Word: broadway
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...gaudy musicals and pumped-up stage dramas, Crystal's 700 Sundays might seem like a pretty stripped-down piece of theater. But then, you must not go to the theater much. Crystal's autobiographical monologue, which opened last weekend, is the hottest-selling new show of the Broadway season. And while Crystal may be alone on the stage, he's certainly not alone onstage. His is just one of five one-person shows--along with those from Whoopi Goldberg, Mario Cantone, Eve Ensler and Dame Edna--that have opened on Broadway since September...
Intriguing sign of the times or symptom of Broadway's creative poverty? Let's just say that in an era of soaring costs and a dearth of new plays with any assurance of drawing an audience, it's a perfectly logical commercial development. With only one salaried actor and minimal sets and costumes (unless you are Dame Edna), those shows are cheaper to produce than full-scale plays. "You've got a lot less risk with a one-person show and pretty much the same opportunity to make money," says Jay Larkin, an executive producer at Showtime, responsible for Cantone...
...seems a lazy way of making rich subject matter easy to digest--and almost guaranteeing a Tony acting nod in the bargain. Then there are the autobiographical shows, which can occasionally be dishy and inspired (Elaine Stritch at Liberty) but just as often superfluous ego trips (Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends). The real growth industry in the past few years, however, has been the puffed-up comedy monologue, from the traditional stand-up of comics like Jackie Mason, Bill Maher and Rob Becker (Defending the Caveman) to the more crafted, character-driven monologues of such performers as Lily...
...these tours de force can start looking forced awfully quickly. Goldberg's new show is an update of her 1984 Broadway collection of character sketches that launched her career, with a couple of new voices mixed in. But the thing seems slapped together without any dramatic shape or reason, other than to let Goldberg get off some anti-Bush zingers (put in the mouth, unconvincingly, of her drugged-out street-hustler character Fontaine). Ensler has done a much better job of shaping The Good Body. But that critique of America's obsession with thinness, based on her interviews with women...
Stand-up comics, of course, do one-person shows every night, in clubs and concert halls, so it's no surprise that they would eventually make an assault on Broadway. The bigger question is whether they belong there. Cantone, a New York City comic and actor perhaps best known for his recurring role as Charlotte's wedding planner in Sex and the City, is a talented, high-voltage performer with a bag of good impressions (Julia Child, Sammy Davis Jr.) and a bitchy, high-camp sensibility. But despite some second-act musings about his family, including his mother's death...