BRIGHT SPOTS SAW US THRU A HARD YEAR
Boss, ‘Caroline,’ ‘Doubtfire’ lifted spirits
What a terrible year for New York City’s beloved Broadway. Sure, we can find bright spots, not the least of which is our new appreciation for the swings and understudies who show up to work ready to play eight different roles on a moment’s notice. And for those who returned to watching live theater in 2021, the palpable joy of an overture playing and a curtain rising brought tears to plenty of eyes that had watched so much pandemic Netflix.
For many people, Broadway was there when it most was needed. You have to see this awful year in that context. For some, seeing Patti LuPone was like snorting oxygen after nearly suffocating to death.
But anyone who, like me, saw the disappointment in a kid’s eyes after arriving at “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” without the requisite test, and no time to take one in the tent outside, will be ready for 2021 to post its closing notice. The year did not return our collective investment.
Heck, it was a measure of the dedication of its management and workforce that so many shows found their way to Opening Night, despite the need to essentially open nurses’ testing stations in the wings. So many probes went up actors’ tender noses, nostrils risked permanent flares. Add to that the number of stars who have recently caught COVID — including Hugh Jackman, who announced a positive test Tuesday, a week after his “The Music Man” co-star Sutton Foster said she was infected.
These days people love to rail about Broadway producers and theater owners, but it’s time everyone acknowledged how hard they worked this year and how much cash they spent just to keep the street humming. Most of them nurtured their people, and a few wrote regular checks with very little in the deposit column.
The highlights?
Let’s start with The Boss, kickstarting the truncated year with “Springsteen on Broadway,” despite the crowd of anti-vaxxers with bullhorns outside complaining about the need to be vaccinated to attend.
“This is a time filled with confusion,” said the chiseled, ever-tolerant Brother Bruce. Amen, said we all. What a performer. When he attacked his guitar on “American Skin (41 Shots),” it was like he was attacking the virus. Or so we wished.
Up next was Antoinette Nwandu’s “Pass Over,” an important new American work that its playwright had inestimably improved from its earlier incarnations, ennobling her characters and creating a script that will, I hereby wager, eventually become canonical.
“Chicken and Biscuits” had its issues — easily fixable — but the work at least addressed Broadway’s persistent need to reach a Black audience that was not part of the usual Manhattan elite. The same could be said of “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” a piece that plowed familiar thematic territory, sure, but also moved its audience right from the beginning when a cast of Black men walked out on stage and simply said they were here to speak that which Broadway rarely had heard before.
Meanwhile, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, nursing a back injury, still was able to pay homage to the community of resilient eccentrics and abandoned souls who raised him. “Lackawanna Blues” worked because we knew Santiago-Hudson had lived and felt every last word.
“SIX,” a show that seemed like it was never going to open, offered some empowering fun for kids long stuck in their parents’ basements. And the awesome “The Lehman Trilogy,” a dazzling feat of storytelling and by far the best Broadway attraction of the year, was one of the very few shows you are likely to see where someone looking at their watch in the third hour was likely worried that the show was
going to end before they were ready to hit the street outside.
“Dana H.” offered New Yorkers the chance to see a stunning performance from Deirdre O’Connell, mouthing but also feeling words first spoken by a real woman, the mother of playwright Lucas Hnath, held captive by a malevolent man she had only wanted to help. Had Second Stage Theater put that show on the same bill as “Is This a Room?” also fascinating, surely both would have done better.
The revival of “Caroline, or Change” had its bumps and excesses, but it was still a reminder that it took years for Broadway to catch up to how Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori were thinking in 2003. “Diana the Musical” was, of course, completely ridiculous. But those who had drank some bubbly before the show at least had some laughs. (One lesson here: people won’t pay good money for a show they can already see on Netflix. Duh!)
“Trouble in Mind,” a fascinating script about Broadway itself, could have been great if the production had been willing to emphasize the veracity of the Alice Childress material, rather than merely congratulating itself for finally producing it. And by writing “Clyde’s,” clever Lynn Nottage wrote a shrewd meta-play taking down toxic producer behavior within showbiz and Broadway, while pretending to write a play set in a restaurant. You could appreciate it on several levels.
Then in came “Company,” a disappointingly chilly production that had an idea for everything except what the show is really about, which is vulnerability, change and the human need for love. A deconstruction of the musical was a perfectly defensible choice, of course (heck, look what Broadway did to “Oklahoma!”), and thanks to the wisdom and generosity of the late Stephen Sondheim, it was still a fascinating evening, replete with LuPone scaring away quarantine cobwebs.
Over at “Mrs. Doubtfire,” they dared to do an old-school family musical comedy at a time when critics seem to have taken leave of whatever sense of humor our kind has ever had. The audacity! “Mrs. Doubtfire” was a blast. Unfairly maligned, too. Doesn’t Broadway want families to return for something other than their umpteenth visit to “The Lion King?”
All that was left then was a crazy musical about tripping on LSD — at the tony Lincoln Center, no less. “Flying Over Sunset” seemed to get stuck in an endless loop of its own creation.
An apt metaphor for one crazy year on Broadway.