The Truth About The Shows That Closed.

The Times has a couple of articles about Sunday’s big Broadway closing day. Nine shows shut down (with more shutting down later this month). This is a bad thing, of course; you never want to see all those folks out-of-work, all those writers losing out on royalty checks. And yes, it’s a sign of the economic times; in the past, you’d never get nine shows closing in one day, not even in January. All that said, what did Broadway really lose this week, and what will it lose for the rest of the month?

For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll be avoiding the big financial impacts: the loss of jobs, the loss of rental income, and all the business related stuff which, truly, is unavoidable and the real sadness of this all. I’m interested purely in the shows right now. My list (and the links) come straight from the Isherwood article.

The Broadway shows closing this month:

‘ALL MY SONS,’ closes on Jan. 11. — Limited run from the start, which means it’s not closing early. Been playing to packed houses (96% in the last week of 2008), made back its investment, affirmed Katie Holmes as a bankable star (sort of), an unquestionable hit. Not a victim of the economy. Could have run a lot longer if the stars were available.

‘BOEING-BOEING,’ closed Sunday. — Made its money back. Outperformed expectations, in my opinion, making it to a partial replacement cast (including The Noxzema Girl, who was pretty good and very pretty {prettier than Natalie Portman [I've given it a lot of thought, and Ms. Portman just isn't pretty like people say she is, folks], I think} ). It’ll do well on tour. Mark Rylance reached the end of his contract,  and while they surely could have renegotiated, without him, the show would have run its course. An unqualified success. Maybe a bit of a victim, but certainly not a tragedy.

‘DIVIDING THE ESTATE,’ closed Sunday. I wasn’t a fan of this show personally, but it played to pretty full houses most (if not all) of its run. It was a Lincoln Center/Primary Stages production, which means (a) it was a not-for-profit venture, which changes the rules a bit, and (b) it was a limited run. It will move on to a run at Hartford Stage with the same cast (for the most part — Elizabeth Ashley moves on to August: Osage County). I’d call this one a success, and I’d say it’s not really a victim.

‘GREASE,’ closed Sunday — Let’s be honest about this Grease. It was all conceived as a reality show prize. It was tame, innocent, nothing like the overtly sexual and faux dangerous film (and full disclosure, I didn’t see this production, but saw enough performances at parades and other places to feel confident in my judgement), and still, it was Grease, which means it could make money in its sleep. I don’t think the Broadway production recouped (I could easily be wrong on that), but there’s a national tour with Taylor Hicks that should make a fortune. I won’t call this a hit, but it’s certainly not a disaster, and should make money. Probably a victim, but with an almost two-year run and the tour in progress, I wouldn’t cry for this one.

‘GYPSY,’ closes on Jan. 11. — Okay…here’s a victim. Sort of. This wasn’t a limited run show, but Patti Lupone’s contract was scheduled to end in March, and if she didn’t re-up, the show would have closed then. The only thing that matters with this show is the lead performance; it’s not a show you can recast. The decision to close in January was clearly a product of the economy, and proof that even the best reviews ever couldn’t necessarily save a show in times like these. I’m sure it didn’t make a ton of money, and it’s not likely to tour, but this certainly has to be considered an artistic success (I didn’t love it, but I saw it early). Still a clear victim — the first one so far.

And that seems like a good place to take a break. Part Two will follow…soon.

August: Osage County and This Week in New York Theater.

1. I saw August: Osage County on Wednesday. I have to admit, I went in more than a little skeptical about the whole experience. There has been, of course, an extraordinary amount of hype around this show, and I tend to tune out when something is treated as if it were the best thing that ever happened (The Dark Knight being an exception to this rule; I was ludicrously amped about that flick, and remain amped after seeing it–expect a post about that soon). But my mom bought tickets, and off we went to a matinée. The opening monologue made me more than a little nervous; I had visions of spending the next three hours watching college professors quote TS Eliot at great length and verbosity. But the play progresses past that quickly, and it settles into, well, the kind of play I generally don’t remotely dig: the wildly dysfunctional but relatively not all that terribly bad-off family play. But I’ll be damned if it’s not a pretty damn good dysfunctional family play.

The acting in this piece is amazing, and this is the replacement cast I saw, meaning that the writing (and the direction) have to be pretty top-notch. The roles are meaty and kind of showy, and the one-liner/zingers that pepper the script are well-placed and paced, so they become more effective in context than out. I’m not going to say this was one of the best or even better shows I’ve ever seen, but it is a remarkably effective 3-plus hour dark comedy that earns its time in the theater. Which is saying a lot, I think.

And it was good to see Officer Prezbo in action too.

2. Billy Elliot is going to be a big hit on Broadway. I really don’t get it. I saw it in London. I was not impressed. More accurately, I was impressed with the little kids dancing, with the sheer athleticism of it all, the achievement of it all, but not much beyond that. But it’ll be a hit, we’re all sure of that, right?

3. The Equus posted is bizarre, and I’m not sure in a good way.

4. Definitely go see Animals Out of Paper at Second Stage. My boy Rajiv wrote it, and my boy Utkarsh is one of the stars. I did a little informal “hip-hop consulting” on it, and I wrote an article about it. Would I get this invested in a show if I didn’t like it? Unlikely.

5. My Nebraska partner in crime (he’s not from Nebraska; we just partner in crime there) Joe Salvatore has an upcoming Fringe show called III. I am bummed to be missing it, but you should be neither bummed nor missing it.

6. I am also likely to miss Hair. This makes me sad, although I might get a chance to see it after all.

Let’s Talk About The Tonys.

The Tony Awards snuck up on me this year.  If I had planned ahead, I would have done a whole week of pre-award analysis, but I’m late, so I’ll bang this stuff out now, then comment again Monday after everything is announced.  The Times has their predictions up, so I’ll riff off that as I do my own.

Musical: I’ve got this sinking, stinking suspicion that Xanadu is going to steal this away from In The Heights and Passing Strange, which happen to be the two most exciting, most important Broadway shows of the last who knows how long.  But both of those shows happen to be young and Brown, and while I don’t think that those are exactly problems for voters, I do think there’s a possibility–more than a possibility–of them canceling each other out, sending the vote to the silly, fun film adaptation that a lot of people really enjoyed.  I haven’t seen Xanadu, but it’s clearly the safer show–and I hope it doesn’t win.  Heights seems the likely juggernaut, but I think Strange was the best show I saw this year, and certainly could use the ticket boost that the Tony would bring.  As long as we’re looking at one of the two, I’ll be happy.

Heights should win best score, if only for numbers like 96,000, which might be the coolest example of melding hip-hop and Broadway that you’re ever gonna get.  My mom thinks they should perform that song on the Tony broadcast, and I agree–it’s something that starts out like nothing on Broadway, then becomes exactly what you expect from Broadway, but with a ton of musical sounds that are still like nothing you’d expect from Broadway.  Strange has a great score too, and is probably more consistent all the way through, but Heights is unabashedly a Broadway show (for better or worse), and that’s what the Tonys should celebrate.

And I’ll say this much: If Lin-Manuel Miranda doesn’t win for Leading Actor, there is no justice in the world.  He’s giving a truly groundbreaking performance in that show, one that people will be studying for the rest of Broadway history.

Plays: I haven’t seen any of the plays this year, but I kind of don’t need to–August: Osage County has everything locked up.

Revivials: I saw Gypsy and Sunday in the Park with George, didn’t love either one, and I’m not sure I’d have loved South Pacific if I had seen it either.  Lupone is a lock for Lead Actress though, and I think South Pacific is almost a lock for the big prize.

And you know what–I’m stopping here, because I realize that I only care about the two musicals in this race, and I hope to hell that voters look at them as two completely different shows that share an energy that Broadway desperately needs right now: young people of color with understandings of popular music and a respect for Broadway traditions but a willingness to shatter them when needed. 

Passing Strange spoke to me like few things speak to me on stage–the story of a young artist, confused, not sure where to fit in, not able to stand in a safe straightforward upbringing, and that’s a simple story that we’ve heard a million times, but this is complicated by race, and class, and religion, and a need to do things exactly your own way, to fail and fall hard in hopes of finding new ways to climb.  It possesses an incredible beautiful cast of incredibly beautiful people of color, and it’s not about race at all, but race is infused in every second of it, and it’s race the way race really is–complicated, invisible, impossible to avoid.  In another year, this would be the hands-down favorite thing I saw, and it’s close even this year.

In The Heights made me cry, and made me cry repeatedly (well, not cry, but tears in my eyes intermittently from the moment the music started), not because of the touching stories of love and acceptance and keeping life going in the face of all kinds of hardships (because honestly, the storylines are nothing we haven’t seen before), but because–and forgive the emotion here, but the emotion is really the point–GOD DAMN IT THOSE ARE PUERTO RICAN FLAGS UP THERE, and Dominican flags, and some Mexican and Cuban, and that’s Washington Heights, and it’s really Washington Heights, and that dude is starting the show by rapping, and it’s good rapping, really good rapping, really real rapping, and there’s a b-boy, and a real b-boy, and the Spanish fits, and no pare, sigue sigue is just, it’s just, god damn it, it’s perfect.  And we’re not gang members or drug dealers or even Lothario Latin lovers–we’re people, hard-working people who struggle with gentrification and self-worth issues and questions of leaving home and putting our pasts behind us to succeed or clutching madly to keep them close and push us even higher.

And I was in the audience on Mother’s Day, and this, I can’t stress this enough, this is what I want Latinos to do on Mother’s Day, I want them to go see In The Heights, all dressed up, full families, and I want them cheering when the lights go down, and I want them cheering and “oooooh”-ing when Nina and Benny kiss on the fire escape, and I want little Puerto Rican and Dominican boys to feel like Usnavi is looking right at them when he’s rhyming the way I felt like John Leguizamo’s Miggy was looking right at me all through Spic-o-Rama.  And you know what?  I’ve got tears in my eyes (just barely, son, just barely) even right now–right now–as I’m writing this.

Damn.  That wasn’t my plan for this at all.

Anyway.  Tonys.  Sunday night.  To say there’s a little bit riding on this year’s awards is an understatement.