As my sister Aliza and I were walking down from my apartment to The Scottsboro Boys a few weeks back, I said to her, “Just to warn you, this is going to make me cry.” “Well yes,” she responded, not much one for my sweeping dramatics, “It’s about a fake rape.”
I told her that I intended to cry over The Death of Broadway, because it had been announced the day before that The Scottsboro Boys–which, by most accounts was one of the best shows The Great White Way had seen in a long while–was to close on December 12. Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, it had been announced that same week, would close January 2. Worry not: Jersey Boys carries on. And on.
In addition to the news of those two shows closing, my recent bout of depression over The American Musical is due to the fact that Rent is moving Off-Broadway. Rent opened in January 1996, and I wrote about my mom’s and my experience seeing it in previews here, along with my (less positive) experience seeing Avenue Q just before it closed on Broadway in September 2009. In that post, I wondered: if I had seen Avenue Q closer to its opening, closer to the time when it was a fresh, new production, would I have loved it like I loved Rent? By the time I saw it, it was a period piece in the history of musical theater. And yet, Avenue Q is currently running Off Broadway, here in 2011, and Rent soon will be, too.
Avenue Q ran at The Vineyard (also the birthplace of The Scottsboro Boys) from March to May of 2003. Avenue Q was then transferred to Broadway that summer. After closing in September 2009, it opened at the New World Stages on 50th Street the next month. The show is performed Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 and 7:30 p.m: a schedule comparable to that of a Broadway show. Tickets range in price from $66.50 to $86.50. As a point of comparison, tickets to the still-on-Broadway Wicked, which Avenue Q beat for the Best Musical Tony in 2004, range in price from $56.25 to $131.25. The lowest ticket price on Broadway is cheaper than the lowest ticket price for Avenue Q at the New World Stages, so price isn’t an argument, here; people aren’t going to suddenly see it because now it’s Off Broadway and affordable.
New York Magazine’s Scott Brown points out that this Off-Broadway to Broadway to Off-Broadway transfer may really only work in that pattern; that is, shows that were designed specifically for Broadway, such as Wicked, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and of course the much-discussed Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, could not be moved to smaller, more intimate venues without major revisions. He writes:
Certainly, behemoths designed expressly for Broadway can’t be comfortably downsized. Avenue Q and Rent
both began life as scruffy downtown chamber pieces, albeit ones with
consciously built-in mainstream appeal. (In other words, don’t expect a
diorama-scale Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown anytime soon.) A burgeoning long tail
Off Broadway might actually encourage creators of Broadway shows to put
more theater (and less production) into their theatrical productions.
On the other hand, it could also create a traffic jam, as Off
Broadway’s hothouses gradually fill up with downsized revivals,
squeezing out more modest, potentially more inventive shows.
I would add to this, too, that both Avenue Q and Rent are shows that take place in New York City, a common denominator that factors in when most of the commercial appeal here is tourist dollars.
I don’t deny that, while they are both technically “Off Broadway”, New World Stages serves a different purpose in New York theater than houses like the Vineyard, for example. Nowhere in New World Stage’s mission does it say it will workshop new musical theater pieces. The description on the website reads:
New World Stages
NEW New Venue. New Artists. New Audiences. The new face of Off-Broadway, continuing the tradition of Excellence.WORLD New World Stages is owned by the internationally acclaimed entertainment group, Stage Entertainment.
The Vineyard writes on their site:
Vineyard Theatre is a non-profit theatre company dedicated to new work, bold programming and the support of artists. One of America’s preeminent centers for the creation of new plays and musicals, Vineyard Theatre has consistently premiered provocative, groundbreaking works by both new and established writers.
I sniped at Jersey Boys earlier in this post, but again: if
that’s what people want from Broadway, who are any of us to judge them,
or to continue pretending that Broadway is something other than it is? The recent schadenfreude over Spider-Man‘s seemingly inevitable demise is upsetting; at this point, what Broadway are we defending? A Cirque du Soleil-ish aerial spectacle with music by Bono is what Broadway has become, and it’s not “for better or worse,” it’s simply how it is. Broadway is now for shows like that, Off-Broadway is for The Scottsboro Boys and Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, and maybe we can be OK with that. I saw both The Scottsboro Boys and Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, appreciated the value in what they were trying to do, but didn’t love either, and more importantly, didn’t understand why either had to be in a Broadway house. There is the matter of the Tony Awards, which, not unlike the Grammy Awards, don’t mean much beyond signaling to a public that may not pay attention to theater and music that something is in fact worth their attention. And of course it’s good for the Off Broadway houses to be able to say they’ve transferred X number of shows to Broadway, and that those shows have won Y number of Tony Awards. If Broadway is Spider-Man, though, and we’re turning up our noses at it, then why does a Broadway run still indicate the ultimate marker of success in theater?
What are the options, then, for commercial Off Broadway runs? Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson was hugely successful at The Public–another Off Broadway theater with a mission to create new theater works–but does that mean a chamber play needed to be performed in a 1500-seat On Broadway venue? Alternatively, if a willing, paying audience still exists, and theaters like The Public can’t offer unlimited runs, is there somewhere for the Andrew Jackson’s and The Scottsboro Boys to go? Is there a way, for example, for shows to go straight to national tour, or do they need the “Broadway musical” label to sell tickets outside of New York City?
Off Broadway has to be viable in both directions: for shows that need somewhere to go after their initial Off Broadway runs, and for shows that, while no longer sustainable in big Broadway houses, may have commercial viability. Whatever system develops after the successful or unsuccessful Rent and Avenue Q transfers, the most important thing is that safe places to create and develop new works remain. If the whole business is locked up in non-risky ventures, there won’t be Rent’s and Avenue Q’s to transfer anywhere at all.
The Scottsboro Boys is currently trying to return to Broadway. at Time Out New York reports:
