PORGY & BESS Moves Broadway Closing Up to September 23, 2012

Wow. So what's going into the Rodgers?

Updated On: 7/18/12 at 10:12 AM

How terribly disappointing! I'll be in town the weekend it was to originally close, and I was really hoping to catch the last performance. What a bummer!

Maybe a Christmas Story isn't going into the St James after all....?
Not a suprise though, with Aurda being out for the 3 weeks following the Tony Awards it really killed the shows momentum and Porgy and Bess has never be able to recover.

Well, yes.

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What I mean is that there is not a single ounce of stale-ness to the show. They've been at it for almost a year, and it's still fresh as ever. Unlike the bored-to-death chorus members at shows like MAMMA MIA! who don't care that they're performing for people who've spent over $100 to see it.

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Strange marketing. I was at the Four Knots Festival with six indie rock groups with not one African Artist performer. Yet Porgy and Bess was a sponsor. There were a handful of black folks at the show but the Indie Rock was not the crowd to see the show.

They had a raffle and a booth where I won sunscreen and entered to win tickets but there were very few people at the booth.

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Yes, the actors, musicians and crew will be out of work, but that's why it's called "show business." So let's move past that. (Oh yes, and the poor Gershwin estate won't get royalty checks anymore...)

May this closing mean that this bastardization of a great classic be dead and buried for good.

Fabulous.

I guess I'm what Ms. McDonald would call a "Gershwin purist."

JV92: really, please just stop.

I'm an opera person first and a theater-fan second, and I really am sick of the "pure-opera-fan-perspective" on a theater website. Everyone involved (director, actors, librettist) made clear that their efforts were designed to distinguish this musical form of Porgy and Bess from the actual opera. Get over it: it's not the actual opera! Had it been: it would have closed months ago!!!

I loved the opera long before I ever saw the musical and I've seen a number of opera singers sing the role of Bess...but none inhibited the role in quite the same way as Audra (who, by the way, has sung at the LA Opera -- not as Bess -- and was widely [though wrongly] rumored to sing the role of Kitty in "Dr. Atomic " at the MET.)

Instead of bitching about the lack of classical virtues of this production, just sit back and enjoy the Glyndebourne recording and/or DVD conducted by the AWESOME Simon Rattle. ...actually, that recommendation could apply to anyone here. Really a great recording. Rattle is the most exuberant, exciting, and moody conductor on the scene.

Updated On: 7/18/12 at 09:42 PM

Willing to bet just about anything that in the coming weeks that closing date gets pushed up even sooner. Their numbers have been less than stellar for weeks now. That Tony Award they sure didn't deserve hasn't really done much to help them.

FAIL. Gotta see this again.

Wexy, I'm sure I'm mis-reading you, but you think the show should have only advertised to primarily black audiences?

Maybe it just doesn't work in a commercial house--Trevor Nunn tried to make a more "musical theatre" version a few years back, and that only ran a year as well, didn't it?

Play Esq, I do love the Rattle recording, although I find some of the tempi SOOOOOOooooOOO slow that I think the edge for me goes to the Houston Grand Opera recording from the 70s that Thomas Sepherd produced so theatrically. (I dislike the Trevor Nunn film of the Rattle production though--I wish they had just filmed it live, not on a soundstage with lip synching--something I believe they did for Nunn's Oklahoma too which robs it of some of its immediacy).