Broadway revivals showcase problematic scripts, characters
Amid a national reckoning with sexual harassment and misconduct, Broadway is mounting a cluster of musicals this season and next that, some theatergoers contend, romanticize problematic relationships between women and men.
“Carousel,” “My Fair Lady” and “Kiss Me, Kate” are classics of the canon; “Pretty Woman,” a new musical, is adapted from the smash film of the same name. And each of the production’s female protagonists has her own strength — strength that, in some cases, changes the men in their lives.
But other elements of the stories — and the fact that all four musicals are being directed and choreographed by men — are drawing new scrutiny at this MeToo moment.
“It’s a huge conversation,” said Carole Rothman, artistic director of Second Stage Theater, a nonprofit that has become Broadway’s newest theater owner.
Georgia Stitt, a composer, lyricist and musician who worked on a female-led off-Broadway revival that rethought another troubling classic musical, “Sweet Charity,” sounded an alarm on social media in the fall, as the shows were being announced.
“It’s frustrating that the material people seem to want to throw their energy into is old properties where women have no agency, and then there is the real scarcity of women on the creative teams,” Stitt said in a recent interview. “And are these the shows I’m going to take my 12-year-old daughter to?”
The issues aren’t new, but they’re felt especially intensely this year, in the aftermath of sexual-assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein, which prompted a wave of accusations against other prominent men, including many in the entertainment industry, and a broader discussion of how women are portrayed in the culture.
“We’re in a moment of heightened awareness in the best possible way,” said Stacy Wolf, author of “Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical” and a theater professor at Princeton University.
Revivals are a staple of commercial theater, in part because a lot of great musicals were written decades ago and because audiences often flock to the familiar.
The first of the coming musicals will be Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel,” set to open on April 12.
First produced on Broadway in 1945 (and most recently in 1994), the show centers on the fraught relationship between a carnival barker named Billy Bigelow (played by Joshua Henry) and a millworker named Julie Jordan (Jessie Mueller).
“Carousel” has long upset some, not only because of the exchange between Julie and her daughter, Louise, about whether a slap can feel like a kiss but also because Julie seems to accept being hit by Billy, while his best songs can make him seem more sympathetic and ultimately redeemed.
“There weren’t many concerns when it was first staged in 1945, and most productions in the ’50s and ’60s tended to move very quickly over the problems,” said Tim Carter, a professor of music at the University of North Carolina and the author of a book on “Carousel.”
But in recent years, he said, there has been an increasing focus on how the central relationship is understood.
“We’re going to do it as written — it’s what they wrote, and it’s the truth of the characters,” said Scott Rudin, lead producer.
Previews for the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady” will start March 15 before the show’s April 19 opening.
The musical — adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” and made indelible by the 1964 Audrey Hepburn/Rex Harrison movie — stars Lauren Ambrose as flower girl Eliza Doolittle and Harry HaddenPaton as Henry Higgins, the phonetics professor who gives her speech lessons.
Critiques of “My Fair Lady” have focused not only on the show’s final exchange but also on the Pygmalion narrative itself: a man transforming a woman to meet his standards. Also objectionable are Henry’s bullying tone with Eliza and her return to him at the end of the show.
“Oh, gosh — it is very, very sexist,” Julie Andrews, who originated the role of Eliza on Broadway in 1956, told an interviewer last year. “Young women in particular will, and should, find it hard.”
“The investigation that MeToo forces you to do is quite important,” said director Bartlett Sher.
“Pretty Woman” is a new musical with no pre-existing book or score. The show is adapted from the 1990 film, with songs by rocker Bryan Adams and his longtime co-writer, Jim Vallance. The production is scheduled to open on Broadway in August, starring Samantha Barks as Vivian Ward, the prostitute made famous on film by Julia Roberts, and Steve Kazee as Edward Lewis, the businessman who introduces her to a new life.
The show’s creative team has made what it views as significant changes to the story to strengthen Vivian’s self-determination — in particular, by making clear early in the show that she is eager to leave prostitution.
“Unlike in a revival, we’re not locked into delivering what’s been done before,” said Paula Wagner, the show's lead producer.
The Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of “Kiss Me, Kate,” a 1948 Cole Porter musical, is scheduled to begin performances in February 2019, with Kelli O’Hara in the leading role of Lilli Vanessi. The show is about Lilli and Fred, oncemarried actors starring in a production of “The Taming of the Shrew,” a Shakespeare comedy in which a fierce woman is persuaded to humble herself to please her husband.
The musical hasn’t begun rehearsals, but director Scott Ellis said the MeToo movement will clearly affect the production.
“These are two extremely strong people who are jockeying throughout the show,” Ellis said. “How do we keep strength on both sides?”