Word: broadway
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Broadway, to its peril, has increasingly gone the way of the movies: it has become a business of megahits and instant flops, of shows that either stake a claim on immortality ("Now and forever" the Cats slogan boasts) or die within days. It costs so much to keep a play running--from $80,000 to $150,000 a week, not counting TV advertising--that unless the reviews are raves or a large advance sale provides a cushion, skittish investors often decide to cut their losses by closing worthy shows right away rather than struggling to survive and recoup...
...property. The story starts slowly and wobbles in tone, but achieves the original's deft mix of social comment, slapstick farce, heartrending melodrama and boy's own tale of danger. Big River, which started in regional theaters and seems likely to become a standard there, deserves its place on Broadway. It is gentle, thoughtful, slightly old-fashioned and much cleaner than the back of Huckleberry's perennially unwashed neck...
...first appeared on Broadway in 1968, and its lead roles have been a recurrent draw to major actors ever since. For Jim Dale, a manic clown who won a Tony for walking a tightrope in Barnum, and Stockard Channing, a lopsided-grinning gamine best known for mugging her way through the movie Grease, there could scarcely be better parts to broaden their images. Brian and Sheila cannot have anything like a normal life if they keep their helpless spastic daughter Josephine; they cannot rid themselves of guilt if they remand her to the unloving custody of the state. Yet, mercifully...
...estranged straight brother and tolerant chum. Hoffman has written rich, lyric dialogue for the leads: a budding writer (Jonathan Hogan) who is diagnosed as having the disease, and a former lover (Jonathan Hadary) who takes him back "as is" to nurse him. During the play's earlier off-Broadway run, Hadary played the lover as a near saint, but has now toned down the sanctimony and emphasizes the character's wit. Hogan must storm through the show on a single note approaching hysteria. Yet he manages to find great variety, shading and humor in the role, and delivers the most...
...illusion, and among the dreams it fosters is that the clock can be turned back and the ravages of time denied. Film and TV close-ups reveal the smallest encroachments of age; the stage keeps a civilized distance between seemingly ageless performers and happily deceived audiences. In the Broadway revival of Frederick Lonsdale's 1923 Aren't We All?, part of the charm is a return to the heyday of drawing-room comedy and, for that matter, of drawing rooms. The chief pleasure is seeing Rex Harrison, 77, and Claudette Colbert, 81, apparently just as vibrant and elegant...