JS Online: "Broadway has it backward this season.
For at least 25 years, the premier commercial theater district in the country has been dominated by musicals. Such serious dramatists as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams were once represented on Broadway marquees, but the straight play was pushed to the margins during the final third of the last century."
I think it is a nice change of pace to see the play back on Broadway. The Broadway scene has been so dominated by large giant musicals (which seem to be losing their originality by the day) that it is nice to see the fine art of the drama brought back to the Broadway stage. With the way that musicals have been going lately, it is little surprise to me that people want to go back and see some plays on Broadway.
ReplyDeletei agree that the return of a majority of plays will be helpful. lately broadway has been seeming to take a turn for the cheese with its big movie musicals and such, so to return to the foundations of drama (ha) will hopefully help to get broadway back on track. after all, the musical's roots are in the straight play, and i think the musical needs to return to those.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little surprised about this years Broadway shows. I mean sure we have had our share of muscials. The whole lot of them ranging from good to bad, which isn't surprising. It happens every year and can be expected to happen for years to come. But it seems that this year I have been hearing a lot more about the plays that are going on on Broadway. Not only that there seems to be more interest in plays this season, but that most of the plays are well talked about. Perhaps this is a sign that people are getting tired of the big flashy musicals that we always see on Broadway.
ReplyDeleteI can't say I really understand the big hoopla about the play being "back". This is the latest in multiple articles on this blog about the changes in Broadway. Even though there were mostly plays this past holiday season, which shows were people really talking about? Young Frankenstein and The Little Mermaid. With the exception of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, most of the plays on Broadway recently have not really received much mainstream publicity. When I went to New York in December and walked around before the matinees started, people were still in line for the musicals and not the plays. And since January, its been back to "normal", and many musicals have started opening, many of them not the "mainstream musical". Broadway is still about the musical, as much as these articles want to say it isn't
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