The Problem With Broadway Revivals: They Revive Gender Stereotypes, Too

This is getting ridiculous. Revivals should above all else remain true to the original author's work or simply not be produced (unless you have special permission or the creative team is revisiting their work). It is not our job as a society to alter every past work of art until it matches our current sensibilities. If you don't like how the women are portrayed in Carousel; don't do it, don't see it. Write your own version of Liliom that changes how the women are conceived and meets your standards.

If there are gender stereotypes in a work, let them play out. Let the actors and creative team find ways to address these problems and make them work. Just look to the work of Laura Osnes, who is one of the few who can portray these classic leading lady roles full of stereotypes. She is able, through her acting choices, to imbue the performance with her own strength and character, creating much more nuanced and real performances from these simple stereotypes. I think leaving revivals intact can be MORE enlightening when there is discord between the times reflected in the piece and our modern sensibilities.

An unspoken aspect of this article is that Broadway is relying more and more on the familiarity of revivals and adaptations of hugely successful movies and TV shows, with a dearth of original work being developed and supported. Barring special events/acts (Springsteen, Michael Moore, etc.) the 2017-18 season, when complete, will only boast 5 original new plays (only 1 of which was not a limited nonprofit run and/or a transfer), and only 2 (two!) musicals with totally original scores (both based on movies, one of them very commercially successful).

Of course, this may just be a reflection of popular tastes; the masses (generally) don't much go for "original," and it seems that trend is climbing.

I basically called this on a thread RE: Carousel. It’s so predictable. When is Elon Musk going to take us to Mars? I want out.

Where are these ‘feminist’ concerns when it comes to the terrible treatment of women in almost every Islamic country on earth and many Islamic communities within Western countries? No where to be seen. They’d rather spend time complaining that a musical that is 70 years old is, surprise surprise, reflecting the values of a culture 70 years ago. Shocking!

Updated On: 2/23/18 at 11:15 PM

It actually is disappointing. If these ‘feminists’ want an icon they should look to Ayan Hirsi (though I bet these same people would be a critic rather than comrade). Rather than tackle the real issues - women who are oppressed in the most misogynistic ways it’s actually so shocking it still exists today - they’d rather complain about an ancient musical that obviously is not going to be written 70 years ago with the values of 2018. So silly. It’s about understanding context. Not suppressing our artistic legacy.

Updated On: 2/24/18 at 02:50 AM

Yes, context is everything, and the inability for some to understand that simple construct in these humorless, sour times is kind of disgusting. The article and those quoted within are just trying to be on what they think is the right side of the fence. Some of the quotes are truly idiotic - I don't need to name which, but if my daughter were still ten or twelve I would absolutely take her to Carousel or any other show because she was, at that age, very smart, and she would have loved them as she loved every musical we saw together back then.

Are there shows with really outdated gender stereotypes? Yes. Obviously. Theater is centuries old. Society changes. What was acceptable at one point quickly (or not so quickly) falls out of the realm of the appropriate. Does that mean we erase history? No. The smart approach is to contextualize it. Bring it up with the producers, the creative team, and the cast as a jumping off point for artistic expression and interpretation. Discuss your approach in the director's notes. Don't lean into the really offensive stuff if at all possible. And if you have no other way around it, do not glorify it. No sense lingering on, say, the spousal abuse moment in Carousel when so much of the rest of the show is right.

Look at that wonderful Lincoln Center The King and I revival. They found ways to give the female characters agency in their own story through interpretation and performance, not alteration or censorship. It didn't always land as well as the more straight forward interpretation, but the effort was made to present the show as originally written for a modern audience with a modern understanding.

Kiss Me Kate revival 2019 WOOOO!!!!!!

Lol, the fact that they're bringing this up about My Fair Lady is ridiculous. The entire point of the story is that Higgins is an abusive and misogynistic PoS. Are we supposed to just have characters shooting butterflies and rainbows out of their a**es with no flaws whatsoever in today's pearl-clutching climate?

Don't get me wrong, having shows about or focusing on social issues is great and important. But people also like just going to the theatre for an escape every once in a while. This obsession with shoving identity politics into every single thing that comes to Broadway, to the point where people have to worry about the moral consequences of enjoying a classic Golden Age musical just because it's not conforming exactly to the context and sensibilities of this very day in time, is ridiculous. It's easy to just...not see a show if you don't like it, lol.

Updated On: 2/25/18 at 10:38 PM

Oh yeah, I know it's about depriving choices, and that's what annoys me. It's dangerous thinking to try to "ban" every single piece of art that has something even remotely problematic in it. If you start doing that, then eventually, you have to strip away everything, and you have nothing left. Humanity is inherently problematic, and while it's never good to glorify that, it's also a reality that we need to face.

I don't like Dear Evan Hansen. I think the show is preachy for all the wrong reasons and does a terrible job at representing mental illness. However, I'm not about to go writing up pretentious thinkpieces and claiming the show is Bad and that we shouldn't put up productions of it anymore. I get that the show means something to other people, so if I ever take another trip to New York, I'll just skip seeing it and find something more fitting to my tastes.