The first show to be shut down in the current strike of Broadway stagehands that began nearly two weeks ago was Dr Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, for the purely logistical reason that on the Saturday morning that the strike was called it was the first show to have a performance, with an early matinee scheduled for 11am. Today it becomes the first show to return to the boards, since the stagehands union have done a deal with the producers to remove the picket line and allow them to resume performances. That is great news for producer James Sanna, whose show is on a limited run for the holiday season only; but it has led to a war, conducted in the Manhattan courts this week, against his landlords, the Jujamcyn organisation, who didn’t want striking workers back on their payroll (since it is the theatres who pay the stagehands, not the producers) until the entire dispute was resolved.
The court ruled in Grinch’s favour — as the judge remarked as she granted the injunction against the theatre owners, “I think one Grinch in town is enough.” There are, of course, plenty of them about right now in the increasingly bitter dispute that is waging. While the union has offered to return to the negotiating table this weekend, the League of American Theatres and Producers have started to dig their heels in: according to Michael Riedel in the New York Post, the head of the League Charlotte St Martin has said that they will only convene if it appears that the union appears to be willing to make a deal. Riedel quotes one producer as saying, “We’re not going to meet just to meet. We’ve been through that enough times already.”
Meanwhile, on the other coast, the writers’ strike also continues — and Charles Isherwood in the New York Times suggested in a feature last week that perhaps playwrights like Warren Leight and Jon Robin Baitz use the opportunity to return to the theatre from writing for television. Now those playwrights, too, are striking back — at Isherwood. Baitz has written a long response on Huffingtonpost.com — and suggests, “There is a whiff of Grinch in his criticism.” He writes, “Isherwood, as a critic, will never be noted for his generosity of spirit. He is not Harold Clurman. He tends to be waspish, dismissive, cool, and brittle - as a writer. He can be gratuitously insulting, and his reputation is marred by the general consensus that a good mind is not matched by a particularly big heart.” Of Isherwood’s senior colleague Ben Brantley, he declares that he “more and more seems like a breathless writer of gossip and gush for fan mags, and his intelligence - which again is not in question - seems to fail when it comes down to the big picture. The Times critics present themselves as advocates for consumers, and not as advocates for the theater itself. Unlike Clurman, Ken Tynan, say, or even Frank Rich, who could be withering but always managed to let it be known that he was passionate for new voices, passionate for promise, and uncompromisingly rigorous, as he is as an op-ed writer on Sundays.”
I assume that Baitz is not planning on returning to the theatre to subject himself to their replies anytime soon. As for Warren Leight, his own reply in Michael Riedel’s column in today’s New York Post says it all, “Charles Isherwood asking playwrights to return to the stage is kind of like Ted Bundy wondering why no one hitchhikes anymore”.
