That does sound like quite a production.
I think what I loved about Cromer's production comes from it being the first time I felt like the play wasn't being performed as "the great American play." To my generation, Our Town has become synonymous with bad high school productions, dreary community theatre and high school English classrooms that try to dissect every little minutae of the piece. Say Our Town, and we think stodgy, long, dull and dry (leaving Cromer's production, I actually thought he had cut a third of the play...I had never seen it move so fast). Cromer dealt with the play head-on, with the energy and fresh eye that he brings to everything he does (the fact that the production in Chicago was with The Hypocrites theatre, who do this to every production, didn't help...this was actually a mild interpretation by their standards). For me, it was a relevatory reexamination, and for the first time I got why this play is as great as it is (the Lookingglass production, with Joey Slotnick and a miscast David Schwimmer a few months later helped, but paled in comparison).
As for the final scene, I found it unbelievably moving.
Neil Simon flops on Broadway
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FilmFan720
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Back in 1969, I saw Henry Fonda as the Stage Manager in Our Town, with the cast also including Elizabeth Hartman, Ed Begley and Margaret Hamilton. Now THAT was revelatory! I didn't like at all the final moments of Cromer's production, with a kirchen set revealed.FilmFan720 wrote:I loved his Our Town when I caught it here in Chicago before it went to New York. I found that it captured what I imagine was Wilder's intention while presenting what felt like a new play, and loved his performance as the Stage Manager (part of that could have been seeing the play with my sister, who had Cromer as a professor and knew how much he was playing himself in the role). I am still kicking myself for missing The Adding Machine here.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
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FilmFan720
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I loved his Our Town when I caught it here in Chicago before it went to New York. I found that it captured what I imagine was Wilder's intention while presenting what felt like a new play, and loved his performance as the Stage Manager (part of that could have been seeing the play with my sister, who had Cromer as a professor and knew how much he was playing himself in the role). I am still kicking myself for missing The Adding Machine here.
"Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good."
- Minor Myers, Jr.
- Minor Myers, Jr.
David Cromer has received rave reviews in New York for off-Broadway productions. His production of Our Town, which is still running, was deemed by many critics to be revelatory, although I didn't care for his directorial decision, and this may have been my least favorite of the many productions I've seen of the play.
The Adding Machine, on the other hand, was a masterpiece, one of the best evenings in the theatre I've had and, along with Grey Gardens, on of the two best musicals of the 21st century.
The Adding Machine, on the other hand, was a masterpiece, one of the best evenings in the theatre I've had and, along with Grey Gardens, on of the two best musicals of the 21st century.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
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FilmFan720
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I find this especially sad because David Cromer, who was making his Broadway debut with this show, is one of the most exciting, innovative voices in the theatre today. Luckily, he already has his next Broadway show lined up, a revival of Picnic next year that if it is anything like his Chicago production of the play last year should be a vivacious evening in the theatre.
"Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good."
- Minor Myers, Jr.
- Minor Myers, Jr.
I think the reason this failed is that the main audience for Neil Simon plays aren't going to the theatres much anymore, mainly because he wrote plays to his generation, without much universiality. The middlebrow theatregoers of today are off seeing the latest musical comedy, or the latest badly reviewed play with a big name in it. Or they may not be able to afford Broadway tickets, with the prices what they are.
There was some speculation that they pulled the plug so early, without waiting to see if sales improved, because some of the producers of the Simon plays were also producing American Idiot, the Green Day musical (God, that sounds like a miserable night at the theatre), and the wanted to guarantee that there would be an empty theatre for it to go into.
Edited By dws1982 on 1257220731
There was some speculation that they pulled the plug so early, without waiting to see if sales improved, because some of the producers of the Simon plays were also producing American Idiot, the Green Day musical (God, that sounds like a miserable night at the theatre), and the wanted to guarantee that there would be an empty theatre for it to go into.
Edited By dws1982 on 1257220731
NY Times November 2, 2009
Neil Simon Flop May Be a Case of the Missing ‘Wow’
By PATRICK HEALY
Neil Simon was the crossover comedy king of Broadway and Hollywood for three decades, beginning when “Barefoot in the Park” and three other major shows overlapped in New York in the 1960s.
But comedy is changing on Broadway, and on Sunday one of Mr. Simon’s most-produced plays in the last 25 years, “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” became one of the biggest commercial flops on Broadway in recent memory. It closed a week after it opened, shocking many in the theater world, not least the writer himself.
“I’m dumbfounded,” Mr. Simon, 82, who has won a Pulitzer and three Tony Awards , said in an interview. “After all these years, I still don’t get how Broadway works or what to make of our culture.”
What went wrong with “Brighton Beach Memoirs” is a case study in success and failure on Broadway today. There were no big stars like Jude Law in the current commercial hit “Hamlet,” there was no marketing campaign that framed the Simon play as a can’t-miss theatrical event, and there was no wow factor that brought the period piece to life, like the breakneck pacing of the popular farce “Boeing-Boeing” last year.. But the failure also reflects America’s evolving sense of humor and taste.
Broadway shows rarely close a week or less after opening. Those that do like “Glory Days” in 2008 or “Carrie” in 1988 were usually killed by reviews that were far worse than those for “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” It actually received good reviews, but the play was shuttered because people, for whatever reason, did not want to see the Simon show about a Depression-era family laughing through the tears. The show cost $3 million to produce but never grossed more than $125,000 a week in ticket sales during preview performances or 15 percent of the maximum possible an amount that did not even cover running costs.
As for revivals of acclaimed American works like “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” they are hardly out of fashion with Broadway audiences. “South Pacific,” “Hair” and “West Side Story” are doing well, though musicals are stronger sellers than plays.
“There will always be an audience for a well-done revival of a great musical, but reviving a period-piece play now takes a special alchemy,” said André Bishop, artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater , home to “South Pacific.” “A play revival needs to have a strong vision and to give people a reason why they should see it. What’s strange is that everyone I know thought this ‘Brighton Beach’ was wonderful.”
Ben Brantley, the Times theater critic, praised the spontaneity of director David Cromer’s production and “Mr. Simon’s snappy, streamlined dialogue.”
Mr. Simon was a forefather of situation comedy writers, and his scripts for stage and screen were embraced by actors like Robert Redford , Jane Fonda , Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau . But sitcoms have given way to reality shows like “ American Idol ,” one-liners to the sardonic humor of “The Office,” and the heavily plotted comedy of Mr. Simon’s film “California Suite” to the animated wit of “Up” and the fratty banter of “The Hangover,” two of the summer’s biggest hits.
“American sensibilities about comedy change so rapidly, especially in the cultural centers on the East Coast and West Coast where people are always looking for the next new style of humor, whereas Neil Simon’s brand of humor is pretty unchanging,” said Susan Koprince, author of “Understanding Neil Simon” and a professor of English at the University of North Dakota.
Mr. Simon’s signature has always been the well-written, straightforward punch line, but new and revived comedies have done best on Broadway lately when they have been dark, satiric and outrageously narcissistic. The recent revivals of the plays “Boeing-Boeing,” “Speed-the-Plow” and “The Norman Conquests” took flight because of fast-paced timing but also had frissons of fear and panic just beneath the surface humor. A mix of comedy and pain also proved potent for the original play “August: Osage County,” while two other new plays, “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” and “The Little Dog Laughed,” were sharp satires of political terrorism and Hollywood.
While reality shows like “American Idol” and forensic dramas like “NCIS” dominate television today, popular comedies like the traditionally plotted sitcom “Two and a Half Men” and the character-driven “Desperate Housewives” also share sharply written dialogue and recognizable modern characters like those found in “God of Carnage.”
“It’s clear from the ascendancy of certain types of comedy, like the trend exemplified by Judd Apatow , Seth Rogen , Steve Carell , ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin,’ ‘Knocked Up,’ that what audiences are seeking in humor is getting more raw and edgy than Simon’s work,” said Matthew Maguire, a playwright who is director of the theater program at Fordham University .
To that end, if ticket sales before the critics’ reviews were any measure, Mr. Simon struck many people as passé. Most tickets to “Brighton Beach Memoirs” were sold at discounts like the TKTS booths. (Producers release bulks of tickets at a discount when they fail to sell at full price.) The average ticket price for “Brighton Beach” was only $21.32 for the most recent week with available data. (The average ticket price for “Hamlet” was $104.01 for the comparable week.)
Popular culture has also developed a bigger-is-better, entertainment-as-event attitude that runs counter to the ethos of the typical Simon play. Stadium-arena rock concerts, the “ Harry Potter ” and “Twilight” book and film series, the days-long cable news coverage of Michael Jackson’s death, the ever-increasing punch of season finales on television dramas these do not have equivalents in the Simon canon and are not staples of Broadway.
The producers of “Brighton Beach” hoped it too would become an event once the play was running in repertory with its companion by Mr. Simon, “Broadway Bound,” about the same family a decade later. Two earlier plays in the past few years succeeded in part because they pursued that strategy.
The biggest commercial theatrical “event” on Broadway recently was last season’s revival of “The Norman Conquests,” a trilogy of British comedies with interlocking plots and characters; all three opened at the same time, delighting critics, though it was not ultimately profitable. The “Brighton Beach” producers decided to open “Broadway Bound” a month later, Mr. Cromer said, in order to give “Brighton Beach” a chance to build an audience and to spread out the financial obligations.
“Brighton Beach” may have suffered by forgoing another traditional strategy of popular entertainment: It had no big stars. The two plays, based loosely on Mr. Simon’s family, were to have largely the same cast, led by the stage and television veteran Laurie Metcalf . The producers and director said it was necessary to cast strong actors for parts that require dramatic and comic range and that can edge into ethnic stereotype.
“If you want a star, your options are often narrowed in finding a perfect person for the part,” Mr. Cromer said in an interview.
Mr. Simon also found himself up against a bevy of Broadway plays and an economy in which theatergoers are being choosy about $100-a-seat shows. Some commenters on The Times ArtsBeat blog ( artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com ) said this weekend that Mr. Simon simply was not the can’t-miss ticket he once was.
“Too soon for Neil Simon plays to be classified as classics and too late for them to be seen as relevant,” wrote Spence Halperin, a social worker in New York City. “Try again in 15 years.”
Neil Simon Flop May Be a Case of the Missing ‘Wow’
By PATRICK HEALY
Neil Simon was the crossover comedy king of Broadway and Hollywood for three decades, beginning when “Barefoot in the Park” and three other major shows overlapped in New York in the 1960s.
But comedy is changing on Broadway, and on Sunday one of Mr. Simon’s most-produced plays in the last 25 years, “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” became one of the biggest commercial flops on Broadway in recent memory. It closed a week after it opened, shocking many in the theater world, not least the writer himself.
“I’m dumbfounded,” Mr. Simon, 82, who has won a Pulitzer and three Tony Awards , said in an interview. “After all these years, I still don’t get how Broadway works or what to make of our culture.”
What went wrong with “Brighton Beach Memoirs” is a case study in success and failure on Broadway today. There were no big stars like Jude Law in the current commercial hit “Hamlet,” there was no marketing campaign that framed the Simon play as a can’t-miss theatrical event, and there was no wow factor that brought the period piece to life, like the breakneck pacing of the popular farce “Boeing-Boeing” last year.. But the failure also reflects America’s evolving sense of humor and taste.
Broadway shows rarely close a week or less after opening. Those that do like “Glory Days” in 2008 or “Carrie” in 1988 were usually killed by reviews that were far worse than those for “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” It actually received good reviews, but the play was shuttered because people, for whatever reason, did not want to see the Simon show about a Depression-era family laughing through the tears. The show cost $3 million to produce but never grossed more than $125,000 a week in ticket sales during preview performances or 15 percent of the maximum possible an amount that did not even cover running costs.
As for revivals of acclaimed American works like “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” they are hardly out of fashion with Broadway audiences. “South Pacific,” “Hair” and “West Side Story” are doing well, though musicals are stronger sellers than plays.
“There will always be an audience for a well-done revival of a great musical, but reviving a period-piece play now takes a special alchemy,” said André Bishop, artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater , home to “South Pacific.” “A play revival needs to have a strong vision and to give people a reason why they should see it. What’s strange is that everyone I know thought this ‘Brighton Beach’ was wonderful.”
Ben Brantley, the Times theater critic, praised the spontaneity of director David Cromer’s production and “Mr. Simon’s snappy, streamlined dialogue.”
Mr. Simon was a forefather of situation comedy writers, and his scripts for stage and screen were embraced by actors like Robert Redford , Jane Fonda , Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau . But sitcoms have given way to reality shows like “ American Idol ,” one-liners to the sardonic humor of “The Office,” and the heavily plotted comedy of Mr. Simon’s film “California Suite” to the animated wit of “Up” and the fratty banter of “The Hangover,” two of the summer’s biggest hits.
“American sensibilities about comedy change so rapidly, especially in the cultural centers on the East Coast and West Coast where people are always looking for the next new style of humor, whereas Neil Simon’s brand of humor is pretty unchanging,” said Susan Koprince, author of “Understanding Neil Simon” and a professor of English at the University of North Dakota.
Mr. Simon’s signature has always been the well-written, straightforward punch line, but new and revived comedies have done best on Broadway lately when they have been dark, satiric and outrageously narcissistic. The recent revivals of the plays “Boeing-Boeing,” “Speed-the-Plow” and “The Norman Conquests” took flight because of fast-paced timing but also had frissons of fear and panic just beneath the surface humor. A mix of comedy and pain also proved potent for the original play “August: Osage County,” while two other new plays, “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” and “The Little Dog Laughed,” were sharp satires of political terrorism and Hollywood.
While reality shows like “American Idol” and forensic dramas like “NCIS” dominate television today, popular comedies like the traditionally plotted sitcom “Two and a Half Men” and the character-driven “Desperate Housewives” also share sharply written dialogue and recognizable modern characters like those found in “God of Carnage.”
“It’s clear from the ascendancy of certain types of comedy, like the trend exemplified by Judd Apatow , Seth Rogen , Steve Carell , ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin,’ ‘Knocked Up,’ that what audiences are seeking in humor is getting more raw and edgy than Simon’s work,” said Matthew Maguire, a playwright who is director of the theater program at Fordham University .
To that end, if ticket sales before the critics’ reviews were any measure, Mr. Simon struck many people as passé. Most tickets to “Brighton Beach Memoirs” were sold at discounts like the TKTS booths. (Producers release bulks of tickets at a discount when they fail to sell at full price.) The average ticket price for “Brighton Beach” was only $21.32 for the most recent week with available data. (The average ticket price for “Hamlet” was $104.01 for the comparable week.)
Popular culture has also developed a bigger-is-better, entertainment-as-event attitude that runs counter to the ethos of the typical Simon play. Stadium-arena rock concerts, the “ Harry Potter ” and “Twilight” book and film series, the days-long cable news coverage of Michael Jackson’s death, the ever-increasing punch of season finales on television dramas these do not have equivalents in the Simon canon and are not staples of Broadway.
The producers of “Brighton Beach” hoped it too would become an event once the play was running in repertory with its companion by Mr. Simon, “Broadway Bound,” about the same family a decade later. Two earlier plays in the past few years succeeded in part because they pursued that strategy.
The biggest commercial theatrical “event” on Broadway recently was last season’s revival of “The Norman Conquests,” a trilogy of British comedies with interlocking plots and characters; all three opened at the same time, delighting critics, though it was not ultimately profitable. The “Brighton Beach” producers decided to open “Broadway Bound” a month later, Mr. Cromer said, in order to give “Brighton Beach” a chance to build an audience and to spread out the financial obligations.
“Brighton Beach” may have suffered by forgoing another traditional strategy of popular entertainment: It had no big stars. The two plays, based loosely on Mr. Simon’s family, were to have largely the same cast, led by the stage and television veteran Laurie Metcalf . The producers and director said it was necessary to cast strong actors for parts that require dramatic and comic range and that can edge into ethnic stereotype.
“If you want a star, your options are often narrowed in finding a perfect person for the part,” Mr. Cromer said in an interview.
Mr. Simon also found himself up against a bevy of Broadway plays and an economy in which theatergoers are being choosy about $100-a-seat shows. Some commenters on The Times ArtsBeat blog ( artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com ) said this weekend that Mr. Simon simply was not the can’t-miss ticket he once was.
“Too soon for Neil Simon plays to be classified as classics and too late for them to be seen as relevant,” wrote Spence Halperin, a social worker in New York City. “Try again in 15 years.”