Closure Of 'Enron' Shows Broadway's Flaws.- Page 2

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 5/5/10 at 6:27pm

Tourists are the life blood of Broadway. If they are being asked to fork over $ 125 or more , they want a musical & without a name serious drama has no shot.

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 5/5/10 at 7:05pm

Do they actually spell mold with a U? I've read a lot of Brit lit over the years and never in my life seen that. Then again, I don't usually read books about mold.

Stupid blog entry, regardless.

[Kad]

Posted: 5/5/10 at 7:42pm

"Has anyone on the Broadway side of BWW seen JERUSALEM, the other big new play of 2009/10? What did you think of it?"

I thought it was a decent play, but that Mark Rylance's performance was easily the best male performance I have ever seen. He is phenomenal, but the play is overlong.

[AmeliaV82]

Posted: 5/5/10 at 9:08pm

Us Britishers use it with a 'u' and without, and I've always gone by:
Mold - furry stuff that grows on cheese
Mould - recepticle into which jelly is poured, before being left in a fridge in the often vain hope that it might come out looking vaguely like a rabbit/train/flan ring

I really liked ENRON - I saw it both in London and NY (in previews). I prefered Sam West to NLB, but thought the British pair playing Andy Fastow and Claudia Roe made a hash of their American accents to the point where I could hardly bear to listen - he was so unbelievably nasal and she ended up with a Sean Connery-type speech impediment half the time. Stephen Kunken & Marin Mazzie were far, far superior.

I'm stumped as to why there have been such polar reactions to it either side of the Pond. I thought it was marvellous but, honestly, preferred the Broadway production, primarily for the casting reason mentioned above. I thought the play did have some flaws but was excited by the boldness, by the way it swung for the fences (as someone on ATC said) and by the fact that it was something unlike anything I'd seen in WE/B'way play before.

I can't believe I'm about to cite Boy George, but in the Showbusiness:Road to B'way documentary, when they were interviewing him after Taboo shut he said something along the lines of creatives on Broadway have to keep trying new things and going for the unconventional, whether it succeeds or not, because otherwise you're just going to be left with AndrewLloydWebber all the time, and who really wants that? I look at ENRON as having followed in that line, trying something different so that we don't risk getting stuck in a rut of banality. I'm not saying it's the only play out there doing it - War Horse is magnificent at it, as are several others I've seen in the last year or so - but it's taken a good stab at trying to make what I will dare to call innovation succeed and I personally find that much more gratifying than if they had not taken a risk at all.

I'm not betting on many of the producers/moneypots sharing that thinking right now, however...

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/5/10 at 10:57pm

There are certain posters who love nothing more than to stoke the fires of xenophobia whenever they see the chance.

Who, me?


Never forget that the only country ever to attack the capital of the United States was...Merrie Olde England.

[alterego]

Posted: 5/5/10 at 11:46pm

Orangeskittles, yes there is a "U" in mould, check the Oxford English Dictionary.

[gcontini2]

Posted: 5/6/10 at 12:12am

I find it humorous that so many of the articles in the British press about Enron's closing take a defensive approach, saying New York audiences are a) not enlightened enough to "get it" and b) may have been turned off to a British playwright and director telling a story about American business demise...

Nonsense.

Truth is: many NY audiences are extremely savvy (more so, if I might make a friendly dig, than some Londoners who will pay to see Dirty Dancing or Thriller Live).

More important, many New Yorkers wouldn't know or care that playwright Lucy Prebble is a young, English woman...as if Americans (unlike the British) would ever be wrapped up in her status/qualifications and discount her right to tell the Enron story...so suggesting that some sort of cultural boycott is ongoing is just silly

Let's remember that plenty of British plays open and do well on Broadway. In fact, knowing that ENRON was already a hit in London may have prompted some New Yorkers to purposefully check it out here.

Finally, all of this crap about NY tastes being "off" because of one particular British play is not doing well is B.S. If the theater-going public in NY was dying to see ENRON because it struck them as interesting, they would have bought tickets.. just as they did for The Norman Conquests, The History Boys, or Red.

Posted: 5/6/10 at 11:58am

Mr. Roxy I believe you meant "$61 or more" as those are the lowest priced regular tickets (not including discounted tickets which have been widely available), not "$125 or more" as you stated.

Right?

[DeNada]

Posted: 5/6/10 at 12:52pm

"Finally, all of this crap about NY tastes being "off" because of one particular British play is not doing well is B.S. If the theater-going public in NY was dying to see ENRON because it struck them as interesting, they would have bought tickets.. just as they did for The Norman Conquests, The History Boys, or Red."

Norman Conquests played to less than 50% gross potential for most of its run; Red has only broken the 50% barrier for half its run. Bums on seats /= actual success. And more people saw Enron in its first four weeks than Red or Norman over the same time period.

We'll leave History Boys out because it rather effectively deconstructs my point by being a smash hit, but why let that spoil my fun?

[gcontini2]

Posted: 5/6/10 at 1:16pm

^ Denada, while true, that's not the point really...

What I was talking about is -- contrary to what some of the British press are saying about how Enron's failure relates to the show being British - plenty of other British do well every year in Bway regardless of their origins.

There is no conspiratorial bias. Like many of British imports I mentioned (and you can add to that list failures like Coram Boy or successes like Hamlet and Mary Stuart, too) Enron had just as fair a chance for awards and/or for a good run as ANY other play on Bway..

** and case in point: despite any attendance measurements, The Norman Conquests did win the 2009 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play...

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 5/6/10 at 1:19pm

Word, gcontini2.

[Scripps2]

Posted: 5/6/10 at 6:01pm

I'd like to echo Reggie's words and say thank you Tazber for also being a voice of reason.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 5/6/10 at 6:14pm

Joe

How may of the seats are $61? I daresay not many. Most are the higher prices & the $ 61 dollar seats come with an oxygen tank. Broadway is being milked for every penny. In a Shubert theater you cannot bring a drink to your seat. If you pay $ 4 for a plastic cup that says Shubert, than it is all. At MDQ, a bottle of water ($1 outside) is now $5. The greed on Broadway rivals Wall St in audacity & sheer chutzpah. Chici Marx would have been proud.

Updated On: 5/6/10 at 06:14 PM

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 5/6/10 at 6:23pm

this thread upset me so much that i killed eight brits. at least i think they were brits. they mighta been australians. or swedes. no matter.

[singtopher]

Posted: 5/6/10 at 7:06pm

A little off topic, but I was just checking my email and "Enron Play" was the 4th most popular search on Yahoo.

[wexy]

Posted: 5/6/10 at 7:18pm

I got my TDF ticket to see the last performance Sunday nite for $36.
If I like it great, if I don't I get to say I saw the last show and know why it closed so early.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 5/6/10 at 8:49pm

Anyone else picturing Papa in a kilt with eight Brits?

And maybe an Australian or a Swede? Updated On: 5/6/10 at 08:49 PM

[uncageg]

Posted: 5/6/10 at 9:22pm

PBS Newshour ended their broadcast this evening with a piece on the show and its closing this Sunday. Interviews with Butz, Prebble, Itzen and Peter Marks of the Washington Post. Clips from the show and a discussion with Marks near the end about why the show is closing. His remarks are interesting. It is a 6 minute segment. Here is the link.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/module.html?s=news01s3f33qea3

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 5/7/10 at 8:19am

"Truth is: many NY audiences are extremely savvy (more so, if I might make a friendly dig, than some Londoners who will pay to see Dirty Dancing or Thriller Live"

Just had to say that its mainly tourists who see those shows, especially for Dirty Dancing which has a huge percentage of American Audience.

[gcontini2]

Posted: 5/7/10 at 8:35am

"Just had to say that its mainly tourists who see those shows, especially for Dirty Dancing which has a huge percentage of American Audience"

^ ...just for fun I will point out that there are not THAT many American tourists to keep Dirty Dancing running in London week after week. Surely, there must be some Brits in the audience?... Moreover, I know as a firsthand fact that Dirty Dancing's current form has been deemed from the start to be something that would not do well on Broadway (which is why it has never been here).

**Otherwise - aside from the prickliness that some members of the British press have displayed about Enron's short Bway run (as though it has given them a personal offense) -- this is a silly conversation about two different markets and two equally diverse and GREAT theater towns..
The fact that not everything does equally well in each city is a PRODUCING challenge, NOT an artistic referendum on the markets themselves.

Updated On: 5/7/10 at 08:35 AM

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 5/10/10 at 12:38pm

Not exactly Scofield in "Lear" is it?

[gcontini2]

Posted: 5/10/10 at 12:41pm

^ ha! point made, borstalboy, very funny.

[TalkinLoud]

Posted: 5/10/10 at 12:46pm

There better be dinosaurs in FATAL ATTRACTION.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 5/10/10 at 12:57pm

Will there be six foot tall blind mice to symbolize someone's symbolic moral blindness, or whatever they were supposed to symbolize?

Updated On: 5/10/10 at 12:57 PM

[Scripps2]

Posted: 5/10/10 at 3:48pm

A shame to see one of BWW's sharpest minds and most articulate posters jumping on a cheap and easy bandwagon. To quote Rothko in Red:

"You embarrass yourself."

If some people here knew 25% of what they think they know about the West End, this debate thread would have also been contextualised with The Mountaintop.

But it hasn't.

So many of the people who think they know so much have proved they know fcuk all.
Updated On: 5/10/10 at 03:48 PM