I’ve often had cause on this blog to sadly reflect on how musicals are in crisis, and especially new, original ones. Broadway is the traditional home of the musical, of course, and at next month’s Tony Awards, they have been unable to rustle up four nominees for the best original score category from musicals, but have unbelievably had to include the “scores” instead to Enron (now shuttered) and Fences as well to complete the category. Three of the four nominees for best new musical use previously-written music.
But the ecology of new plays isn’t always in such great shape, either. The commercial sector, either in New York or London, rarely produces them off their own bat now; producers, as a veteran British director of plays recently remarked to me, aren’t so much producers as shoppers, who instead of nurturing and developing plays on their own, merely go out shopping for what’s produced elsewhere.
And that’s born out in the US, too, where four nominees for Best Play on Broadway, for instance, Red came from the Donmar, and Next Fall was produced by Naked Angels at Playwrights’ Horizons; while the category was completed by two new plays that originated in the not-for-profit environment of Lincoln Center Theatre (In the next room or the vibrator play) and Manhattan Theatre Club (Time Stands Still) respectively.
A fascinating new study has recently been published in New York, conducted under the auspices of the Theatre Development Fund whose primary function is to build and strengthen new audiences - but this time looked into the sustainability of the environment in which new plays are produced in the US. Called “Outrageous Fortune” and subtitled “The Life and Times of the New American Play”, TDF’s executive director Victoria Bailey says in her introduction that it is clear “that the ecosystem in which the new play is produced is not healthy. Playwrights cannot make a living from their plays. Artistic directors are deeply troubled as they work to navigate the marketing and funding pressures facing their theatres. The lines of demarcation between the not-for-profit and commercial theatre is increasingly blurred.”
Of course, this book revolves around the American experience; but all of the above applies equally to the British model, too. We may have more funding here - at least for now, though we know that the arts are not going to be spared in the swingeing cuts that the new government is promising - but the same pressures to writers and practitioners.
The book identifies many problems, but the one most relevant to this blog is, of course, the state of criticism. As it puts it, “Knowledgeable and thoughtful criticism is crucial in the realm of new work, because, as one artistic director says, ‘The way we are led to what is new is through critics’. This has become ‘one of the stopping blocks. We no longer have critics who are operating from the point of view that part of what they do is educate and bring people to material that might be unfamiliar or scary to them. It’s moved into the thumbs up/thumbs down’.”
There isn’t enough of a critical conversation around the work, partly because of the reduction in the number of voices, and the space those voices get, but also because of the still disproportionate influence of the New York Times, even if its authority has been increasingly eroded. “Since this study began, the ranks of newspaper critics throughout the United States has been decimated. Artistic directors and playwrights agree that, even as the power of the press has been severely curtailed by a dwindling readership for newspapers and then increased power of Internet reviews and, even, audience blogs, there is really only one source of criticism left with impact, and that impact is seen to be outsized. In the minds of most artistic directors and playwrights, the single meaningful opinion for a new play - in terms of its continued life on American stages - is the one printed in the New York Times.”
Of course, even an approval rating there isn’t necessarily enough to guarantee commercial success: as Variety reported just last week, “Broadway ticket-buyers are ignoring the Tonys and crix. For example, the Tony-nommed Next Fall is the lowest-grossing show on Broadway, despite what are arguably the best reviews for a new play.”
But if good reviews don’t necessarily count, bad ones do - and the book notes the vitriol that many theatre practitioners feel towards Charles Isherwood, the New York Times’s second string critic. “While some argue that a good review for this critic - or from the Times’s senior critic Ben Brantley, who, concentrating more on Broadway and London, as well as the musical theatre, has less direct impact on the not-for-profit sector - does not guarantee a successful New York run, all believe that a good review from him can grant a play life outside of New York. Moreover, a bad review from Isherwood, it is universally agreed, will cut short the life of a play and can seriously damage a playwright’s career.”
And it goes on, “Whether or not audiences read or care about reviews - and there is much disagreement about the impact of criticism outside of New York - playwrights and nonprofit producers agree that, despite the often repeated claim that they do not take reviews into account, regional theatre artistic directors are heavily influenced by Times reviews. The head of a prominent off-Broadway theatre warns against allowing Isherwood to become the de facto ‘artistic director of the American theatre’.”
The message is clear: critical voices still matter. In fact, authoritative voices may matter more than ever. It’s a paradox that, even as fewer people are apparently reading (or at least buying) the New York Times than ever, the artistic community still clearly hangs on its every word.
They do in the states Mark because over there especially a new work - whether it be a play or a musical -bases its success on whether or not it transfers to New York. Here in the UK, a large amount of the time the success of a regional production is based on the work itself not on whether it was able to transfer into London. I'm not naieve, I'm sure a lot of them hope that their show will get to London but there is more honor for an actor saying "I'm doing Hobson's Choice in Sheffield" in the UK than an actor in the US saying: " I'm doing Barefoot in the Park in Louisville." and furthermore the regional theatres in the US are , by and large afraid of new work and controversy and losings their grants and their audiences, than their UK counterparts. The New York Times remains a force in how shows are percieved within the industry but not so much with the audience that actually goes to the thetare. As for "Next Fall" those producers (the real ones - not the celebrity presenters) are so busy trying to communicate what the play isn't (it's not a gay play, it's not a play about death) that they fail to communicate what the play is. Let's face it, it's a gay play about death and religous prejudice. The potential audience knows its being lied to or at the very least they're suspicious.