Word: broadway
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Broadway's got the blues. The current season has taken its cue from last year's box-office slump and dared to offer less of the same: revivals, British imports and a few ho-hummable musicals. The only serious new American play (Brothers) closed on opening night. Worse, for the main stem's economic and emotional health, there have been no successful romantic comedies in more than a year. It says something dour about Broadway, its playwrights and its audience that the last laugh-till-you-cry hit was Torch Song Trilogy, Harvey Fierstein's savvy...
...Julian Barry and lyrics by Christopher Adler (all Americans). There were reports of backstage turmoil. The leading actress sprained her ankle, a leading actor broke his, and the choreographer was replaced. There were complaints that the National, with its government annuity of some $9 million, was underwriting a "Broadway tryout" (Hall may direct a New York company of Jean Seberg early...
Hall, who in his Diaries had derided Hamlisch's A Chorus Line as "reeking of double Broadway standards," now pushes the pre-opening troubles aside and defends Jean Seberg as "an exciting piece of work about the danger of starmaking in Western society." He has literally cast Seberg as a modern Joan of Arc. He has staged Seberg's involvement with the Black Panthers as a khaki chorus line brandishing rifles to a rhythm-and-blues beat. The show climaxes with Saint Jean burning at the stake for her ideals, torch courtesy of the FBI. Jean Seberg opened...
What's this? A Broadway musical that comes out foursquare for motherhood? And, for that matter, fatherhood? Shades of George M. Cohan! Nor is that by any means the end of the sins against chic committed by Baby. It is set in a leafy college town, about as far as you can get from show business, which seems to provide the themes and setting for most of Broadway's current musicals. And in a theatrical atmosphere where producers will spend millions on state-of-the-glitz stagecraft but not a penny for tribute to the ordinary issues that...
...good or ill, the current Broadway revival brings Williams down to earth. This time the moonbeams are paved with asphalt. Though Designer Ming Cho Lee has buttressed the Wingfield's St. Louis home with fleecy clouds, he has furnished it in a sturdy naturalistic style. Director John Dexter has paced the play to move one resolute step at a time, and encouraged the actors to deliver their lines with clarion force. This is a "solid" production, but it should be buoyant. The Wingfields imbibe a kind of emotional helium; only the guy wires of propriety keep them from floating...