Welcome to today’s edition of ShentonSTAGE Daily.
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, the West End’s most successful ever export to Broadway, closed yesterday with the curtain going up (ahd the chandelier coming down) for the 13,981 time. That not only set the record for the longest running show of all time on Broadway to date, but also saw the show eclipsing all others currently running in terms of box office earnings in its final weeks. (In its penultimate week, which ended April 9, it earned $3,648,872.13 — the most it has ever done in its 35 year history. I’m pretty sure that when the figures are published tomorrow fr its final week, it will have broken that record again).
It will unquestionably be back — in an interview with Variety this week, producer Cameron Mackintosh said, ““Of course it will return. All the great musicals do.”
But it won’t be the same show, if the “new” version of Phantom that re-opened at London’s Her Majesty’s (soon to be His Majesty’s, following the May 6 Coronation of King Charles III) post-Covid is anything to go by. (The orchestra was nearly halved in size and the sets reduced to help mitigate its running costs).
In the same piece, it was revealed that its weekly nut — break-even point — on Broadway is $950,000, so it was losing money regularly when it reopened after the Covid shutdown.
(pic above by Joan Marcus)
As Variety notes, “The shuttering marks the end of an era for a production that has become synonymous with Broadway, a tourist attraction akin to a city landmark.” Part of the problem, apart from its high running costs, post-COVID was the slow return of the tourist audience to the city.
But also the era it was part of, the 80s British musical assault on Broadway, is unlikely to occur again, either. It had been ushered in by Lloyd Webber’s CATS and STARLIGHT EXPRESS, as well as the Mackintosh juggernauts LES MISERABLES and MISS SAIGON (Mackintosh had also co-produced Cats and Phantom).
As David Smith wrote in The Guardian last week. Some regard Phantom “as a gaudy spectacle, the vanguard of a ’British invasion’ of New York theatre that put style over substance, commercial smarts over high art. In the prosecutor’s case against ‘the blockbuster musical’ and all that implies, it may well be Exhibit A.”
But the West End still offers rich pickings for Broadway looking for spectacle: LIFE OF PI has recently transferred, and BACK TO THE FUTURE will arrive this summer. And of course London also sends plays over regularly, whether epic — Tom Stoppard’s LEOPOLDSTADT, with its nearly 40 strong cast — or small (Mischief Theatre’s PETER PAN GOES WRONG and Jodie Comer’s star solo vehicle PRIMA FACIE, both open officially on April 19 and 23 respectively).
RE-VISITING LEOPOLDSTADT
I revisited LEOPOLDSTADT on Broadway on Friday, for the first time since I reviewed its London opening night at Wyndham’s in February 2020, an original run soon interrupted by the theatre shutdown the next month because of COVID.
It has become much tauter by the removal of the interval, its three acts playing across different time periods now uninterrupted.
I’ve written before of my own personal connection to this play — like Tom Stoppard, I too only discovered my Jewish ancestry late in life. I’ve spent the last three years unpacking some of the family trauma I’ve lived through thanks to my narcissistic father, which I’ve outlined here, and written more about my personal recovery journey here.
But I’m yet to fully deal with the trauma of my mother’s early life experiences and how that has impacted on me, too. Watching Stoppard’s play, which is partly his attempt to contextualise the trauma of the Holocaust (and his own survival of it, when his Czech Jewish mother brought him to England and he was raised as an Englishman), turned out to be even more moving three years on, as I’ve been thinking about this a lot more myself.
As Stoppard traces several generations of a Jewish family’s life in Vienna, Austria from 1900 to 1955, and their history of assimilation and annihilation, I found it Intensely moving.
Three members of the original London cast are still reprising their original performances on Broadway, too: Faye Castelow (pictured above with Joshua Molina, the West Wing actor who recently joined the company as her husband), Jenny Augen (pictured below, who plays Wilma/Rosa) and Aaron Neil (Ernst). Patrick Marber’s magisterial and haunting production fields a massive ensemble cast: a real show of producorial faith.
And announcing that the extended run of this production will finally close on July 2, producer Sonia Friedman recently said,
“It is my hope that the wonderful reception given to our show proves once and for all that new, epic drama must remain an essential part of the Broadway ecosystem. Quite simply, presenting Tom Stoppard’s timely, timeless and most personal play – in Patrick Marber’s superlative production which features an extraordinarily committed and passionate company onstage and off, alongside our dedicated co-producers and investors – has been a remarkable honour for everyone involved and is undoubtedly one of the proudest moments of my career.”
I WONDER WHAT THE KING IS DOING TONIGHT….
The original production of Lerner and Loewe’s CAMELOT opened at Broadway’s Majestic Theatre in 1960, following immediately upon the original run of THE MUSIC MAN (that had premiered in 1957) — the same theatre about to be vacated by PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.
On Saturday afternoon, I attended a screening at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center of a fascinating new documentary about Meredith Willson, the creator of THE MUSIC MAN; and then popped next door to see Lincoln Center Theater’s brand new production of CAMELOT, so there was a nice synergy to my day.
And of course one of the biggest new productions that ushered in Broadway’s post-Covid return was one of THE MUSIC MAN at the Winter Garden, starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster (the latter narrated the documentary); now CAMELOT is back, too, in a typically handsome and assured production by Bartlett Sher, who has previously revived SOUTH PACIFIC, THE KING AND I, and most recently Lerner and Loewe’s MY FAIR LADY at the same address.
The show is stately (in every sense), and despite an entirely revised book by Aaron Sorkin, still dramatically creaky; but it is gloriously sung (especially Philippa Soo’s radiant Guinevere. pictured above, and Jordan Donica’s tall and terrific Lancelot, pictured below) and beautifully accompanied by a 30-piece orchestra. Still, as far as musicals set in past kingdoms go, give me the playfulness and depth of PIPPIN any day….
SHOWS AHEAD IN LONDON, SELECTED REGIONAL THEATRES AND ON BROADWAY
My regularly updated feature on shows in London, selected regional theatres and on Broadway is here: https://shentonstage.com/theatre-openings-from-w-c-april-17/
See you here on Friday
I will be back on Friday. If you can’t wait that long, I may also be found on Twitter (for the moment) here: https://twitter.com/ShentonStage/ (though not as regularly on weekends)