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Broadway Plays It Straight
| Article
# : |
20088 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1992 |
1,944 Words |
| Author
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William Ruhlmann
William Ruhlmann is a critic based in New York. His seventh
book, The Rolling Stones, was published last September. |
For some years, the conventional wisdom on Broadway has held that success can be found primarily through big, escapist musicals, while smaller productions, especially straight plays, enjoy, at best, money-losing, limited runs. Thus, the Great White Way has become the long-term home of the likes of Cats (which noisily celebrated its ninth anniversary this season), Les Miserables, and Phantom of the Opera, while well-reviewed nonmusical have died on the vine or, more likely, opened and stayed Off-Broadway.
So, you'd expect more of the same for the 1991-92 Broadway season. Instead, during the season's first half, opening have included no less than five straight plays, along with two novelty shows, a couple of holiday offerings, and only one big-budget musical.
To take the least first, the season's curiosities have been Andre Heller's Wonderhouse, a compendium of very old vaudeville routines performed by very old vaudevillians that opened and closed in a week in October, and Catskills on Broadway, which featured comedy veterans from that unique vacation center. Then there are the holiday shows. Just before Thanksgiving, former gymnast Cathy Rigby bought her touring version of Peter Pan back for a visit. And Patrick Stewart, of Star Trek: The Next Generation, performed a one-man version of A Christmas Carol. These warmed some hearts as well as two theaters for a few weeks. But specialty shows do not a season make.
Back in the hard-to remember days of September, theatergoers' greatest hopes centered on one musical: Nick and Nora. That hope died in mid-December when the play closed. Based on Dashiell Hammett's novel The Thin Man and the six films Hollywood spun out of its characters in the 1930s and '40s, the show looked like a sure hit, as it combined the proven talents of book writer and director Arthur Laurents, composer Charles Strouse, and lyricist Richard Maltby, Jr., as well as Tony-winning actors Barry Bostwick and Joanna Gleason.
It will probably take a book like Devil's Candy (the recent account of The Bonfire of the Vanities movie debacle) to detail what went wrong, but the first sign of trouble was when the show, which had elected to preview in New York for a month instead of for an out-of-town run, delayed its opening from November 10 to December 2, and then to December 10. Soon stories of backstage strife were appearing. Rumors were rampant about the show's overall weakness, and even the Department of Consumer Affairs got into the act, complaining that the play's previews were not advertised as
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