As I watched my favorite morning news show today, an item came up which caused me to execute a perfect Danny Thomas “spit-take.”  Today is the publication date for President Obama’s new children’s book billed as “a moving tribute to thirteen groundbreaking Americans and the ideals that have shaped our nation.”   The content of the book didn’t cause my reaction, nor was it that what Obama would describe as the “ideals that have shaped our nation,” would probably be unrecognizable to our founding fathers.  The publication of the President’s book made me angry but it had nothing to do with the President’s progressive politics and everything to do with the title of his book; Of Thee I Sing.

There is only one true Of Thee I Sing, a musical that first appeared on Broadway almost seventy years ago and (in my humble opinion) is one of the most biting political satires ever written. In fact, Of Thee I Sing was the first successful American musical with a consistently satiric tone.  The writers and the cast were unsure of what the public’s reception would be, prompting one of the writers of the book, George S. Kaufman, to quip “Satire is what closes on Saturday night.”

Written at the beginning of the great depression, Of Thee I Sing lampoons a political system too tied up in personalities and silly little issues to fix the country’s economy. The creative team behind the musical was a Broadway All-Star team.  The book was written by George S. Kaufman (You Can’t Take it With You) and Morrie Ryskind. The team’s previous collaboration was Animal Crackers, a Broadway musical written for the Marx Brothers (Ryskind went on to write many of the Marx Brothers movies). Music and lyrics were written by George and Ira Gershwin.  George Gershwin was perhaps America’s greatest composer, writing everything from musicals, to opera, to classical music and ballet.   Ira Gershwin is one of the American musical’s greatest lyricists, who wrote for both stage and screen (including the original A Star is Born).

Of Thee I Sing was the first musical ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Unfortunately though the score is an essential part of the play, George Gershwin was was not recognized by the Pulitzer committee.

The play tells the story of presidential candidate John P. Wintergreen,” he’s the man the people choose, loves the Irish and the Jews.” For Vice President the choice is Alexander Throttlebottom, who throughout the play keeps trying to get into meetings and rallies, but gets thrown out because no one knows who he is.

Thanks to political bosses Louis Lippman and Francis X. Gilhooley, newspaper magnate Matthew Arnold Fulton, Senators Carver Jones and Robert E. Lyons – Wintergreen’s chosen platform was the politically safe “love platform.”  The party bosses also decide that Wintergreen should get married, so they hold a beauty pageant to select a bride for him. The winner is the sultry southern belle Diana Deveraux. (more…)

Summer is the slow time on Broadway as theatre pros recover from their Tony Award hang-overs and try to rush out to the Island for a few days of R & R before the new season begins.  This year it seems there are a few plays aiming for early fall openings hoping to ride a crest of popularity into the always-lucrative holiday season.

Just 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 number of shows scheduled to open between October 1st and the first week of May (the traditional Tony nomination cut-off).  So to help the readers of Big Hollywood plan their trip to the Great White Way (we can still say that, can’t we?), I submit the top 10 things to look for from the center/right perspective:

10.  ”Superior Donuts” – A transfer from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre (one of my personal favorite regional houses in America), the play stars “Spinal Tap”’s Michael McKean as an aging hippie who owns a donut shop in a largely black neighborhood and Jon Michael Hill (do all young Broadway actors HAVE to go by three names now?) as a 21-year-old from the neighborhood who talks his way into a job at the shop.  From the New York Times review:  ”In one of the play’s most amusing exchanges Franco challenges Arthur to name 10 black poets. Arthur names a few, then stands dumb, a look of deep concentration on his face. “It’s like watching George Bush on ‘Jeopardy!’ ” Franco cracks.” (more…)

Contrary to popular belief the sky is NOT falling on Broadway. Yes, about a dozen shows closed after the holidays, but up until about 15 years ago, that was the norm.  There have traditionally been three “seasons” for shows to close on Broadway:

• Right after New Years because shows cashed in on all of the tourism in New York, but then can’t survive January and February, the worst times of the year for ticket sales.
• The first week of May because that’s when the Tony nominations come out and many shows hang on to see if they get nominated, and if they don’t they’re done.
• The second week of June because that’s right after the Tony Awards, and the shows that don’t win are barely scraping by and will not sustain large enough grosses to stay in their house through the Summer.

So, the fact that many shows just closed is not historically rare.  The real indicator as to the health of the industry is how many shows are scheduled to open between now and that magic first day of May (the Tony nomination cut-off).  A quick look at the schedule over at Playbill.com shows us that no fewer than 21 shows are already scheduled, if not already on sale.  When I look at the current shows running and the schedule for new shows, it appears that by the time we hit May 1st almost every Broadway house will have had a tenant this Spring … even the Belasco… even the Brooks Atkinson!   (more…)