Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1991 - 23

tive anion, alleviating liberal guilt roward
minotities or the handicapped. And the
day of the genuinely original American
musical is over roo, eclipsed by such
grinding British juggernauts as The
Phantom o/the Opera and Les Miserables.
Ticket prices are clearly the main
issue. The high level of producers' greed,
artists' royalties, expensive thearre leasing
arrangemems, and union featherbedding
has made a couple of seats ro a Broadway
show-if you coum in rransponation,
restaurams, parking, and baby sirtingcost as much as a couple of shares of
IBM; and when the evening's over, you
don't even have a dividend ro show for it.
At such prices, any thearregoer is going
ro sray home unless he's assured of a
blockbuster. Consequently, what was
once the thearre cemer of the world no
longer has a regular thearre audience.
Look around the Majestic or the Wimer
Garden the next time you visit Broadway
and see if you can recognize anybody you
know. It's an audience of tourists and
expense accoumers, commuters traveling
via bridge and runnel. But that gabby,
feisty, noisy, demanding New York audience that used ro mob the Broadway box
office is a thing of the past. Oh, you'll
probably see a few natives at the revival
of Gypsy or at Cat On f1 Hot Tin Roof But
most commercial producers recognize
that they haven't the slightest notion who
their customers are.

nd it's for that reason, I
think, that so much of the
currem Broadway product
is rrite and banal. Where
the criterion for sraging
shows once was originaliry and surprise,
now it is the capaciry to repeat successful
formulas from the past. Sometimes this
works. All of Andrew L1oyd-Webber's big
mechanical musicals sound exactly alike
to people like me, but every one of them
somehow manages to stan a box-office
srampede. The same is true of Neil
Simon, each of whose recem hit plays is
juSt another chapter in his romamicized
aurobiography, timed with rose-colored
water and studded with conrrived gags. It
is more likely, however, that any thearre
work based on some previous success will
seem desiccared and tired, unless ir has
an infusion of new anisric energy. And
rhar energy is jusr whar frighrens convenrional Broadway producers rhese days.
You don'r risk $4-10 million on rhe
unknown.
Bur in failing ro rrusr rheir audiences,
rhe Broadway producers have been
encouraging audiences nor ro rrust thell/,
with the result rhar living-room conversa-

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1991

SPRING

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1991