Starring in Broadway plays this season: (Top row) Janet McTeer, Cherry Jones, Daniel Radcliffe and Tom Glynn-Carney; (Top center row) Alexandra Billings, Bobby Cannavale, Justin Edwards, Pierce the Bunny and Mike Birbiglia; (Bottom center row) Fionnula Flanagan and Michael Urie; (Bottom row) Kerry Washington, Bryan Cranston and Mercedes Ruehl.Credit...Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times

This Broadway Season, the Play’s Really the Thing

In a turnabout no one expected, New York’s most prominent stages are rich with drama, most of it new and most of it American.

The blockbusterization of Broadway is taking a breather.

It was just last season when theater lovers were wringing their collective hands as big brand musicals descended on Times Square, swallowing space, money and attention that was once available for a good old-fashioned play.

No more.

In a turnabout no one on Broadway expected, this season is rich with drama — ambitious, challenging, risky work, most of it new and most of it American.

There are 20 plays already announced this season — a period that runs through next May, leaving time for a few more to join the crowd — tackling gender, race, and sexuality, politics and policing. There are three plays about journalism, one about Hillary Clinton, and one about snooker (naturally, it’s imported from Britain).

Last season’s crop of plays, although roughly the same size, included a number of slight comedies and solo shows. Critics were worried. “The traditional for-profit, new Broadway play is disappearing almost as surely as the dodo,” wrote Peter Marks of The Washington Post.

“It looked ominous,” acknowledged Nick Scandalios, executive vice president of the Nederlander Organization, which runs nine Broadway theaters. “This year it doesn’t.”

[Ties to the Irish Troubles Fuel ‘The Ferryman’]

If history is any guide, many of this season’s plays will fail financially. But that hasn’t stopped a parade of film and television stars from lining up for the opportunity to show off their stage chops: Lucas Hedges, Daniel Radcliffe, Mercedes Ruehl and Kerry Washington are already in previews; still to come are Annette Bening, Bryan Cranston, Jeff Daniels, Adam Driver, Ethan Hawke, Glenda Jackson, Nathan Lane, John Lithgow and Keri Russell; Armie Hammer and Jim Parsons were in plays that ran during the summer.

The vibrancy is in part the result of long-term structural change on Broadway, where nonprofits, always more open than commercial producers to presenting plays, now control six of the 41 theaters — a historic high. Seven of the 20 plays this season are being presented by nonprofits.

Image
The three actors struggle with definitions of truth as they review an account of a suicide in Las Vegas, written by Mr. Cannavale’s character.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Some of the change reflects the audacity of a single commercial producer — Scott Rudin — who is the lead producer for five of the 20 plays.

And some of it is undoubtedly happenstance — the makeup of a Broadway season is not planned by any one individual or organization, but instead reflects a combination of producer passions, theater availability, star schedules and investor interest.

But it also is clear that the paucity of high-quality dramas last season concerned many in the theater industry who believe in the importance of the form, even in an era when musicals can promise greater profits.

“No one wants to see the Broadway play go extinct,” said Tom Greenwald, the chief creative officer of SpotCo, a marketing agency. “The whole town realizes the importance of having plays be an unmistakable part of every season.”

The nine new American plays already scheduled this season seem to reflect a moment when artists — and, producers hope, audiences — are hungry to reckon with the issues vexing the nation.

Look, for example, at “American Son,” now in previews. It’s a drama, set in a Florida police station, about an estranged interracial couple worried about their missing, mixed-race, adolescent son.

The writer, Christopher Demos-Brown, is a 54-year-old Miami lawyer who has never had a play produced in New York, let alone on Broadway. “I think I’m the oldest emerging playwright in America,” he said.

The play, which Mr. Demos-Brown wrote in 2016, was prompted by his upset over a number of incidents around the country in which young black men died during encounters with law enforcement, and by the writer (who is white) observing the disparate ways his friends were reacting to those deaths.

Image
Jeremy Jordan as a police officer and Kerry Washington as the mother of a missing child in “American Son.”Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Two years ago, as the play was having an initial production at Barrington Stage Company in Massachusetts, the writer’s agent brought a copy of the script to the producer Jeffrey Richards.

“I couldn’t put it down,” Mr. Richards said. “So I called him the next day and said I want to do this.”

A Broadway veteran who has a penchant for new American work, Mr. Richards had been disappointed by the failure of his last such Broadway venture, “Significant Other.” So this time, taking the approach embraced by most producers of new plays, he determined to find a lead performer whose fame would help sell tickets. “With an unknown playwright, I felt it would be very important to secure, if possible, a major star,” he said.

He succeeded. He sent the script to Kerry Washington, an actress he had worked with nearly a decade ago, in the David Mamet play “Race,” and who had since become a celebrity via television’s “Scandal.” That show was wrapping up its seventh and final season earlier this year; she was looking for an opportunity to return to the stage.

Ms. Washington decided that, in addition to starring in the play, she wanted to co-produce it, helping to raise the $4.2 million capitalization and adding muscle to the show’s marketing. Her enthusiasm attracted a number of other prominent African-American artists to the team, including the television producer Shonda Rhimes and the actresses Jada Pinkett Smith and Gabrielle Union-Wade, along with the basketball player Dwyane Wade, who is Ms. Union-Wade’s husband.

Mr. Richards took a similar approach with the other new American play he is producing this season, “The Lifespan of a Fact,” a timely look at variable understandings of truth, in this case by a magazine writer and a fact-checker. The playwriting team, Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell, is unknown and untested, but the cast is not: It is led by Daniel Radcliffe, the star of all eight “Harry Potter” films, along with Cherry Jones and Bobby Cannavale, both catnip to playgoers.

Several other of the season’s plays are highly topical, too. In an era when “fake news” has become a meme, “Lifespan” is one of the three journalism plays on the docket — the others are an adaptation of “Network,” the 1976 television industry satire, and “Ink,” about an early chapter in Rupert Murdoch’s career.

Like “American Son,” “Straight White Men,” which ran earlier in the season, and a new adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” coming later this fall, tackle race in America. “The Boys in the Band,” which ran over the summer, “Torch Song,” which is now in previews, and the upcoming “Choir Boy” deal with challenges faced by gay men in three different eras.

There are even two plays that, in different ways, invite audiences to think about gender through Shakespeare: the current “Bernhardt/Hamlet,” about Sarah Bernhardt’s portrayal of the tormented prince of Denmark, and “King Lear,” coming next spring, in which Glenda Jackson plays the maddening British monarch.

“It’s no accident that all these plays are happening now,” said Richie Jackson, the “Torch Song” producer. “It’s how artists react to what’s happening in the culture.”

This is crunch time for Bill Hyers.

A Democratic political consultant who managed Bill de Blasio’s successful 2013 campaign for New York City mayor, he is hard at work on congressional campaigns around the country, and the midterm elections are less than a month away.

But he’s also a devoted New York theatergoer — he estimates that he sees shows at least 20 times a year, and that about two-thirds of them are plays, not musicals. And, just as politicians target frequent voters, producers target frequent theatergoers.

So this season, with the raft of plays competing against one another for audiences, he is inundated.

“I’m definitely getting hammered, and by a lot more stage plays than normal,” he said. “And I’m not opposed. It gives me something to look forward to.”

(In fact, he’s not waiting until the elections are over to get started. “I’m not going to lie — I will sneak away to two this week,” he said. “Don’t tell that to my clients.”)

The limited-run plays — and that’s almost all of them — are courting habitual theatergoers from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

“There’s a pool of theatergoers in the tristate area — some people say it’s 300,000 or so, but it’s obviously kind of a fool’s errand to put a number on it — who have shown an affinity for seeing plays,” Mr. Greenwald said. “It’s a specific kind of culture seeker that goes to plays — it’s not as mass market as we would love it to be, and not as mass market as musicals are.”

The play audience tends to be more gender balanced than the audience for musicals, which tilts female. And it tends to be local because the length of the runs — from nine to 20 weeks — makes it difficult for out-of-towners to make travel plans in response to word-of-mouth. “If it runs 11 weeks, by the time people hear about it in Seattle, it’s closing,” said Todd Haimes, the artistic director of Roundabout Theater Company.

So each play tries to take advantage of its distinguishing characteristics.

Take “Torch Song.” Harvey Fierstein, who wrote the play, is not in the cast (he performed in the original, four decades ago) but you would be forgiven for not knowing that — he’s sandwiched on the couch in the show’s advertising material, and early this month he represented the play at the Atlantic Festival in Washington.

Image
Michael Urie, left, and Ward Horton as on-and-off-again boyfriends in Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song.”Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

“I am using my big asset, which is Harvey Fierstein,” Mr. Jackson said. “He’s in our commercial, he’s the voice of our radio spot, and he’s signaling to everyone this is funny and this is going to make you feel.”

That’s not all. “Torch Song” is even trying to reach fashionistas, partnering with Lingua Franca to sell sweaters embroidered with lines from the play.

British plays are a Broadway staple, and this season there are four — commercial productions of “The Ferryman” and “Network” and nonprofit productions of “The Nap,” the snooker comedy, and “Ink.”

“The Ferryman,” a rambunctious Irish family drama by Jez Butterworth, is the biggest bet of the bunch — a big budget ($6.7 million) play, with no celebrities in the cast, aiming for a long run based on the strength of rave reviews and awards in London.

The lead producer, Sonia Friedman, is a powerful industry leader in London and a veteran of numerous New York transfers. She is counting on critical acclaim and word of mouth here, as well as a sense of occasion; the cast includes 24 adults, seven children and four babies (only one appears on the stage, but they alternate shows). There’s even a goose and a rabbit.

“Initially our audience will be the traditional, serious drama-seeker, and we hope it will then break out into a mainstream audience that would have come to see ‘August: Osage County’,” she said, referring to the long-running 2007 play. “It’s in that world — a big family drama, and a big event.”

Ms. Friedman said she would not have presented “The Ferryman” on Broadway if she didn’t believe it could make back its investment, but that her faith in the play was the major factor.

“I couldn’t call myself a producer if I didn’t bring ‘The Ferryman’ to New York,” she said. “And however naïve this may sound, and I know it will sound naïve, I will always believe that great theater, great storytelling will attract an audience.”

Image
Bryan Cranston in the London production of “Network,” which is transferring to Broadway this fall.Credit...Jan Versweyveld

The high-tech, high-energy “Network” is taking a different approach. It also got strong reviews in London, but has a recognizable title and television notables (Bryan Cranston, Tony Goldwyn and Tatiana Maslany) to help woo audiences. While it has the biggest budget of any new play, up to $7.75 million, it is scheduled to run just 18 weeks, which producers hope will create a sense of urgency.

“There is a very hungry, very smart local audience looking for great evenings in the theater,” said David Binder, who is also producing this season’s revival of “Burn This.” “They’re there.”

Most of the season’s plays are commercial ventures, meaning they are backed by investors hoping to make a profit. They are less expensive than musicals, and slightly less risky to produce — history suggests that nearly half will at least break even, compared to just a third of musicals.

The biggest bettor is Mr. Rudin, whose projects include plays by Lucas Hnath (“Hillary and Clinton,” which imagines the relationship between a woman who would be president and the husband who once was); and Taylor Mac (“Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus,” which ponders those who clean up after political conflict).

But his chief gamble is “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Aaron Sorkin’s new adaptation of the Harper Lee novel. The show is costly — capitalized at up to $7.5 million — and had to fight a bruising battle with Ms. Lee’s estate to get to Broadway. (The estate claimed a draft script deviated too much from the novel; Mr. Rudin denied that, and the two sides settled. He declined to be interviewed about any of his productions for this story.)

Financially, the season of plays is off to a promising start.

A starry 50th anniversary revival of “The Boys in the Band,” which opened in late spring to accommodate actors’ filming schedules, was a hit.

The three others that have opened thus far have all been nonprofit productions that do not have investors — “Straight White Men,” from Second Stage, “Bernhardt/Hamlet” from Roundabout, and “The Nap” from Manhattan Theater Club.

Nonprofits have a key impact in diversifying this season, when all of the plays presented by commercial producers are by white writers, and none are by women.

Young Jean Lee’s “Straight White Men” was the first play by an Asian-American woman ever on Broadway, and even so, needed a starry cast (led by Armie Hammer and Josh Charles) to help find an audience (which it did). Manhattan Theater Club is presenting “Choir Boy,” the Broadway debut for Tarell Alvin McCraney, a prominent African-American playwright who won an Oscar for his work on the film “Moonlight.”

Boundaries between commercial and nonprofit productions are blurring. Ms. Friedman has helped the transfer of “Ink” to Manhattan Theater Club; the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater is co-producing “To Kill a Mockingbird”; and “Torch Song” is at the Helen Hayes, owned by Second Stage.

“I want ‘Ink’ to be seen here, because it’s a really good piece of work,” Ms. Friedman said. “MTC was keen to do it, and it would have been daft to say no. You have to make choices, and our choice was ‘Let’s get the play on.’”

Follow Michael Paulson on Twitter: @MichaelPaulson.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section AR, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Dramatic Resurgence. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT