We want revivals! But which ones? — Page 2

Cats
My One and Only
The King and I
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Miss Saigon
42nd.Street
Sunset Blvd.

Updated On: 11/18/12 at 04:46 PM

whatever it is.. please don't James Lapine near it.

Hello, Dolly with Christine Ebersole

Dracula, the play, with the Edward Gorey sets and costumes and Benedict Cumberbatch as the lead.

Other plays: Bent, Amadeus, Sweet Bird of Youth, Sherlock Holmes (The RSC's version of the Gillette play). No Musicals, most have been revived ENOUGH.

I definitely agree about Carnival!

They're Playing Our Song
Hello Dolly
The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd

THE PERFORMERS. Maybe reunite the original cast? They're all still young enough, right?

---

It's this kind of thinking that has reduced us to seeing only one truly good new work every five years. Everyone wants a re-run...

In answer to Newintown, should the Met be chastised for always remounting old opera classics? What about Symphony Orchestra repertoires?

There ought to always be a place on Broadway for brilliant shows of the past to get a remounting. Sometimes they'll hit gold (Chicago), sometimes not (On a Clear Day...), but give today's audiences a chance to see the fabled glories of Musical Theater Past and let them decide for themselves. Most of us play the old scores of LADY IN THE DARK or ONE TOUCH OF VENUS and try to imagine how those shows lived and breathed onstage. Staging a revival is our way of reaching back to the authors and audiences of 1941 or '44 and sharing the magic of Kurt Weill, Ira Gershwin or Ogden Nash.

I want to know what that magic is myself, and I want the generations of young theatergoers behind me to know it too. How else can we insure there will be new glories of musical theater to come?

"In answer to Newintown, should the Met be chastised for always remounting old opera classics? What about Symphony Orchestra repertoires?"

It's a good question - opera and concert music are, as far as the masses are concerned, relatively dead "high art" forms, and what is new is generally (with a few exceptions) relegated to academia.

Theatre, however, doesn't need to succumb to being a victim of movies and television. It can stay contemporary and alive.

There are some, who, ignorant of anything that happened before they were 10 years old, feel that the relatively current glut of revived work is simply a result of a larger library of works available to be revived; a point of view so ridiculous it's difficult to know where to begin to refute it.

Revivals are best left to regional, stock, and amateur groups; the argument that they can't do it as well as "Broadway" is lame-brained. Perhaps they can't do it as expensively; but equating budget with quality is a strictly Republican mindset. "Talent," on the other hand, is a completely subjective word - you may not feel that they guy playing Bobby in a revival of Company in Duluth is as talented as Raul Esparza, but I'm sure there will be many who disagree with you.

Here in New York, we have the Encores series (which no longer makes much of a pretense at being a "reading" series anymore) and Paper Mill for good revivals.

But when almost half of the work produced in Manhattan (or more) is old work, on Broadway as well as Off, with fewer theatres and theatre companies in existence, it makes one sad that there isn't more good new work given to us. IMO, the most recent artistically successful musicals produced commercially in NYC were The Scottsboro Boys and The Book of Mormon, the more recent of which opened a year and a half ago. We're lucky to get one truly good new show every 2-3 years. Much of what is new is derivative and mercenary (wooden, lazy adaptations of successful films or public domain literature, that appear to be created more to make money than to be good).

So that's my point - it's easy to keep watching what we've already seen; let's work a little harder on new work, and avoid atrophying into a slack-jawed audience that can't enjoy anything unfamiliar.

To Ed, how about a LADY IN THE DARK with birthday girl Jan Maxwell?

To newintown, it's great to have a legitimate debate about the value of revivals on Broadway stages, and refreshing to up the level of discourse here. So here's my rebuttal--

I fail to understand why revivals are ok to produce in regional and community theaters but main stem theaters should be saved for new works. Is the Broadway calendar really a zero-sum equation? Are the creators working on new scripts being knocked out of contention for theaters and money because of the latest revival of ANYTHING GOES or FOLLIES? They seem to be two completely separate impulses to me.

Wouldn't a great production of ANNIE inspire juvenile theater-goers to come back to Broadway to check the untested new SPRING AWAKENINGS-type show next year?

As for the money spent on revivals, I have to say that my little set-designer's heart sinks down and feels dead every time another production of COMPANY or CHICAGO is staged like an Encore or Reprise concert, ignoring the contributions a Boris Aronson or Tony Walton could offer to shape the original gorgeous productions of those shows. Do I want to see a low-budget revival of BRIGADOON against a rental forest drop with some rental footbridge in foreground? Of course not-- I want Derek McClane to give me an evocative Abbey ruin and I want Natasha Katz to give it all the lighting magic the show deserves. I want the BROADWAY version of that show, dammit!

Lastly, I want the masterpieces of the past to not be lost and forgotten. How many theater goers out there have ever seen a production of ONE TOUCH OF VENUS, or LADY IN THE DARK, or THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM, or CARNIVAL, or ONCE ON THIS ISLAND? How many future lyricists, composers and librettists would benefit from learning how those earlier artists made their art?

Updated On: 11/20/12 at 05:34 PM

No kidding-- had no idea -- makes me really happy to know highschoolers are familiar with such a great show!

"Lastly, I want the masterpieces of the past to not be lost and forgotten. How many theater goers out there have ever seen a production of ONE TOUCH OF VENUS, or LADY IN THE DARK, or THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM, or CARNIVAL, or ONCE ON THIS ISLAND? How many future lyricists, composers and librettists would benefit from learning how those earlier artists made their art?"

I get your point but:
I've seen One Touch of Venus at Encores; I love it, but a full Broadway revival with the original book and orchestrations would not be a success with the herd.

I've seen Lady In the Dark twice - the Marcovicci, and Maria Friedman at the National; it, too, would not fly on Broadway - it represents a sophistication that Wally and Wanda Wisconsin couldn't comprehend, and its take on psychology would be funny for the wrong reasons.

I've seen two full regional productions of The Robber Bridegroom, both excellent. It flopped horribly on Broadway originally; what argument would there be that it might be a hit now?

I've seen two full regional productions of Carnival as well as the Encores version. With so few theatres available on Broadway, why do it there again? Broadway is not the only place good musicals can be done.

As already noted, Once on This Island is done all the time.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but I should reiterate my main point that Broadway is trending towards a greater ratio of revivals to original work, which I find depressing as an indication that producers, writers and audiences just lack the imagination to create and welcome great new works except very rarely.