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Broadway's Future Is in Its Past
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20304 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1992 |
1,914 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. |
The 1991-92 Broadway theater season ended officially on April 29, but it has its graduation ceremony a month later on May 31, when the Antoinette Perry Awards are given out by the League of American Theatres and Producers. In recent years, the league has been hard put to adapt the Tony Awards to what actually happened during the theater season, sometimes eliminating awards when not enough eligible shows appeared, sometimes altering the definitions of eligibility. This season is no exception.
The good news: The number of productions that opened on Broadway for 1991-92 was the highest in five years. The season brought back to the stage some of its veteran writers--Arthur Laurents, Cy Coleman, Brian Friel, Israel Horovitz, Richard Nelson, Ken Ludwig, Herb Gardner, John Guare, Neil Simon, and August Wilson, Some veteran Broadway actors were also on hand, among them George C. Scott, Barry Bostwick, Joanna Gleason, Donnal Donnelly, Lindsay Crouse, Jason Robards, Victor Garber, Brain Bedford, and Jane Alexander. In addition, hard times in Hollywood persuaded a number of actors better known for their film or television roles to shuttle east for a few months, where they were greeted with lines of ticket buyers that stretched around the block. These included Glenn Close, Richard Dreyfuss, Gene Hackman, Alec Baldwin, Jessica Lange, Alan Alda, and Joan Collins.
The bad news: For the most part, the new work provided by those veteran writers wasn't among their best, and the box office heat generated by some of the star names above the marquees didn't necessarily extend to the stages inside, where more than one celebrity turned in a performance that left eager audiences cold.
But perhaps the worst news for Broadway itself was that the season failed to generate the kind of long-running hit shows that keep the theater going from year to year. By April 1, twenty-seven shows had opened on Broadway for the new season (with twelve more scheduled), and only ten of them were still running. Of those, only two had opened in the first half of the season, and of the remaining eight, four were limited runs, though it still was possible that one of the shows to come would break out of the pack to runaway success. With four weeks to go, it seemed far more likely that 1991-92 might fail to produce even one show that would become a multiseason hit.
Of course, a major element in producing such a hit is a Tony Award, and the shows most likely to benefit and achieve long runs are musicals. (Three of the four shows that survive from last season are musicals.)
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