Stage Door is possibly the most famous, but the same idea entertained audiences from the start of the Great Depression to the finish.
Even in good times, shows close, of course. But in hard times, they close a lot faster:
Yet the prospect of darkness and days off came with a different meaning this past Sunday night, as nine Broadway productions -- including "Hairspray," "Young Frankenstein," "Boeing-Boeing," "13" and "Grease" -- closed for good, some as scheduled, and some as a result of declining audiences in grim economic times.
And so after the shows there were parties, of course, with a good deal of laughter and tears here and there, and a lot of white wine and hard-to-identify canapés. But there was also a sense of heavy reckoning -- over the high price of Broadway tickets, over the future directions of theater actors' careers, and over the real sadness that can accompany a production marquee dimming for a final time.
"For me, it feels like putting a pet to sleep, but not because it's sick -- because you can't afford dog food," Marc Shaiman, who was the composer of the music and the co-author of the lyrics for "Hairspray," said during its closing-night party at the club Arena. "So I can't make peace with it -- if I had seen it sick and dying, I could make more peace with it."
Anyone selling an expensive luxury is going to find themselves putting a lot more of their pets to sleep in the next few months.
On the other hand, dinner-and-a-show is a lot cheaper than a weekend in the islands. Theaters that can put together reasonable plays for moderate prices (not big-budget spectaculars) should be able to find a niche even in hard times. I've attended several sold-out shows in the past couple of months, none of which cost over $50.
I don't know if the big Broadway theaters can move in that direction, or if they can sell enough tickets to non-musicals to make money. It does seem that there have been a lot more dramas and non-musical comedies recently.
"Hairspray," "Young Frankenstein," "Boeing-Boeing," "13" and "Grease"
So the economy is killing the old and weak?
I have often had that thought. My hobby is supported by a range of cottage industries; how they will weather the downturn, I do not know.
So does this mean the death of these endless B-grade movies made into musicals? Or is that all they'll do now because nobody will take a risk on a show that doesn't already have name recognition?
I'm sure this marks me as a cultural Philistine, but I've always thought of plays as an anachronistic form of entertainment that can't compete with modern offerings like movies and video games, and which only survives as a nostalgic niche.
I actually rather enjoy theater (although I never get out because of the kids) but part of the problem is creative writing teachers telling people to "write what they know." This means most of the new stuff is, as my wife likes to put it, about "lesbian laundromat workers" (For the 30-something hipsters in the audience, this is a reference to an indie film from the late 90's whose name I have forgotten). So to see something actually good, or even just something where everybody doesn't have AIDS, you have to reach back into the past and pull out nostalgia revivals.
I doubt Rogers and Hammerstein knew anything whatsoever about Oklahoma territory.
Broadway's problem is a simple retooling problem. Broadway's audience is heavily foreigners and out-of-towners... this leads to familiar musicals and an equilibrium in which New Yorkers don't want to go to the theater. (An overgeneralization, but not much.) But M.C. is right: when foreigners stop coming here and New Yorkers stop going away, theater looks pretty cheap relative to Mustique. But the inventory has to change to accomodate. Look for more plays and more of the shows Rob Lyman doesn't like. Broadway will survive, just as it survived the Stage Door era.
"For me, it feels like putting a pet to sleep, but not because it's sick -- because you can't afford dog food," Marc Shaiman
It seems like karma. After all, Shaiman shouldn't be playing in a theatre in a state where gay marriage isn't allowed, right?
Maybe he can call Scott Eckern and they can commiserate about being out of a job.
This isn't cyclical - this is just part of a longer decline. Broadway isn't relevant to American culture anymore, and hasn't been for a long time.
The proper analogy is the terminal decline in Dreamcast sales, not seasonal decline of Wii sales.
Entertainment is doing quite fine, and uses up a much, much bigger chunk of the family budget than it did in the '30s. That's going to the Wii and the Xbox though.
It isn't just the theater ticket prices for us out of towners. It's the whole cost of a Manhattan visit. The wife suggested we drive to NY on a Saturday, have dinner, see a good show, stay overnight, and come home. When the price started to approach $1000 (tolls, gas, parking, meals, hotel, etc. etc.) we decided to wait until the second string production visited a nearby city. Heck, the Broadway ticket price could be reduced to $5 a seat, and I still wouldn't spring for a visit, though that price would probably bring out the locals in droves.
What about Rochelle, Rochelle?
Touring companies aren't bad, and a lot of regional theater is excellent. Even in New York, Off-Broadway is still there at more reasonable prices. High-end community theater and low-end professional theater overlap in personnel and quality, and often cost about the same. Broadway is hardly the only thing out there.
And isn't AIDS, as a theme, a little dated? Unless the play is set in Africa, that is. The big wave of AIDS plays happened when people here were dying of it in droves. Now that HIV is more controllable, it doesn't have the same dramatic impact.
Still, there's the question of how you fill a gigantic venue in hard times. Not all the big playhouses are in New York, so this is a question that goes beyond that city. I'd say that part of the answer will involve being funny and charming. Even if the theme is intense, use some wit to explore it. Nobody is going to want grim-for-the-sake-of grim in the near future.
Is it wrong of me to want to dance on the grave of musical theater?
Well, I want to even if it is.
Posted before I finished my previous thought --
Live theater is one area where an old technology can meet the internet with good results. Most theater companies are on the web now, and most have e-mail lists or other electronic means of getting in touch with potential customers. This makes it a lot easier to find out what is happening on stage wherever you are, and a lot easier to pick out the things that happen to appeal to you. Plenty of people are doing shows Rob Lyman would like. But the same companies will have other shows in their seasons to appeal to different demographics.
This may be one of those long-tail things.
If you have to ask what it costs,
then it is not a luxury item. :)
As an aside, the book "Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip-Mining of American Culture" has a lot of essays attacking TV and movies as non-literate culture while simultaneously praising drama and poetry - without recognizing that they are just holdovers from an earlier period of non-literate culture.
I'm a theater buff, as you all may have guessed, but I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with TV and movies. Or books. They're all just different media for telling stories. If the stories are good, they are good. Other than that, the different media have different strengths and weaknesses.
I happen to like being in a room with live storytellers. I also prefer live sporting events to televised sports. The collective experience is part of the fun in both cases.
But I still subscribe to Netflix.
Anybody seen the movie versions of "Doubt" and "Frost/Nixon"? Any comments on the process of turning the plays into movies?
Even if the theme is intense, use some wit to explore it. Nobody is going to want grim-for-the-sake-of grim in the near future.
I recently saw a play that followed this advice, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, about a man that was bounced from the IRA because he was too violent and then joined a splinter group. Funny and violent in the Grand Guignol tradition.
I saw Doubt onstage last year. The play was strangely timeless - it could have been anywhere from the 50s to the 70s. It reminded me of "The Crucible" in reverse. I can't see putting it on the screen - the sparseness of a stage set acts as a focus on the characters and the words. These could be diluted by a rich, natural background.
I'm lucky to live in a city with a great professional theatre, The Alley.
We get the really good plays a year or two after NYC, but it's a lot cheaper.
ech -
I also saw a "Lieutenant of Inishmore" this year, apparently in a different place (Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia). Very good, very bloody, and very funny.
If you like that, look for anything by Conor McPherson. "The Seafarer" was in New York last winter, and now it's beginning to turn up in regional theater. The Washington DC one opens on January 14. "Shining City" is another good one by the same author.
Nonetheless, Broadway theater ticket sales were up in 2008 over 2007.
Though 2009 may be different, of course.