By David Gordon
The economy is in tatters, but Broadway, the biggest tourist destination (or, trap, depending on who you ask) in New York, is still thriving, despite what all the naysayers say. Sure, by mid-January, the theater district looked like a tornado hit, with audience favorites like “Spring Awakening” and “Spamalot” closing (after highly successful and lengthy runs), but most of the theaters were all ready booked with new tenants.
Take, for example, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on West 49th Street, where “Spring Awakening” had been thrilling audiences for just about two years. Its new tenant, which began previews Monday night, is a play written and directed by Moises Kaufman called “33 Variations.” Jane Fonda stars as a musicologist dying of cancer who is determined to figure out why Beethoven wrote 33 variations on a waltz by music publisher Anton Diabelli.
And at the Shubert Theatre, where Monty Python fanatics have been looking on the bright side of life for years during “Spamalot,” Rupert Everett, Christine Ebersole and Angela Lansbury star in a revival of Noel Cowards’s classic comedy “Bilthe Spirit,” abou a writer who gets more than he bargained for when he stages a seance and brings back his dead wife in the process.
As far as other revivals, there are three huge musicals hitting the boards in the next few monhs. “Guys and Dolls,” at the newly refurbished Nederlander Theatre (where “Rent” has been stationed for a hundred years), starring Oliver Platt, Lauren Graham, Craig Bierko and Kate Jennings Grant, began previews last week. The production takes the Golden Age musical into the 21st Century with a set that blends huge automated pieces with IMAX movies.
“West Side Story,” Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents’ musical adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet,” opens at the Palace Theatre in March. The production, directed by the 91-year-old Laurents, will include lyrics to classic tunes like “I Feel Pretty” translated into Spanish (by “In the Heights” Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda).
“Hair: the American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” returns to Broadway after a highly successful staging at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park last summer. The difference was that those tickets, as part of the Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park, were free. These cost real money. Will it fly?
Playwright/director Neil LaBute makes his Broadway debut with “reasons to be pretty,” the final play in his three-play trilogy about the American obsession with physical appearance. Piper Perabo, Thomas Sadoski, Marin Ireland and Stephen Pasquale star.
Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon star in Rush’s adaptation of Eugene Ionesco’s “Exit the King,” about a megalomaniacl king who refuses to relinquish power despite being on the road to death.
Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick make their returns to Broadway, albeit in different plays, though both produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company. At Studio 54, Lane stars alongside Bill Irwin, John Goodman and John Glover in a revival of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” Broderick, at the American Airlines Theatre, stars in “The Philanthropist.”
There are sure to be at least two ‘snob hits’ this season. “Impressionism,” with Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen, about a world-reknowned photojournalist who falls in love with an art gallery owner. Frederich Shiller’s “Mary Stuart,” with English actors Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter, arrives on Broadway after a successful London production. The play tells the story of the relationship between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots.
The two new musicals of the season are “Rock of Ages,” which I reviewed for the Chronicle Off-Broadway, a fun jukebox musical that makes use of the hits of the 1980s and ‘9-to-5,” the musical based on the movie of the same name, featuring a score by Dolly Parton. It stars Allison Janney, Stephanie J. Block and Megan Hilty.
Personally, I am most excited for “God of Carnage,” a new dark comedy by Yasmina Reza (“Art”). The true A-list cast features Jeff Daniels, James Gandolfini, Marcia Gay Harden and Hope Davis as warring parents debating how to punish their warring children.