All of Broadway’s 35 theaters have been humming with shows, including a record 23 musicals, both new and revivals. This season 8.9 million theatergoers (last year 8 million) bought $423 million (last year $373.4 million) worth of tickets. OK, kids, stop the numbers! We’re dealing with the American musical, which has been an endangered species since the British invasion of the ’80s (“Cats,” “Les Miserables,” “Phantom of the Opera” et al.). Suddenly last season two shows really created by kids, “Rent” and “Bring in ‘da Noise/Bring in ‘da Funk,” came from the nonprofit theater to Broadway, where they’re still gigantic hits. Now here come the pillars of the Broadway establishment, determined to show they can still cut it.
“This is a crucial moment in the progress of musical theater,” says producer James Freydberg (whose show “Big” didn’t make it last season). The success of “Rent” and “Funk” has drawn investors back to Broadway. The massive cleanup of 42d Street, anchored by the imminent opening of Disney’s operation in its gorgeously restored New Amsterdam Theatre, and the presence of Livent, under the hard-driving Canadian producer Garth Drabinsky, have changed the landscape of Broadway. Disney’s bottomless pockets, plus its immense multimedia and merchandising capacity, will make it the nearest thing to a lossproof operation. And Livent’s new theater, grandiosely called the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, reflects the corporate sponsorship that’s a growing element on Broadway. Jed Bernstein, of the League of American Theaters and Producers, points out that “for the first time, in Livent, there is a publicly traded company whose major line of business is Broadway theater.”
Despite all this, opening a big, traditional musical is still the world’s biggest crap shoot. Not only did “Titanic” cost $10 million to mount, but, with weekly operating expenses of about $450,000, the show will have to sell every seat for about a year and a half to break even. Shows can OD on the money drug. Consider “Dream,” a farrago of tunes by the great lyricist Johnny Mercer (“Skylark,” “Moon River”) that is ponderously overproduced. “Producing Broadway shows is about the most foolish thing you can do with a dollar. It’s a mental illness,” cheerfully says Michael David of Dodger Endemol Theatricals, producers of “Titanic.” People like David and Roger Berlind love the craziness; Berlind not only coproduced “The Life” but is sole producer of “Steel Pier.” Berlind welcomes the new, Disneyfied Broadway. “If Disney does big entertainment suitable for families, that’s great,” says Berlind. “If I do something about pimps and whores, that’s great.”
Which sums up America in the age of Bill Bennett and Larry Flynt. And in fact “The Life” opens with the sleazy Jojo (Sam Harris), a kind of Times Square Iago, mockingly remarking, “Gotta have the streets clean for Mickey Mouse.” The show then flashes back to circa 1980, far enough to antedate AIDS, not too far to make it a period piece. “The Life” is a surprisingly (not totally) successful attempt by its creators–composer Cy Coleman (“Sweet Charity,” “City of Angels”), lyricist Ira Gasman, who wrote the book with David Newman and Coleman, and director Michael Blakemore–to avoid both sentimentality and exploitation in its portrait of downscale prostitutes in the Times Square area before the current sweep of gentrification. Its virtue is a tough compassion with no easy moralizing and without shirking the tragedy (or the ribald humor) of these women. All this comes together in the best number, “I’m getting too old for the oldest profession,” a small masterpiece of black humor, pathos and defiance performed with stunning power and marvelous musicality by Lillias White. White is part of a strong cast that includes Pamela Isaacs as the central figure, Queen, Kevin Ramsey as her hapless lover and Chuck Cooper as Memphis the superpimp. A Fellini-esque pride of hookers, choreographed down and dirty by young Joey McKneeley, succeeds in being both grotesque and moving. Of all the new musicals, “The Life” has the most guts and grit.
Its exact antithesis is “Titanic,” which positively drips with class. The show starts with a superb long choral number, “In Every Age,” by composer-lyricist Maury Yeston (“Nine”), in which the crew and passengers assemble at dockside to begin the fateful maiden voyage on April 10, 1912. Goggling with awe at the giant ship (invisible to the audience), the chorus evokes the Promethean feats of history like the Chinese wall, the Parthenon, the Pyramids. The great ship is “a floating city… a complete civilization… the largest moving object in the world.” It’s a soaring anthem of hubris, and nothing else in the show reaches that peak again. “Titanic” could be called the first “Masterpiece Theatre” musical, moving at a stately, pageantlike pace, illustrating rather than illuminating the tragedy. The strongest flare-up in Peter Stone’s book is a cross-fire of recriminations among the Captain, E. J. Smith (John Cunningham), the owner, J. Bruce Ismay (David Garrison), and the ship’s designer, Thomas Andrews (Michael Cerveris). The cast is nearly faultless, doing the stylized bidding of English director Richard Jones. For the special-effects kick that the audience expects, designer Stewart Laing provides not a sinking ship but sets of the ship’s various sections that gradually tilt until they reach a dizzying 45 degrees. Laing says that the show wanted to “treat the subject with dignity.” “Titanic” does this all too well. After that opening, it never really grips your throat or your heart. Will it be enough to draw $75 from theatergoers who for $8 will be able to see James Cameron’s upcoming movie, complete with undignified icebergs and spectacular effects?
“Steel Pier” deals with marathon dancing in the Depression ’30s at the once legendary Atlantic City resort. A team combining older and newer talents–music and lyrics by Kander and Ebb (“Cabaret” ), book by David Thompson, choreography by Susan Stroman, the most creative of the younger choreographers, direction by Scott Ellis–has come up with a romantic fable with (alas) supernatural overtones and just enough Depression desperation to keep the reality franchise. Karen Ziemba gives a star performance as dance marathoner Rita Racine, caught between her scheming husband, Mick (Gregory Harrison), who’s the marathon emcee, and Bill (Daniel McDonald), the all too heavenly aviator. Stroman’s variations on the shlepping of endurance dancing have passages of brilliance. But with its cliches of story and character, “Steel Pier” may be squeezed out not only by “Titanic” and “The Life” but, ironically, by the current smash revival of Kander and Ebb’s own 1975 “Chicago.”
So, are the big new shows a sign that the American musical is back as a creative force? This calls for the old Scottish verdict, Not Proven. One veteran producer sees the Old Guard as a rear guard. “A lot of the reason “Rent’ and “Noise/Funk’ succeeded was their high level of energy onstage. It’s tough work doing a new musical; I don’t think it’s work for people over 30.” That may be an extreme perspective. But Kander and Ebb admit that they’re the last of a breed of writers who create traditional book musicals with a sound that’s not the language of the “Rent/Funk” generation. And the American musical needs a new generation–on both sides of the footlights.
