NYTimes.com: WITH Mike Nichols’s revival of “Death of a Salesman” opening next month, Broadway is once again shining a spotlight on those to whom attention must be paid. That injunction usually means — to use the condescending parlance of another time — “little people,” unobtrusive and unhappy members of the working and middle classes who are anonymous to the point of invisibility.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
On Broadway, a Penchant for Celebrity Biographies in Song
NYTimes.com: WITH Mike Nichols’s revival of “Death of a Salesman” opening next month, Broadway is once again shining a spotlight on those to whom attention must be paid. That injunction usually means — to use the condescending parlance of another time — “little people,” unobtrusive and unhappy members of the working and middle classes who are anonymous to the point of invisibility.
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I find a number of things about this upcoming Broadway season interesting. The first is, as Brantley mentioned, the contrast between works that explore celebrity and the public's obsession with them (such as Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar), and those that take a more intimate look at the everyday life of the downtrodden, like Death of a Salesman, Porgy and Bess, and others. What Brantley points out is that both categories of work are ultimately about the people, the "99%" as we might call them today. Evita explores how the poor clung to her more than how she herself won their affections. In History of Drama we are learning about the 18th century and how that time was when theatre stopped only being a thing of the rich: the emergence of a middle class that wanted to see themselves onstage led to new plays about ordinary life, and an audience made up not only of the "1%" or so. It is telling that in this "Occupy" age theatre is once again taking the trend that it did then and showing stories about its own people and their problems. Now if only we made tickets affordable to them...
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