THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN THEATRE
So the Tony Awards were broadcast last night and I have to admit that it looked fucking grim. I'm going to rant about this sordid affair a bit, so feel free to skip this if it's of no interest. But, hey, I have a degree in Theatre Theory and Criticism and was a practitioner of the art for twenty-odd years (and a damned good one at that), so I deserve a rant about this sorry state of affairs.
Eight years ago, the Roundabout mounted a production of Cabaret that was one of the worst pieces of tripe ever to be hurled across the footlights. Apart from the brain-damaged direction by Sam Mendes, the worst thing about it was Alan Cumming. Both missed the point of the show - and, obviously, the source material - by light-years. It was all pretentious art school "decadence" with Cumming as a leering, mincing MC that was about as chilling as a day-glo spider in a dark ride. The immediacy and ease of the fascist impulse couldn't have been more absent. The thing apparently appealed to the sad sort of audience that mistakes style - even the jaded style of those who think too much kohl is "Brechtian" - for substance and it ran for six seemingly endless years. It was the worst thing to happen to Broadway since Andrew Lloyd Webber crossed the Atlantic. When this abomination finally closed, I thought we'd seen the last of that sort of third-hand sub-Fosse bullshit. How wrong I was.
Most of the awards last night went to Canadians and Brits, which is hardly surprising since it would appear that Americans no longer have any sense of theatre whatsoever. This is particularly sad since the musical theatre is one of the few original American art forms - or, at least, once was. Two steaming piles of excrement stood out from the rest of the debris floating in Broadway's gutters, both revivals. I suppose this is not very surprising since none of the new works were any more memorable than a State of the Union address by Gerald Ford. Well, okay, one new production stood out as excruciatingly bad: The Wedding Singer. Is it not enough that one must, from time to time, attend an actual wedding reception? Do we really need a Broadway show that celebrates wedding receptions? In 1985? In New Jersey?? Slash my throat now.
But getting back to the revivals: first, there is the appalling revival of Sweeney Todd. Okay, the original Harold Prince production wasn't that great, but at least Prince knew what the show was about. He rightly created a rich Dickensian milieu that demonstrated that the sick mind of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street was both a reflection and result of the sick Victorian society that spawned him. A factory whistle underlined each murder and corruption was ubiquitous. Directed and designed by John Doyle, the new production is "pared down", purportedly placing emphasis on Sondheim's lyrics. Okay... what about Sondheim's show?
There is a pathetic tendency in theatre of late to equate every society in decay with a misreading of the Weimar Republic. Everyone is decked out in quasi-thirties garb with "expressionistic" make-up and such silly trappings as cigarette holders, garter belts, monocles, and shaved heads. And black leather. Lots and lots of black leather. And, of course, all those Bob Fosse boas, fishnets, and bowler hats. Everyone spends their time looking sinister, intense, and thoroughly unconvincing - and polysexuality rules the day. It's as though Erich von Stroheim had fucked Marlene Dietrich up the ass and she shat out a chorus line of bisexual brats costumed by Hot Topic and Frederick's of Hollywood. It's also cheap, trite, unimaginative, easy, and dead wrong for most pieces in which it's used. Sweeney Todd is the perfect example. I have no doubt that the mindless snobs who fork out a few bills for this puke leave the theatre ever so pleased with their refined selves: "It was so artistc!" Die, you shit-for-brain losers, die.
Even worse is the revival of Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, one of the greatest pieces of theatre ever penned. Brecht is particularly susceptible to this class of bankrupt-style-over-semblance-of-substance treatment, though, and this production is clearly no exception. Indeed, it is the paradigm. In 1979, Garland Wright directed an hysterical show called Das Lusitania Songspiel, written by and starring Christopher Durang and Sigourney Weaver. It was a brillaint satire of all the then-recent productions of Brecht's works (and elements of Brecht's "epic theatre" in other plays and films). It was one of the most hilarious evenings I have ever spent in the theatre (and I'm not just saying that because I was sleeping with Wright at the time). Frank Rich of the New York Times, in selecting highlights of the theatre season, wrote "For flat-out, falling-on-the-floor laughter, though, nothing came close to Das Lusitania Songspiel. It takes ruthless satirists to keep our culture honest."
Tragically for our culture, we seem to have a dearth of ruthless satirists these days. Indeed, Scott Elliott's production of Threepenny Opera is such a trivial self-parody that it could almost be mistaken for Das Lusitania Songspiel. Like Sweeney Todd, Brecht's play is set in Victorian London. To Scott Elliott, Victorian London looks like yet another dark fantasia on the Weimar Republic, replete with every tired cliché in the Brechtian book - each of which totally misses the point of what Brecht and Weill were trying to do. Brecht was a communist and a lethally serious, if entertaining, social critic. His art is all about class divisions. Elliott would not appear to know the difference between the working and ruling classes if they collectively bit huge chunks out of his ass. Brecht created a style of theatre specifically to provoke self-reflection and a rational view of the actions on the stage. This thing looked like a cheesy entertainment at some student coffee shop catering to aging Goths. Far from leading its audience to take to the streets on behalf of the workers of the world, the most this production might do is incite them to order a toffee nut latte.
I know nothing about Elliott except that he previously directed Avenue Q, a musical in which the performers appeared with puppet versions of themselves for no apparent reason apart from giving an otherwise lackluster show a distracting gimmick, but I would not be at all surprised if he were some effete queer who spent his formative years jerking off to photos of Nazis in drag and who's finally come of age to foist his masturbatory fantasies on an unsuspecting, if wholly deserving, public. Attitude - especially attitude that was only semi-original thirty years ago - is no substitute for concept or content. And, no surprise, at the center of the production is the execrable Alan Cumming presenting the worst Macheath (a.k.a. Mack the Knife) to have ever trod the stage. I'm sorry, but Macheath - the consummate criminal businessman and aristocrat manqué - is not some prancing Gestapo ponce with a mohawk. If anyone is considering making a genuine snuff film, Cumming would be perfect casting as the victim. Please.
Bleah. I was going to go on and on about how this is all a symptom of our ailing culture and the lack of hope for the future of the artform, but I'm too dispirited. The Broadway theatre is now officially dead - and the Tony Awards weren't even an appropriate wake.
EDITED TO ADD: Thanks to an anonymous comment, I stand corrected. Scott Elliott did not direct Avenue Q. He was the Artistic Director of the company that originally produced the show. Researching Mr. Elliott's illustrious career (as I suppose I should have done in the first place), his actual directing credits only include revivals of Present Laughter, The Women, Three Sisters, and Barefoot in the Park. Great background in Brecht.
Eight years ago, the Roundabout mounted a production of Cabaret that was one of the worst pieces of tripe ever to be hurled across the footlights. Apart from the brain-damaged direction by Sam Mendes, the worst thing about it was Alan Cumming. Both missed the point of the show - and, obviously, the source material - by light-years. It was all pretentious art school "decadence" with Cumming as a leering, mincing MC that was about as chilling as a day-glo spider in a dark ride. The immediacy and ease of the fascist impulse couldn't have been more absent. The thing apparently appealed to the sad sort of audience that mistakes style - even the jaded style of those who think too much kohl is "Brechtian" - for substance and it ran for six seemingly endless years. It was the worst thing to happen to Broadway since Andrew Lloyd Webber crossed the Atlantic. When this abomination finally closed, I thought we'd seen the last of that sort of third-hand sub-Fosse bullshit. How wrong I was.
Most of the awards last night went to Canadians and Brits, which is hardly surprising since it would appear that Americans no longer have any sense of theatre whatsoever. This is particularly sad since the musical theatre is one of the few original American art forms - or, at least, once was. Two steaming piles of excrement stood out from the rest of the debris floating in Broadway's gutters, both revivals. I suppose this is not very surprising since none of the new works were any more memorable than a State of the Union address by Gerald Ford. Well, okay, one new production stood out as excruciatingly bad: The Wedding Singer. Is it not enough that one must, from time to time, attend an actual wedding reception? Do we really need a Broadway show that celebrates wedding receptions? In 1985? In New Jersey?? Slash my throat now.
But getting back to the revivals: first, there is the appalling revival of Sweeney Todd. Okay, the original Harold Prince production wasn't that great, but at least Prince knew what the show was about. He rightly created a rich Dickensian milieu that demonstrated that the sick mind of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street was both a reflection and result of the sick Victorian society that spawned him. A factory whistle underlined each murder and corruption was ubiquitous. Directed and designed by John Doyle, the new production is "pared down", purportedly placing emphasis on Sondheim's lyrics. Okay... what about Sondheim's show?
There is a pathetic tendency in theatre of late to equate every society in decay with a misreading of the Weimar Republic. Everyone is decked out in quasi-thirties garb with "expressionistic" make-up and such silly trappings as cigarette holders, garter belts, monocles, and shaved heads. And black leather. Lots and lots of black leather. And, of course, all those Bob Fosse boas, fishnets, and bowler hats. Everyone spends their time looking sinister, intense, and thoroughly unconvincing - and polysexuality rules the day. It's as though Erich von Stroheim had fucked Marlene Dietrich up the ass and she shat out a chorus line of bisexual brats costumed by Hot Topic and Frederick's of Hollywood. It's also cheap, trite, unimaginative, easy, and dead wrong for most pieces in which it's used. Sweeney Todd is the perfect example. I have no doubt that the mindless snobs who fork out a few bills for this puke leave the theatre ever so pleased with their refined selves: "It was so artistc!" Die, you shit-for-brain losers, die.
Even worse is the revival of Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, one of the greatest pieces of theatre ever penned. Brecht is particularly susceptible to this class of bankrupt-style-over-semblance-of-substance treatment, though, and this production is clearly no exception. Indeed, it is the paradigm. In 1979, Garland Wright directed an hysterical show called Das Lusitania Songspiel, written by and starring Christopher Durang and Sigourney Weaver. It was a brillaint satire of all the then-recent productions of Brecht's works (and elements of Brecht's "epic theatre" in other plays and films). It was one of the most hilarious evenings I have ever spent in the theatre (and I'm not just saying that because I was sleeping with Wright at the time). Frank Rich of the New York Times, in selecting highlights of the theatre season, wrote "For flat-out, falling-on-the-floor laughter, though, nothing came close to Das Lusitania Songspiel. It takes ruthless satirists to keep our culture honest."
Tragically for our culture, we seem to have a dearth of ruthless satirists these days. Indeed, Scott Elliott's production of Threepenny Opera is such a trivial self-parody that it could almost be mistaken for Das Lusitania Songspiel. Like Sweeney Todd, Brecht's play is set in Victorian London. To Scott Elliott, Victorian London looks like yet another dark fantasia on the Weimar Republic, replete with every tired cliché in the Brechtian book - each of which totally misses the point of what Brecht and Weill were trying to do. Brecht was a communist and a lethally serious, if entertaining, social critic. His art is all about class divisions. Elliott would not appear to know the difference between the working and ruling classes if they collectively bit huge chunks out of his ass. Brecht created a style of theatre specifically to provoke self-reflection and a rational view of the actions on the stage. This thing looked like a cheesy entertainment at some student coffee shop catering to aging Goths. Far from leading its audience to take to the streets on behalf of the workers of the world, the most this production might do is incite them to order a toffee nut latte.
I know nothing about Elliott except that he previously directed Avenue Q, a musical in which the performers appeared with puppet versions of themselves for no apparent reason apart from giving an otherwise lackluster show a distracting gimmick, but I would not be at all surprised if he were some effete queer who spent his formative years jerking off to photos of Nazis in drag and who's finally come of age to foist his masturbatory fantasies on an unsuspecting, if wholly deserving, public. Attitude - especially attitude that was only semi-original thirty years ago - is no substitute for concept or content. And, no surprise, at the center of the production is the execrable Alan Cumming presenting the worst Macheath (a.k.a. Mack the Knife) to have ever trod the stage. I'm sorry, but Macheath - the consummate criminal businessman and aristocrat manqué - is not some prancing Gestapo ponce with a mohawk. If anyone is considering making a genuine snuff film, Cumming would be perfect casting as the victim. Please.
Bleah. I was going to go on and on about how this is all a symptom of our ailing culture and the lack of hope for the future of the artform, but I'm too dispirited. The Broadway theatre is now officially dead - and the Tony Awards weren't even an appropriate wake.
EDITED TO ADD: Thanks to an anonymous comment, I stand corrected. Scott Elliott did not direct Avenue Q. He was the Artistic Director of the company that originally produced the show. Researching Mr. Elliott's illustrious career (as I suppose I should have done in the first place), his actual directing credits only include revivals of Present Laughter, The Women, Three Sisters, and Barefoot in the Park. Great background in Brecht.