It’s amusing to read about the ruckus surrounding the proposed revamp of Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theater in The New York Times and elsewhere. Many people, including Stephen Sondheim, think that putting a new spin on the Gershwins’ celebrated opera (as director Diane Paulus and writer Suzan Lori-Parks are doing with their reinterpretation of the work) is a bad idea.
I don’t object to the concept of artists creating new art out of an existing entity. Just because a work is famous, it doesn’t make it untouchable.
Yet what I find so odd about Paulus and Parks’ reconfiguration of Porgy and Bess is the decision to entitle it “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.” This is asking for trouble. It draws attention to the original in a way that doesn’t help the creators of the reinterpretation. The piece is very likely going to be a radical departure from the Gershwins’ effort, so why not give it a completely new title rather than so self-consciously pay homage to the source material?
A new title, with no mention of the Gershwins at the very least, would make much more sense from an artistic perspective I would guess. It probably also provoke less of a backlash from upholders of artistic sacred cows.
Anybody who is interested in this topic and lives in or near New York City should see Chasing Heaven at the New York Fringe Festival. It’s about a Pulitzer Prize-winning author hired to re-make a controversial Negro folk opera. The ghost of the original creator doesn’t like the idea. Saturday, August 13 at 4:15, Sun. August 14 at 4, Saturday, August 20 at 7, Wed. August 24 at 8:45, Friday, August 26 at 9:45. 107 Suffolk in the CSV Cultural Center, Flamboyan Theatre. Fringenyc.org for tickets.
The two shows that immediately come to mind are “West Side Story” (“Romeo and Juliet” with Juliet left alive at the end) and “My Fair Lady” (“Pygmalion” with Higgins and Eliza a potential couple as the curtain falls). Both are distortions of their source material, but acceptable (and brilliant, even) because they take on a life of their own. Will those behind this Porgy and Bess reboot (a movie biz term that seems appropriate) be up to that task? Or is this just a lazy cash grab using familiar material for superficial ends?
I’m not a particular fan of radical directorial re-interpretation (why not just write something new?), but on a certain level, who cares?
Is there anything in the Diane Paulus or Suzan-Lori Parks oeuvre that leads us to believe they’re going to improve what the Gershwins and DuBose Heyward wrote? Probably not. And in the end mediocre work gets its due and disappears.
Paulus and Parks have an all-star cast and Broadway producers not because of what they are creating, but because the producers know they can sell the Porgy & Bess/Gershwin brand and the fistful of hit tunes that come with it.
Cut “Summertime” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So”, replace them with original Paulus/Parks material, and see how far that production gets.
THis is interesting, Scott
You’re right to point out that using “The Gershwins’ Porgy & Bess” is very likely a branding decision. It’s erroneous of ART to use this branding in my opinion, given how dramatically they are planning to alter the original work. I would have thought, however, that Suzan Lori-Parks and Diane Paulus would have big enough brand names themselves for the company to take the “risk” of naming the production in a way that embraced their creative effort more strongly, rather than emphasizing the source material.
Chloe – I’d agree with you on these points. But this is as much the production of veteran B’way producers Jerry Frankel and Jeffrey Richards as it is ART’s (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/high-hopes-for-porgy-and-bess-on-broadway/).
According to the Times article, ART’s production of this show is made possible by an “enhancement” deal between the producers and ART.
In an enhancement deal, a commercial producer gives a non-profit theater a large infusion of cash in exchange for future rights to a production. The producer gets in effect a pre-Broadway tryout at a fraction of the usual cost, and the theater gets a big production it otherwise couldn’t afford (there are many pros and cons to these arrangements, but that subject deserves its own thread).
So ART needs the producers to afford the production. And what makes this a viable project for the producers to sell to a Broadway audience is the Porgy and Bess property, the Gershwin brand, and the presence of above-the-title stars like Audra McDonald and David Alan Grier – not the involvement of Diane Paulus and Suzan-Lori Parks.
Maybe the more interesting question is this: Is script-doctoring a star-studded B’way revival the best thing ART can find to do with accomplished theater artists like Parks and Paulus? Could they not, say, commission and produce a new Suzan-Lori Parks play (especially given the mission and history of ART)?
Having had some experience with a touring company of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, I am positive that the billing is a contractual obligation between the producers and the Gershwin Estate. Any production of Porgy and Bess, regardless of where and how it is presented, MUST be billed as “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess”. It is plural, as both George and Ira are receiving the credit, and I believe it is Ira’s descendents who are the shareholders in the trust.
E.R. is correct — and that billing denies proper credit to Dubose Heyward, who wrote the original novel, and (with his wife) the original stage play, and also wrote many of the best lyrics for the opera.