By Jeffrey Sweet
A collective sigh of relief greeted the news that, after nineteen days, the stagehands’ strike that had closed down most of Broadway ended with both management and the union declaring they had made a good deal. Management got a reform of work rules, and the union got a significant boost in rates for their hire. And the lights on a lot of stages went on again.
One of the weeks during the strike was the one that Broadway Cares: Equity Fights AIDS had scheduled for its annual curtain-speech appeal to the audiences for support. The shows that for contractual reasons performed during the strike appealed as planned (I left money at performances of Pygmalion and The Ritz). The returning shows attempted to make up for lost time. At the performance of Cyrano I attended, there was some fiercely competitive bidding in the auction for Kevin Kline’s autographed nose. The winning bid – $1400 (one of Jennifer Garner’s eyelashes was thrown in for a bonus; she’d lost the other in performance).
A flurry of plays, the openings of which had been delayed, premiered to mostly warm response. The biggest splash was made by August: Osage County, Tracy Letts’s three-and-a-half hour drama about a warring family produced by Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre. None of the actors is a star by New York terms (though Sally Murphy was the Julie Jordan in the well-received Lincoln Center revival of Carousel some years back and was featured in Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe’s musical version of The Wild Party), but, given the extravagant notices, this will certainly change. The play itself was greeted by the New York Times critic as the best new American drama to play Broadway in years, and there was an immediate stampede at the box office.
As I write this, composer Alan Menken is working with book writer Doug Wright and director Francesca Zambello on the stage version of The Little Mermaid. The score will include songs from the original animated film Menken wrote with his late partner, Howard Ashman, as well as new songs with lyricist Glen Slater. As you’ll recall, The Little Mermaid is about a mermaid who falls in love with a human and becomes human herself. As it happens, Menken is currently basking in the success of a substantial film hit called Enchanted (with lyrics by Stephen Schwartz), which is about a princess in an animated cartoon who falls in love with a real, live human and, yes, becomes human herself. And let’s not forget the recently-arrived Broadway hit, Xanadu, about a goddess who falls in love with a human and becomes ... (Maybe now is the time for me to revive a project I worked on with Susan Birkenhead some years back, a musical version of Bell, Book and Candle. As you may remember, it’s about a witch who falls in love with a human.)
In the meantime, the Writers Guild strike against the movie and TV industry drags along. The most recent round of negotiations ended with management breaking off talks and calling the writers stubborn and intransigent. The studio bosses don’t seem to be convincing many people. Opinion polls show almost 70% of the American public on the side of the writers, with only 4% being firmly on the side of management. By that measure, they’re even less popular than George Bush. Most observers are predicting a long strike that may extend well into the new year.
Critic Charles Isherwood of the New York Times stirred up some comment by writing a column suggesting that striking writers with backgrounds in the theatre should take advantage of their lack of employment by returning to the ennobling activity of writing plays. The immediate response by some of these writers was, “Why, so you can pan us again?” Isherwood is admired for his intelligence, but a number of writers think he is too eager to indulge in withering sarcasm. There is a rumor that Isherwood was genuinely disturbed by an article to that effect written by Jon Robin Baitz and that he called Baitz to discuss the matter. And, as I say, it’s a rumor ...
Jeffrey Sweet is a playwright, journalist and teacher, probably best known for his play THE VALUE OF NAMES, the musical WHAT ABOUT LUV? (which played the Orange Tree many years ago), and a history of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe called SOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY. A resident artist at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre, nine of his plays will soon appear in anthology published by Northwestern University Press.
A collective sigh of relief greeted the news that, after nineteen days, the stagehands’ strike that had closed down most of Broadway ended with both management and the union declaring they had made a good deal. Management got a reform of work rules, and the union got a significant boost in rates for their hire. And the lights on a lot of stages went on again.
One of the weeks during the strike was the one that Broadway Cares: Equity Fights AIDS had scheduled for its annual curtain-speech appeal to the audiences for support. The shows that for contractual reasons performed during the strike appealed as planned (I left money at performances of Pygmalion and The Ritz). The returning shows attempted to make up for lost time. At the performance of Cyrano I attended, there was some fiercely competitive bidding in the auction for Kevin Kline’s autographed nose. The winning bid – $1400 (one of Jennifer Garner’s eyelashes was thrown in for a bonus; she’d lost the other in performance).
A flurry of plays, the openings of which had been delayed, premiered to mostly warm response. The biggest splash was made by August: Osage County, Tracy Letts’s three-and-a-half hour drama about a warring family produced by Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre. None of the actors is a star by New York terms (though Sally Murphy was the Julie Jordan in the well-received Lincoln Center revival of Carousel some years back and was featured in Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe’s musical version of The Wild Party), but, given the extravagant notices, this will certainly change. The play itself was greeted by the New York Times critic as the best new American drama to play Broadway in years, and there was an immediate stampede at the box office.
As I write this, composer Alan Menken is working with book writer Doug Wright and director Francesca Zambello on the stage version of The Little Mermaid. The score will include songs from the original animated film Menken wrote with his late partner, Howard Ashman, as well as new songs with lyricist Glen Slater. As you’ll recall, The Little Mermaid is about a mermaid who falls in love with a human and becomes human herself. As it happens, Menken is currently basking in the success of a substantial film hit called Enchanted (with lyrics by Stephen Schwartz), which is about a princess in an animated cartoon who falls in love with a real, live human and, yes, becomes human herself. And let’s not forget the recently-arrived Broadway hit, Xanadu, about a goddess who falls in love with a human and becomes ... (Maybe now is the time for me to revive a project I worked on with Susan Birkenhead some years back, a musical version of Bell, Book and Candle. As you may remember, it’s about a witch who falls in love with a human.)
In the meantime, the Writers Guild strike against the movie and TV industry drags along. The most recent round of negotiations ended with management breaking off talks and calling the writers stubborn and intransigent. The studio bosses don’t seem to be convincing many people. Opinion polls show almost 70% of the American public on the side of the writers, with only 4% being firmly on the side of management. By that measure, they’re even less popular than George Bush. Most observers are predicting a long strike that may extend well into the new year.
Critic Charles Isherwood of the New York Times stirred up some comment by writing a column suggesting that striking writers with backgrounds in the theatre should take advantage of their lack of employment by returning to the ennobling activity of writing plays. The immediate response by some of these writers was, “Why, so you can pan us again?” Isherwood is admired for his intelligence, but a number of writers think he is too eager to indulge in withering sarcasm. There is a rumor that Isherwood was genuinely disturbed by an article to that effect written by Jon Robin Baitz and that he called Baitz to discuss the matter. And, as I say, it’s a rumor ...
Jeffrey Sweet is a playwright, journalist and teacher, probably best known for his play THE VALUE OF NAMES, the musical WHAT ABOUT LUV? (which played the Orange Tree many years ago), and a history of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe called SOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY. A resident artist at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre, nine of his plays will soon appear in anthology published by Northwestern University Press.