Is the Theater Back to its Pre-pandemic Pleasures?
By Elyse Sommer
There are indeed signals for optimism that the worst of the pandemic is over, at least in the theater. Long shuttered Broadway venues have reopened and this first comeback season was quite robust.
The Tony Awards, the season's annual revenue-jumping event that almost didn't happen, did happen. What's more, it was a justly praised success, even though the striking screenwriters allowed the broadcast to go on only if the host and presenters did not use a script. This made for a show that ended on time and allowed some shows running on Broadway but not nominated to have a chance to strut their stuff. Instead of at Radio City Music Hall, this year's event was held in the smaller historic Harlem movie palace that was a suitable site to showcase the diverse but all too timely issues dominating the theatrical landscape.
The two biggest winners, Kimberly Akimbo and Leopoldstadt, reminded us that ageism and anti-semitism remain toxic prejudices still with us. David Lindsay-Abaire's adaptation of his play and Tom Stoppard's epic family saga took the Tonys for best musical and best play.
There were numerous surprise nominees, like the literally corny musical Shucked, which won over fun-hungry, pandemic-weary audiences and critics and became more than the dinner-theater musical it would have been thanks to smart directing and casting. A surprise nominee who won was British actress Jodie Comer. She nabbed best leading actress (in the solo play Prima Facie) from the multi-award winner Audra McDonald, who finally gave Adrienne Kennedy's Ohio State Murders a Broadway stage life.
For a complete list of all the awards, see https://www.tonyawards.com/
Even though many of these nominees and winners received high praise from critics, most didn't fill all the seats before the Tony jump started the usual day-after uptick in ticket sales. The win for Prima Facie made it one of the best post-Tony sellers and people who missed seeing the play on Broadway will be able to see it on screen, with Cynthia Erivo in the demanding role.
The many announced productions for next season do indeed support the optimism about bringing back the pleasure and excitement of theater before the long pandemic lockdown. Some of the more intriguing items on next season's theatrical menu include new plays by two of my favorite playwrights: John Patrick Shanley and Paula Vogel. An as yet untitled play by Vogel will open at the Hayes Theater and Brooklyn Laundry by Shanley at Manhattan Theatre Club.
Furthermore, Vogel's legendary How I Learned to Drive and Shanley's Doubt are coming back. The Vogel revival reunites David Morse with Mary Louise Parker and some of the other original cast members at the Friedman Theater. Shanley's Doubt will star Liev Schreiber and Tyne Daly. While the focus on issues of tolerance is clearly here to stay, it was very much on the minds of golden oldie storytellers like Vogel and Shanley.
https://playbill.com/category/broadway-news will point you to plenty of other upcoming productions that will support the optimism about the return to normalcy.
But not so fast. We're hardly 100% back to full recovery. The constantly rising costs of putting on a show have done in The Phantom of the Opera's remarkable run at the Majestic Theatre. Costs and the still slow return of tourists also did in Stomp, a modest downtown show that, like Phantom became as much an event as a theater outing. This struggle to stay alive has rippled elsewhere. One of the Berkshire summer season's mainstays, the Williamstown Theatre, skipped a whole season of full-bodied new productions. In California, the Center Theatre Group is shutting down its Mark Taper Forum for at least a year.
And so, while it's good and bad news when it comes to the theater, the news cycle in our daily lives continues to be unrelentingly scary and depressing and repetitive. Consequently, I find it more comforting to spend time with fictional political influencers like President Conrad Dalton and Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord of the seven-season series hit, Madam Secretary. While the weekly crises that Tea Leoni's Secretary of State tackled reflected world events during the time the series was first filmed, it still has incredible currency these days. Even when re-watched, the terrific cast and production values still make for attention-holding, informative entertainment. The difference between the series and real life is that disaster is always avoided -- and in the interest of doing the right thing. If only our real world were on such solid ground.
Among the other spirit-lifting series I've caught up with or revisited are the new addition to the superb Danish political series Borgen; The Dedicated Survivor and the delightful Last Tango in Halifax.
