The Broadway out of recession
WE MAY be in a recession but theatre is putting a brave, even buoyant, face on it on both sides of the Atlantic.
The commercial sectors of the West end and Broadway may only provide a shop window to theatre’s infinite possibilities; the good news, though, is that the shops are not only still open for business but that the audiences are still shopping and there are plenty of good things for them to buy.
Another encouraging sign of health is that Broadway (traditional home of the feel-good musical) has also revealed a
strong appetite for dramas that feed the soul as well as the emotions.
Several of these hail from London: the Donmar’s production of Mary Stuart is now previewing there, with Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter reprising their magnificent London performances, and this week the Old Vic takes its
wonderful staging of Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests to conquer Broadway.
New York’s biggest dramatic hit is God Of Carnage, Yasmina Reza’s ferocious comedy of middle-class bad manners first seen in London last year, revolving around two couples going into magnificent battle to settle a row
between their young sons.
Yet there’s even more at stake in this brittle, brilliant portrait of marriages poised on the brink of imploding.
Director Matthew Warchus re-stages it here with an all-American cast of James Gandolfini (TV’s Tony Soprano),
Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis and Marcia Gay Harden playing it in a symphony of feeling and fury.
Broadway is also taking audacious and surprising risks.
An Australian-born production of Ionesco’s Exit The King, a dark portrait of a dying monarch facing his final curtain, is far from traditional Broadway fare but Geoffrey Rush (Oscar winner for Shine) brings dazzling danger to the role of the King, and Susan Sarandon, on Broadway for the first time in 37 years, brings poise and pertinence to playing his desperate wife.
Jane Fonda has been away from the stage for even longer: her appearance in Moises Kaufman’s 33 Variations marks her Broadway return after an absence of some 46 years.
That she cuts an amazingly elegant figure is no surprise; she’s also quietly affecting as a dying musicologist trying to unravel a story of Beethoven’s creative impulses in composing his Diabelli Variations (played live by Diane Walsh) but though it is beautifully staged, the play, with its inevitable echoes of Amadeus, feels pretentious and stilted.
By contrast, Irene’s Vow, based on the true story of a young Polish Catholic who helped 12 Jews to survive the Holocaust by hiding them in the basement of her German officer boss’s home, has heart, despite the sometimes clunky script from Dan Gordon.
Tovah Feldshuh’s performance on the other hand is impassioned.
Though Hairspray (a London smash hit) may offer a sunny, nostalgic view of the Sixties, it was another musical, Hair, that sprayed that decade with its own distinctive perfume of hippy protest and impassioned rock songs.
It’s a show that coincidentally paved the way for Spring awakening, now to be found at London’s Novello Theatre,
not just in the buoyancy and individuality of their respective scores but also in directly addressing and portraying young lives on stage.
However, where Spring awakening sets itself up as a period piece but then subverts it, creating a tension out of the
juxtaposition between its classic setting of the 19th-century morality play it is based on and a contemporary rock score, Hair has intriguingly become a period piece.
It has been lovingly recreated at the Hirschfeld Theater and is what Broadway always loves: a nostalgia fest for a time gone by.
That sense of nostalgia is also embraced by a new production of Guys and Dolls. Though it isn’t as strongly cast as it might be and the neon glow of the production is enough to give audiences sunburn, it’s always a treat to see this show again.
GOD OF CARNAGE
VERDICT 4/5
Bernard B Jacobs Theatre, New York
(Box office: 212-239 6200; $66.50-$116.50)
EXIT THE KING
VERDICT 3/5
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
(Box office: 212-239 6200; $66.50-$111.50)
33 VARIATIONS
VERDICT 3/5
Eugene O’Neill Theatre
(Box office: 212-239 6200; $67-$117)
IRENE’S VOW
VERDICT 3/5
Walter Kerr Theatre
(Box office: 212-239 6200; $41-$98)
HAIR
VERDICT 3/5
Al Hirschfeld Theatre
(Box office: 212-239 6200; $37-$122)
GUYS AND DOLLS
VERDICT 3/5
Nederlander Theatre
(Box office: 212-307 4100; $50-$125)
