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.

West Side Story Pictures.

Playbill has them.

I  don’t exactly find them exciting.  What are the changes here?  Contemporary (kinda) dress and hair?  The staging feels a little like Laurents’ recent Gypsy, which makes sense, I guess — he’s going for the “keep the sets simple and let the show be the star” kind of aesthetic, I think — but man, I don’t know about this.

The good news, of course, is that I’m going to see it on February 27th.

A Quick Look at New York Theater.

This will hopefully be a semi-regular feature here on Smichovsky Compensation Syndrome (side note: I haven’t had a single person ask me about the name of the blog, which is awfully surprising. I assume either you all immediately get the reference–which I know is not the case–or you’re all researching it and coming away satisfied. Or you just don’t care). I post on this “general discussion” message board sometimes (okay, a lot of times), and every once in a while I throw up what I call an EASILY IGNORED THEATER POST, since most of the folks who visit that site aren’t really checking for theater like that. But now I have a blog where people show up to read about Rent and Idina Menzel and The Tony Awards (tag tag tag), so hopefully this will be a more effective public service.

1. Not surprisingly, a bunch of shows have posted closing notices after missing out on Tony Awards and ticket bumps. Passing Strange remains my big concern. As of the week ending June 22 (the last week of receipts available on variety.com AND the first week after the Tonys), the show is only playing to 60% full houses, and only pulling in about $260K — one third of its potential net receipts.  As a comparison, In The Heights is up to 99% capacity houses and making over $900 grand a week–just about maxing out.  Now of course, Heights won Best Musical, and the buzz there is undeniable, and there’s no way to compare expectations for one show against the other.  But Strange simply isn’t finding its audience, and its a shame, because as I’ve said here before, it might be a better show top-to-bottom than Heights.  So here’s my last ditch plea: go see Passing Strange.  A lot of these other shows will be around for a while.  You’re going to kick yourself if you miss it.

2.  Other interesting stuff to note from the returns: Grease got a $105K bump after the Tonys — did that performance really convince people they needed to see this show?…Gypsy, to no one’s surprise, had a huge bump after Patti won her Tony, bringing in an additional $125K (or half of what Strange brought in total) for the week.  That show will be close to sold out as long as she sticks around…Legally Blonde also got a MASSIVE bump ($117K), and I’m sure it had to be some kind of coincidence–was there some MTV related activity going on that week?

Okay, enough Broadway.

3.  New York Theatre Workshop has announced its 08-09 season.  I’m reserving judgment a bit.  They’re only doing three full productions, plus an Encores! kinda thing for underappreciated Off-Bway musicals and some political work around the election.  They’ve got some limitations this year due to some budget issues (losing the income from Rent certainly doesn’t help), so the lightened schedule makes sense.  I’m not super excited about anything in the season just yet (which is troublesome, since The Public has such a lights out lineup), but I’ll keep my eyes open.

4.  In a Variety story that will only interest some of you and then only in passing (Strange, go see it), New York is considering tax breaks for Broadway producers.  This is kind of a big deal (c) Ron Burgandy.

5. The Summer Play Festival kicks off this week at The Public.  They’ve limited the slate (now I’m talking like Variety) to just two shows a week (down from four in the olden days on Theatre Row) for a total of just eight shows (down from sixteen–and even more the first year, I believe).  I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for SPF.  Some of you reading this will remember seeing Welcome to Arroyo’s way back in the 2005 Festival.  The folks at SPF and Arielle Tepper Productions always treated the artists well, and certainly knew how to throw a party (or six).  That said, there are limitations to the festival’s structure: it’s great for small, self-contained plays that can easily be produced in two weeks with a little bit of money, but it doesn’t give larger plays a whole lot of time to find their way.  I’ve seen more than a few plays come off poorly at SPF simply because they were too big to get on their feet in the time alotted.

So basically, what I’m saying is this: go to SPF.  See a bunch of shows.  Tickets are cheap.  The shows are usually well-selected and diverse.  You’ll have a good time.  Just keep in mind that the shows are far from finished productions (the SPF people don’t always remind audiences of this).

On a last SPF note, my long-time buddy (we used to play the most ridiculous ER-based speculation game on the planet in college) Caitlin Moon is directing Tio Pepe by Matthew Lopez in the festival’s last week.  Go see it.

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.