There isn’t a more prolific producer on Broadway right now than the Roundabout Theatre Company: what was originally founded in 1965 as a small off-Broadway producing house has become a Broadway powerhouse, now operating out of three permanent theatres on Broadway, plus a smaller off-Broadway house that has also now spawned a second “laboratory” space.
This week I will have seen all three of its Broadway entries, the latest of which - the Broadway bow of Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie — opened last night.
Meanwhile, last night I was at another Roundabout show, its revival of Bye Bye Birdie that has the entire Broadway critical pack seems to have attacked with such a ferocity that I’m surprised it is still standing, let alone playing.
In the Village Voice, Michael Feingold used his review to attack Roundabout’s entire producing ethos. Labelling the show “another in the sorry list of the Roundabout’s successful attempts to turn formerly delightful old musicals into embarrassing contemporary disasters”, he goes on to say, “The company achieves this distressing goal with such consistency, no matter who is directing the show, that the blame has to be laid on the management’s whole system of production planning.”
In Time Out New York, Adam Feldman declares, “The featherbrained revival of this 1960 musical is sure to be roasted in so many critical pans that it seems almost cruel to add to the fire. But we can’t duck our call to grouse about a show that has been cast and staged with such flighty ineptitude. Vultures have circled this production for weeks, for good reason: What should be a lark feels joyless and blah, burdened with the albatross of leaden leading players.”
Actually, I don’t recognise the show he is describing. And it may be a question of expectation, but I actually enjoyed it. Yes, there are casting and concept problems and no one is doing their best work, but I’ve seen much worse. Maybe the critics have done it, and me, a service by rounding on it so forcefully that it couldn’t possibly be as bad as they had described it, but it also feels a bit to me like a case of playground bullying: that Roundabout are getting too big for their boots, and need to be brought down a notch or two.
Sure, they’ve had their share of flop revivals, from The Boys from Syracuse (the only musical I’ve ever seen on Broadway where a man sitting near me actually booed the musical director at the curtain call) to Pal Joey, but they also transferred the Menier’s production of Sunday in the Park with George to Studio 54, and had a smash hit with The Pajama Game with Harry Connick Jr.
And it’s wonderful to have yet another Broadway theatre back in permanent use. Roundabout first occupied Henry Miller’s Theatre on West 43rd Street back in 1998 to house their production of Cabaret, converting the original Broadway home of Coward’s The Vortex back from its subsequent use as porno cinema and later nightclub, but the production suffered a dramatic shutdown later that year when scaffolding collapsed on the new Conde Naste building that was being built next door. But after four weeks during which the entire street was shuttered, the show re-opened, before subsequently moving to Studio 54.
Henry Miller’s later became the Broadway transfer home for the off-Broadway hit Urinetown (not produced by Roundabout), but was closed in 2004 to make way for a new Bank of America Tower above it. The theatre’s facade was retained and built into the new building, but an entirely new auditorium has now been created behind it, and Roundabout has taken over the management of. The old building is referenced inside the new one with some of the old doors hung in various locations around it.
Roundabout’s two other Broadway homes are also reclaimed old houses: the American Airlines, as it is now called, is the old Selwyn Theatre on W42nd Street, handsomely made-over as a plush classical theatre (and now home to After Miss Julie, which I am seeing tomorrow afternoon), and Studio 54 (which they have continued operating ever since Cabaret played there), which they have left with plenty of references to the crumbling state of the interior before they took it over that gives it a lovely retro chic. It is currently home to Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show Wishful Drinking, based on her book of the same name that I saw on Tuesday, and is the perfect, real-life companion to Next to Normal: after the musical account of a woman suffering bipolar disorder, Fisher’s intimate confessional offers a frank and comic journey through her own experiences of living with it.
One of the issues with the Roundabout is that it is still operating as a non-profit theatre , paying less wages to everyone and yet operating five theatre spaces and producing - 90% of the time - commercially oriented productions which are financially enhanced by commerical producers. It's lack of artistic policy in favor of basically being a shelter for commerical productions is what gets people's shackles up. Frankly, mostof their productions are misfires always for different reasons but somewhere in the creative process in that organization something goes wrong and we the theatregoers end up with mediocrity . In the meantime an orgainzation like Lincoln Center Theatre has such a high level of production value and casting that their work is 90% of the time of the highest quality one can imagine. Maybe it has to do with not being a recieving house for other people's visions but a hothouse for harvesting their own?
TIME OUT NEW YORK's Adam Feldman has responded to my blog here with one of his own:
http://www3.timeoutny.com/newyork/upstaged/2009/10/is-bye-bye-birdie-so-bad-bad-bad/
He makes some interesting points, not least the fact that Brits and Americans sometimes have different "takes" when it comes to classic musicals.
And I entirely take his point about the power of the Roundabout being able to withstand the higher standards expected of it. I just felt that the response had been disproportionate overall: BYE BYE BIRDIE is not a sin against musicals -- at least not in the way that ROCK OF AGES is (as far as I'm concerned!). Yet ROCK OF AGES got a critical pass as opposed to pasting. But then, as I'm always fond of quoting a friend of mine saying, that's why there's chocolate and vanilla (and Baskin Robbins have 38 varieties).
"I just felt that the response had been disproportionate overall: BYE BYE BIRDIE is not a sin against musicals -- at least not in the way that ROCK OF AGES is (as far as I'm concerned!)."
Mark, I could not agree with this more! I was in New York two weeks ago (visiting from Toronto) and I saw (among other shows) Bye Bye Birdie and Rock of Ages. I very much enjoyed Birdie, while Rock was a huge disappointment. It was just not Broadway calibre at all! And I'm 35, so I love all the '80s music featured in it. I just expected so much more from the production given all the positive reviews and word of mouth.
Bye Bye Birdie had fantastic sets and costumes and I loved all the young performers (especially Allie Trimm and Matt Doyle). I saw it the week before the reviews, but I'd still heard such negative buzz about Gina Gershon that I expected her to be dreadful. She wasn't! I think she's miscast, but her performance was still entertaining, as was that of John Stamos.
The show was fun fluff, and I left with a smile on my face. I've found the critical lambasting mean-spirited and puzzling. No, the show wasn't perfect by any means and some of the criticism is certainly valid, but it well and truly is not that bad!