This Just In: Broadway Not Dead
by Larry O'ConnorBack in January you couldn’t watch any entertainment “news” show or read any Arts & Culture section of a newspaper without seeing something about the death of Broadway. There were so many shows closing all at once that the imminent death of our industry was whined about not just from spineless actors, but from producers as well. It was so pervasive that Saturday Night Live utilized Neil Patrick Harris’ musical theatre ability to present a skit starring the characters of popular Broadway shows having a meeting at Sardi’s to try to save the industry.
Somewhere, out in the wilderness, on the pages of Big Hollywood, there was a lone voice of reason. A pragmatic and practical man laying out the facts for you, the ever-interested and conservative reader. That man, one Stage Right, was shrewd enough to label the producers as “panty-waste industry folk” and explained that their propensity to panic and pull the emergency brake is partly attributed to their liberal tendencies.
Your average liberal hears a statistic like “46 million without health insurance” and they pull the panic cord. The next logical step, rather than looking at WHY those people don’t have insurance, is to force a mediocre, government planned health care bureaucracy down everyone’s throat (even the 260 million of us who DO have insurance) because it is a CRISIS!
In my post in January, I calmly showed the schedule of future bookings planned in the run up to the Tony Awards and I pointed out that nearly every house would be occupied by the end of the season. Furthermore, I pointed out that you don’t judge the health of the theatre industry based on the shows that are closing, you judge it based on the planned shows in the future. And based on that criteria, the 2008-2009 season was looking to be one of the best.
Now, Variety has come around to vindicate your favorite commercial theatre blogger:
During the 2008-09 season, productions logged a cumulative sales tally of $943.3 million, breaking the record held by the 2006-07 season — and managing to do so during the most unsettling fiscal downturn in decades. Restaurants may be closing, European vacations are being cancelled, alimony payments may be late, and prestigious private schools are losing students. But for various reasons, folks are still turning out for theater. After a turbulent fall and a particularly worrying winter that saw the shuttering of more than a dozen shows, the season snowballed to 43 new productions, the highest count for a single season since 50 shows launched in 1982-83. (Thirty-six shows opened during the 2007-08 season.)
As I pointed out, Broadway is populated by a bunch of victim-mentality whiners who love to see themselves as the ugly step-cousin of the beautiful and rich Hollywood Industry. Many of the folks who tend to find themselves working in theatre as a career are often the types who wallow in self-pity and who don’t see the glass as half-full… they see the glass as being way too big in the first place!
I have longed for a time when our industry stopped seeing itself as something that required subsidies and our art as something that is entertaining and wonderful rather than some sort of medicine that your are SUPPOSED to like. Theatre remains mysterious and inaccessible because many of the folks who run the show like it that way… it makes them feel intelligent, different and special.
Luckily, there are still some grown-ups in the room. The Variety article ends with a quote from Philip Smith, Chairman of the Shubert Organization. Smith is a pro’s pro who has literally seen it all. The coda from Mr. Smith:
“Things look no different than they have in the past,” says Philip J. Smith, co-topper of Broadway landlord the Shubert Org. “Of course, when winter sets in, it may dry up, but right now I don’t see how it could happen.”
Than you, Mr. Smith. It’s true everyone, the sky is NOT falling. Come to Broadway and see a show!
Stage Right is on Facebook.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?
26 Comments
So true, the crowd always loves a good one:
Whoa, what's with that picture? It looks like the bear-suit guy from "The Shining."
Dolly Parton is an American treasure!
Joe Kidd and sons, Lakeside, CA
That was a Saturday Night Live skit. It's was pretty funny, though it lasted too long — as their skits always do.
Here it is:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/52190/saturday-night-li...
Stage, you are the voice of reason in a world of chicken-littles.
I visited Manhattan for the first time about 4 years ago – had to see a play of course but what to see? Mama Mia was hopelessly sold out – the Producers almost – then the play (still have the poster hanging in my hall – for BH I will go downstairs just to let you know (pause) Thoourgly Modern Millie at the Marquis –
Anyway I decide on The Producers and the only seats available were the very expensive ones in front and 1 seat in back.
I pick the cheap seat and find I am sitting behind a concrete pillar but still reveling in the experience.
I am at a top Broadway show .
Had I been able to stay longer I would have seen 2 or 3…
Manhattan? Damn, that's where I went wrong, I have been up and down Broadway here in St. Louis and couldn't find a theater anywhere.
I used to like Funky Broadway until I realized it was supposed to be about Phoenix, Arizona instead of NYC. Safe to say, neither place now matches the description given in the song.
They might even have a larger take if they produced something aimed at the conservative 40 percent they're presently not only ignoring, but actively irritating. But, as you say, that wouldn't make them feel all mysterious and special.
Is this a sign that Broadway should be producing shows that they'll bring to Hollywood instead of the other way around? The last time I paid a trip to NYC, every major show on Broadway was a stage version of a movie I didn't much like in the first place. Back in the dark ages when I lived in NYC, in a short period of time I saw "Funny Girl," "Hello, Dolly," "Fade Out–Fade In" and "High Spirits." Two of those were famously made into films, and "High Spirits" should have been. Not a single movie production-turned-play in sight, and plays about people who didn't want to pay their rent because they had a social disease were off-off-Broadway. I didn't even mind that as a starving student, I had to go "standing room only."
Andrew, thanks for the link…. I couldn't embed it in my post for some reason… It's sad that the only time SNL acknowledges the theatre industry two blocks away from their studio is when there is a perceived CRISIS! It all seems kind of silly six months later now that we see that this season was the highest grossing in history and there were 20% more shows opening this season than last year!
I thought she ranked at least two American treasures.
Then there are the Disney animated movies that become musicals on Broadway, and/or "spectacles on ice." They deserve their own classification.
Perhaps it is a sign that Broadway became so "cool" they froze out all but those writers considered "hot," who turned out to have short creative lifespans. Of course the money is in Hollywood, the best writers (by industry definition) would tend to go there, thus the best available material for Broadway is coming from Hollywood. This has been shown by a long-running string of movies (theatrical release and TV) and TV shows that could only be watchable if some musical numbers were added.
Should we have more entertainment "innovation" like The Producers, the film that became a hit play that became a hit movie? Hopefully that circle will only loop once.
Here I thought if it did not require subsidies to stay afloat then it could not be "art." You cannot be an "artist" without suffering for your art. Where is the suffering if you can make a profit and not have to starve? Or at the very least be forced to grudgingly accept government assistance to avoid starving?
You're welcome Stage.
I think the problem with SNL is that they aren't very broadly focused. They seem to stick pretty much to the front page of the NYT and the movie page. I rarely see them venture into much of anything else.
I agree. My two favorite parts were the reference to racism and the Color Purple and the bit about the woman with the muppet giving massages.
Oh, didn't you know? Artists that make money are called "Sellouts". It can't be art if the majority of people like it.
Not if they are wildly successful sellouts, then they are artists. Andy Warhol was an artist, for example.
Good point. Then again, I'm pretty sure people pretend to "get" Warhol's crap to seem "artistic" or "sophisticated".
Wow, I love that sketch. I don't really watch SNL (just never did, not as a statement or anything) but that made me laugh.
You are an oracle, Mr. Right. Good to have you on our side. It's like anything else economy-related – it's cyclical. Pretty sure EVERYONE was hitting a slump there for a while, or are going through a slump, or are about to, but then it cycles back around and sales pick up again.
Just to add a few things guys – I have regularly attended my town's plays – named appropriately the 'Broadway Series" – and the theater is usually sold out or nearly sold out each year. Seen everything from 12 Angry Men to Mama Mia. To me if you are an actor the Theater is the top of the food chain – forgot all those re shoots for those movie people – you and the audience are there live – and there have been a few times where an actor flubs a line (I remember years ago in SF watching Showboat with Donald O'Connor and he flubbed a line – Donald O"Connor – and the audience was sympathetic with him and cheered him on. Like Yul Bryner and the King and I O'Connor owned Showboat.
If you are ever traveling our scenic Hwy 49 – along the foothills of the western Sierras – and stop at our state park Columbia – you have to see a play at the historic Fallon Theater. Columbia is a gold rush version of colonial Williamsburg and the scene of some movies like High Noon.
Anyway the local people host actors from all over the west coast who appear here. The theater is as it was pretty much in 1860 and you feel like at the end everyone should take their 6 shooters and fire into the ceiling
We've seen in past years (my car club) South Pacific, Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat and (appropriately for Columbia) Paint Your Wagon.
We're going Aug 1 for Damn Yankees.
I believe the spelling is "pantywaist", not "waste".
However, the label is apt:
1 [Historical] a child's two-piece undergarment that buttoned together at the waist
2 [Slang] a man or youth considered as like a child in lacking strength, courage, etc.; sissy
"the film that became a hit play that became a hit movie"
That should be the film about a hit play that became a hit play that became a film that bombed at the box office.
The Producers was a film in 1968 that seemed to go under the radar – only made a play 30 some years later – The Lion King another movie -> play can't think of too many others – most of the time like South Pacific or Oklahoma it is the other way around. Phantom of the Opera bombed at the box office if I am not mistaken but the play still goes on after many years…
I read one explanation to this slang that I didn't need to read – and not on your list. 'Nuff said
[...] as last season brought a record number of plays as well as stellar gross sales (despite doom-sayers in the industry) this season already looks locked and loaded with a huge [...]
You must be logged in to post a comment.