The problem is that in "most" cases the only revivals that are being done these days are musicals and that's to pack the house with tourists from out of town that want to go home humming, "I'm as corny as Kansas in August."
Sure, when I travel to the City I love seeing a revival of Rabe's "Hurlyburly" or more especially Griffiths' "The Comedians." I saw them on Broadway years ago and it had me coming back for more. The problem is that the "economics" of Broadway makes staging these type events practically impossible
...….which is sad!
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Brain dead and money out of control. Box office grosses with inflated egregious prices. TDF discounts (beyond my budget). As a Award winning director, Broadway was once my goal. Now it seems like a gang of producers at every awards show... Hype and gripe sway... Eons ago Liza Minelli inflated $100- tickets for The Act (and The Times published my letter) in 1977. Pocket change now for some. Way too much for me.
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@danielpquinn684 - Wow, the best seats for Liz Taylor i "The Little Foxes" several years later were $30, which everyone thought was high then. Was Liza Minnelli in "The Act" am even hotter ticket?
I always like the construction Liza got $X for "The Act" - it conjures up an image of the star sitting in the box office taking the money, happily making change, LOL! (almost like: "She's a great performer, but will she sell tickets?" "Sure, if you want her to, and she'll even help give out Playbills - she loves her fans.")
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My first job with Meryl Streep as a production assistant was Happy End from Bam to Broadway about 1977-8 after they fired Shirley Knight in Brooklyn.
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@danielpquinn684 What do you expect tickets for a major theatre production should cost, exactly? Less than a movie ticket? How much are tickets to basketball games or hockey games? I can assure you the actors on stage aren't getting anywhere near the salaries of sports stars. There are performers, musicians, designers, costumes and so many other things to pay for. I get tired of people whining that they can't afford these "outrageous" prices.
There are so many ways to score cheap tickets if you even do a minimal amount of research. I travel to New YOrk regularly, and in the past 10 years I have never paid what the box office lists as the regular ticket prices. There are lotteries, rush tickets, standing room, PLaybill club tickets, and special discount offers all the time. I saw Bette Midler in Hello Dolly for about $40 with a great view of the stage from a standing position at the rear of the orchestra. All it took was some basic research and a willingness to get in line early at the box office. If you then complain that you don't want to wait at the box office for two or three hours, then you're not a true theatre fan. Please, people, do a little homework before whining.
The chance to see Katrina Lenk and Patti Lupone perform Sondheim has me eagerly looking forward to Company, and I will probably see it more than once. I adored Lenk in The Band's Visit. And I was even more knocked out when i came across her phenomenal performance of If I were a Rich Man at a Broadway benefit (available on YouTube). She sings the tune with wonderful humour and sexiness and the kind of warm, unforced, natural singing we almost never hear in today's pop music (amplified and processed so much it rarely sounds human). But she also performs a phenomenal violin solo before she sings. I had to look up her background to discover she majored in viola at university. And I adored Patti's version of The Ladies who Lunch in the concert version with Neil Patrick Harris and the Sondheim 80th concert at Lincoln Center. So nice the production will coincide with Sondheim's 90th. Everybody Rise!
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Or do today's Broadway songs,
drop below acceptable ???
"When Broadway premieres are so often second comings how do we (critics) treat them as exciting arrivals?" Well, here's an idea: don't review them until they arrive in NEW YORK. Everyone in the theater knows that the NYTimes review of a play or musical is the ONLY ONE that matters to a show's success or failure. A middling NYT review for a show that is still out of town can stop the momentum of that show dead; eroding producer confidence that their show will ever illicit a good review from the paper. The extraordinary habit of NYT critics hungrily dashing off to see and review newly germinating shows out of town, or out of state, before the real work in front of a paying audience has even be done by the creatives undermines their theatrical process and prevents many new shows from ever coming to fruition, or to New York, at all. It takes 7 years, on average, to bring a new musical to production. I'd love to see a NYT theater critic (all they all men?) embedded with a new musical for the better part of a decade so they could truly appreciate this process. Perhaps then they'd glean why it is that a revival and an original musical en route to Broadway, must never be judged by the same metric, as so often happens. Leave constructive criticism to local critics! Yet, oblivious NYT reviewers just can't wait, just cant stay away while the cake is baked, frosted, candles lit and happy birthday sung. Only then should they dane to taste the product and report their findings.
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I for one will not be going to see the Mammy musical "Caroline or Change." After all the wonderful representations of African American Women "Hadestown," "Tina," "Hamilton," "Frozen," "Aint Too Proud," "West Side Story," and others, why on earth would anyone revive the time worn Mammy Trope in "Caroline or Change". It wasn't good the first time around. Paula Marie Seniors, PhD, Africana Studies, Virginia Tech
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I figure seeing Rupert Everett as George is worth seeing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf again.
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I saw the recent revival of Oklahoma and it ranks among the best artistic experiences I've seen or heard in a long time.
That said, given the costs to create and stage a show for Broadway, it should be no surprise the stages are full of revivals and adaptations.
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Flying Over Sunset is opening on Broadway in April. Other than a few industry readings, it has never been seen by a paying audience.
The reality is most shows will not make it to Broadway without a positive notice from the NY TIMES whether it's Brantley or Green, so yeah, they've seen shows previously. Broadway is expensive, more and more so, thus producers are depending on familiar revivals or big name stars to entice ticket-buyers. If you're looking for innovative or 'new' work, don't look to the Great White Way which often plays to the lowest common denominator.
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This is very true. But wouldn’t enough noisy theatre-goers, and especially Broadway investors, change this?
I am waiting for Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 to be revived and will not rest easy until it is done so!
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@Phoebe Dillard It was SOOOOO GOOD!!!!!
I'm quite the sucker for a revival that intelligently contextualizes and makes me fall in love with a piece I thought I already knew. The recent revivals of Oklahoma! and Once on this Island at the Circle in the Square theater are excellent examples of this.
I actually think a larger problem on Broadway is the proliferation of adaptations. It seems every Disney movie or every 80s movie is getting its own Broadway musical nowadays. These musicals aren't inherently bad, but many of them feel uninspired. I make a trip to New York every year, and last summer was the first time I saw more plays than musicals. The lesser financial risk to producers seems to produce more creative, thought-provoking content.
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Your concluding sentence sums up the whole experience of live theatre. Every performance will be subtly different because each of us, audience and actors, changes every moment. That is why good productions are worth seeing more than once; even more true of revivals.
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Will be interested in reviews of Plaza Suite in NYC as it was not reviewed during the Boston tryouts. I saw it there and will say no more.
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@Gardner -- I saw it in Boston as well. I will say no more.
Broadway is not the only branch of the American entertainment industry that has been stuck in rerun mode. Seemingly endless superhero- (and action hero-) infused franchises dominate movie theaters. If a TV show runs for one season, it's considered a failure. The genre of historical fiction--which recycles, well, history--is blooming. The same chorus-verse song form, using the same few chords, has been inundating the music market for half a century.
For some reason, then, Americans have been rejecting innovation as the driving force of culture. We want innovation to make our next smart phone better, but we don't want it to make lives more meaningful.
Nostalgia is characteristic of an empire's twilight. When are we going to stop escaping into the past and start looking for inspiration in new ideas?
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@D. S.
"When are we going to stop escaping into the past and start looking for inspiration in new ideas?"
We're done and everybody is in denial.
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I've seen "Caroline or Change" twice--in London with Sharon Clarke and again in Boston. I preferred the Boston production which had a simpler set and seemed to fit the stage better. It's an emotional roller coaster of a play and the music isn't exactly memorable. Hoping the Broadway production can sustain a nice run.
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This seems a part of a bigger conversation about whether “canons” (literary, musical, dramatic) will continue or not. I do see that we might be questioning them for a few decades. Carina del Valle Schorske’s excellent op-Ed on West Side Story has been on my mind. To me, revivals feel great, like rereading a favorite book, and sometimes sharing it with new friends and family. But it is true that the immense resources focused on revivals detracts from funding actually new work and new voices. Maybe as audience members we need to put down some old favorites and pick up some new titles - take some more risks. I wonder how many revivals were being put up in the 40s, 50s and 60s on Broadway . . .
@Mtn14 - The 1990s "Guys and Dolls" showed that a revival if handled right could become front-page news (or at least a front-page photo), and throw off touring companies and become a license to print money, the same way a new hit show that had to be developed from scratch would be. I don't think that had ever happened before. It certainly seemed more reliable financially than the new American musicals in the mid to late 1980s, which were always paling at the box office and for awards against the British imports which had come here with huge Broadway advances, not having to worry on opening night.
I’ll take a revival over the glitzy concerts Broadway is now putting on. A revival indicates a show had content worth revisiting. Does anyone think there will ever be a revival of The Cher Show or Margaritaville? Paying Broadway prices for concerts without the actual singer is a travesty l
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@Queenie - This may be a coicidnece, and I had to look back to check. But unless my receipts are wrong, I actually did pay more to see Stephanie Block with a band, no scenery, than I paid for a really good (though non-premium) seat to see "The Cher Show."
PS There were at least two numbers, though the character Cher sang them in a different era than when Cher recorded them, that had great dramatic power (to me) sung by the character than the recordings by Cher - "The Way of Love" sung by the character seeming to recall the song she used to sing at a moment she needed to draw on what the song said, and "Just Like Jesse James," which to Cher had just been a song on her album that she says she never imagined would have been a hit but in the show Ms. Block sold the drama of the strange situation of working with Sonny while married to Gregg Allman.
(Oy, I keep doing it - I'd typed Jesse Green rather than Jesse James. Can't blame spellcheck, but at least I caught it this time BEFORE hitting submit.)
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One might think that the point of doing revivals is not just to do it again, or to do it 'drifferent' (as in 'Think Different'), but to do it better.
What??? Do it better than the Greatest Shows of the past? Heresy!!!
Every past Great Show has been a set of compromises. Theater always is. So why not aim higher? With modern theater tech, great actor/singer/dancers, choruses on their marks, and so on, why can't we improve on the past? We expect yearly improvement in cars, cell phones, etc. We long for improvement in election processes. Why not expect it as the Reason to do revivals?
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Economics, mainly, I would guess; it is hard to throw the million-dollar-dice on the new. But perhaps better texts in the past? Or a time ripe for re-interpretation of the past?
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Broadway is a bit stuck on replay, but in two instances I am glad for it: Company and Caroline, or Change. I have both performed in and worked on Company, and I'm excited to see this new production with a female Bobbie. As well, I missed both productions of Caroline, or Change (Off and on Broadway) and this time, I will not miss this production! And from what I hear, it's a great one.
Revivals can enlighten and also introduce folks to shows that they might not have seen previously. The shame for me is when revivals are so stretched beyond their parameters in order to serve the director's ideas over the libretto/choreography/score. (Oklahoma, I'm looking at you --- in the dark, unfortunately!)
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Huh?
You mean Met should not do Tosca because they've done it hundreds of times? Or the Philharmonic Beethoven's 5th Symphony, all time audience favorite? But do "new" pieces even though no one shows up?
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@Irate citizen You make a very good point. Often the symphony will pair a warhorse like Beethoven's 5th with either a brand new or a much lesser known piece of music. Most of the audience comes for the well-known piece, and end up being introduced to something new (and hopefully liking it!). It's easy to do in the philharmonic, much more difficult to do on the theater stage.
Quality new theater and new music is wonderful. However, there are a lot of people out there who have never heard Beethoven's 5th live, nor have seen West Side Story live on stage. (There are some people around who are old enough and might have seen WSS in the 50s live. There are many more who were born afterwards.)
@Bill F I worked at Philharmonic. It was a joke with us that if we programmed Beethoven's 5th every performance, we would sell out every performance. But, of course we couldn't do that.
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@Irate citizen
And they should have taken a sledgehammer to Michelangelo's David once all the critics had seen it.
As in film and TV, reboots and revivals and sequels and prequels are a sure sign of creative bankruptcy.
They have no new ideas so they must go to reruns.
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@Chris Morris they have new ideas, but when a show costs $10,000,000+ to produce, it's very tough to find investors who will take such a huge gamble on a new work without testing it out.
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As a theater critic I've seen "Fiddler on the Roof" five times and the only way I'll review it again is if they do the all-nude version (think of the potential "wonder of wonders" jokes). However, as I was leaving, I think, the fourth production I reviewed I heard someone say "I didn't know it was a musical." Every production is new to somebody, especially a young person who may never have seen the original or a subsequent revival. Wouldn't it be interesting to send a critic to, say, "Caroline" and not have that writer spend time discussing the way Tonya Pinkins did it.
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Yes. Broadway. Enough of the dated revivals
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You saw Six in Chicago. I saw it on a cruise ship last month.
Is this what Broadway has become?
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It's producers who are more interested in money than art- it's that simple.
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@Go Figure As the great Jeffey Seller, producer of Hamilton et al, would say "I guess that's why it's called Show Business and not Show Art"
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I've seen about 300 Broadway plays - "Les Miserables" 25 times in the 80s.
Broadway died when the helicopter came down in "Miss Saigon" just like popular music died when Phil Collins brought his snare stick down in "In The Air Tonight" and the rest of the 80s featured a snare drum stick first, the song second, followed by drum machines, followed by auto-tune. Have a listen to the Top 40 of today. Remember when hit songs came from Broadway shows? That's when both were listenable.
Aside from some truly inspiring performances like "Fela!"
and others, Broadway is mostly an overpriced Disney theme park. The absolute nadir is the revivals.
And one more thing - the men of Broadway used to have very manly voices. Gordon MacRae. John Raitt. Now you get guys who spend 6 hours a day in the gym and "fit the costume" but their testosterone seems to have gotten lost on the way to midtown and they all sound like Don Knotts with vibrato.
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@Zellickson That's because Raitt and MacRae and the men they played were baritones and most male leading characters today are written for tenors.
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@Seán M HINGSTON --- [agree] and also, "tenor" now means "boy-band high voice" (i.e. spends half its time crooning in falsetto instead of actually singing full-voiced. (And no, I don't mean belting.))
Sequels , revivals are low hanging fruit. Notice they frequently are accompanied by heavy television advertising. An attempt to re-sell rather than compel by virtue of originality.
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Not sure what to make of this piece. Everything Jesse Green says is true but the phenomenon he's describing is really only evident if you lump together a number of different categories. Yes, it's true that Green and Ben Brantley have seen a lot of this material before. But they arrive on Broadway this season under a variety of circumstances. Some of are classic revivals that are returning to Broadway. Others are "graduates" from off-Broadway. Others played out of town before coming to NY. And others played for limited runs.
In some of these cases audiences get to see an older work that they never saw or haven't seen in a while or get to see in a new light. In other cases, the production was not available to many audiences or didn't have the profile that Broadway provides.
I, for one, am very happy that The Lehman Trilogy, for example, is coming to Broadway. I don't have a job that provides tickets to just about any production. As such, when the Lehman Trilogy played a limited run at The Armory with seats costing $thousands, it was not accessible to people like me or most New Yorkers.
I'm sorry that theater critics have to suffer through a season with shows they may have seen but this gives the rest of us a chance to see some of the stuff that required special access, lots of money or world travel to see. I don't think this is such a bad trade-off.
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TV and movies had fallen victim to sequelitis for years, especially movies. Movie producers have become lazy. How many superhero movies are enough? How many sequels and reboots do we have to be subjected to? Movie and theatre customers may have finally grown weary of it because this last viewing season was a little better, I believe. My wife and I went to three movies and a play when we hadn't seen any in three years. Nothing interested us for a long time because every movie and production was the same as days gone by.
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Not just Broadway, but also Hollywood keeps giving us the same stories about the same set of people as hotly debated during the last Oscars.
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