January 9, 2000
By Clive Barnes
It was Charles Dickens who wrote about "the best of times and the worst of times," and the New York theater has always known exactly what he meant. But theatrically, it is never the best of times and the worst of times all at once.
It is an either-or situation, and whether it's the best or worst of times seems a matter of perspective, often depending on which end of the season you're looking at.
Around this time of year, the theater always seems to reach its own version of the winter solstice -- that darkest day when all the naysayers are walking around declaiming it to be "the worst season in years," or perhaps even "the worst season ever."
It is usually that same story, but with spring's awakening and the awards time sprouting, those same naysayers normally find a different tune to hum, confessing, sometimes guiltily but more often shamelessly, that "it wasn't such a bad season as everyone suggested it was going to be ... in fact it turned out quite well ... considering."
Let's take stock. So far, apart from a few bright musical spots, none of them with new music, it has been pretty dire disaster and gaudy doom -- particularly on Broadway. Yet, as optimism is at the heart of the theater (or at least at the heart of the people who lovingly throw their money into it) perhaps the good times are only just around the corner.
So what do the first four or five months of the new millennium hold that the final four or five months of the last so singularly lacked?
There seem to be only three new musicals bound for Broadway, but all of them hold out the promise of glitz and glitter, if not achievement. Coming in March, the new Disney-shaped Elton John/Tim Rice musical Aida presumably hopes to do for Giuseppe Verdi what Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg (Miss Saigon) and the late Jonathan Larson (Rent) did for Giacomo Puccini. And it just might!
Then there is The Wild Party, based on the 1928 poem by Joseph Moncure March, with a book by George C. Wolfe and Michael John LaChiusa, with music and lyrics by LaChiusa, whose pop-opera Marie Christine ends its scheduled run today at Lincoln Center. Starring Toni Collette, Mandy Patinkin and Eartha Kitt, The Wild Party is inked in for an April Broadway opening. Another musical with the same name and inspired by the same poem, with book, music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, will precede it off-Broadway, when the Manhattan Theater Club opens it in February. Which party, I wonder, will be the wilder?
The third new Broadway musical is Martin Guerre, by those wonderful folk who brought you Les Miz and Miss Saigon -- Boublil and Schonberg, who seem to be the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the modern British musical, with Andrew Lloyd Webber, of course, as Hamlet.
I saw a version of this Martin Guerre in London, and have another version -- somewhat changed around the edges -- on CD. This is yet a newer production that has been on out-of-town previews. Based on the French movie of the same name, which Hollywood remade as Sommersby, it's about a soldier, believed dead, apparently returning from the wars. This is also due in April before the Tony deadline.
Another musical once expected was Whistle Down the Wind, by Hamlet himself, Lord Lloyd Webber. This, however, seems to have died on the road, although anyone frantic to see it can jet off to London, where it is still running. I have seen it and would not advise a special journey.
However, for those in need of a Lloyd Webber fix, we have, also in the witching month of April, a revival of that first big Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice hit Jesus Christ Superstar. This is a new and interestingly stark staging by Gale Edwards, which I also saw in London, when it opened London's restored Lyceum Theater, preceding The Lion King. In New York, it will open at 42nd Street's Ford Center, just across the street from The Lion King.
Another major musical revival on Broadway this season is Meredith Willson's The Music Man, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman (whose critically acclaimed Contact moves to Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater in March) starring Craig Bierko and Rebecca Luker. It, too, bows in April.
But, you may well be asking yourself, how about what Variety calls legitimate drama (those things that talk without singing) on Broadway?
Well, as usual, people wanting legitimate, or even illegitimate, drama are best advised to walk off-Broadway rather than on. However, all is not lost.
Indeed, the first Broadway opening of the new millennium (it opens Thursday, actually) happens to be a play, David Hirson's Wrong Mountain. Originating in San Francisco, it stars Ron Rifkin and Daniel Davis, and has been directed by Richard Jones.
The other new play definitely scheduled, also for April, is Elaine May's Taller Than a Dwarf, starring Parker Posey and Matthew Broderick, and staged by Alan Arkin.
There are also a few revivals in the definite offing -- notably, the terrific must-see revival (unless something has gone wrong on the transatlantic crossing) of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing from London's Donmar Warehouse, staged by David Leveaux and starring Stephen Dillane and Jennifer Ehle. Don't be surprised if, come Tony time, Ehle finds herself vying with her mum, Rosemary Harris, from Waiting in the Wings, for the Best Actress nod.
Other definite revivals are Gabriel Byrne, Cherry Jones and Roy Dotrice in Daniel Sullivan's staging of Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten; Patrick Stewart in Arthur Miller's splendid The Ride Down Mount Morgan, already seen off-Broadway at the Public Theater, and Matthew Warchus' staging of Sam Shepard's True West, with the remarkable Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly as the feuding brothers.
And finally, spring will also see the birth of a new theater -- Todd Haimes' Roundabout Theater, which moves to 42nd Street and opens with Michael Meyer's production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, starring Sir Derek Jacobi, Roger Rees and Laura Linney. It, too, is scheduled to open in April.
Why don't we all just hibernate until then?
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