Broadway's Best Shows

Today we celebrate what would have been Angela Lansbury’s 97th birthday with Broadway’s Best Shows’ 2021 “Show of Titles” special tribute to Angela, “Angie” as friends called her, performed by Len Cariou, Rob McClure and Aaron Tveit. We miss you deeply already, Angie.

All week long Broadway’s Best Shows will be sharing memories from friends and colleagues.

By Lindsey Delahunt

60 years ago on this date in 1962, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? exploded on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theatre; the author was an acclaimed Off-Broadway playwright, Edward Albee, whose previous successes had included The Zoo Story, An American Dream and The Death of Bessie Smith.  The director was Alan Schneider, whose reputation soared after this production and went on to direct several Albee plays (Tiny Alice, A Delicate Balance, and The Ballad of the Sad Café) as well as major productions of Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and Robert Anderson. His life was tragically cut short when he was killed in an accident in London, when he looked to his left for traffic on a cross street, forgetting that motor vehicles traveled on the left side of the road, and was hit by a motorcycle. The play won Tony Awards for its leading actors, Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill, who were supported by George Grizzard and Melinda Dillon and became a cause celebre, as well as the talk of the town, when it was passed over for a Pulitzer Prize despite the recommendation of the advisors to the Pulitzer Prize board.  It was said to have been denied the award because of its frank language and explicit sexual themes. It played for 664 performances, it did not have an out of town engagement, there were only five previews when it opened in New York, and the first-string critics all attended the opening night.

One of the intriguing anecdotes concerning the production was the potential involvement of Henry Fonda, the great film actor who periodically returned to the stage every few years beginning in 1948 with Mister Roberts, then Point of No Return, then The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, Two For the Seesaw and Critic’s Choice. His agent rejected the script out of hand, without consulting him. The agent gave as his reason the assertion that, “You don’t want to be in a play about four people yelling at each other all the time.” Fonda, who was an admirer of playwright Edward Albee’s talents, reportedly was furious. Finally seeing the show himself, Fonda was duly impressed by Arthur Hill’s performance in the role, and conceded that he couldn’t have played the part any better.

In 1970, he and Richard Burton approached Albee about doing an all-male version; for the younger couple they wanted Warren Beatty and Jon Voight, but the playwright turned them down.

Virginia Woolf didn’t come to Broadway again until 1976 when Ben Gazzara and Colleen Dewhurst co-starred in a production at the Music Box Theatre. It played for slightly over 3 months and unlike the original production, which had a second company doing matinees due to the length and the fierce, uncompromising battle of the sexes (that second company by the way included Elaine Stritch at one point), Gazzara and Dewhurt played all eight performances.

By that time Virginia Woolf had entered into the canon of major American plays, helped also by the film version which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, with Sandy Dennis and George Segal in support. Major artists who interpreted the roles over the years ranged from Mike Nichols and Elaine May to a recent production in Los Angeles with Zachary Quinto and Calista Flockhart.

The next time that Virginia Woolf appeared on Broadway was approximately 28 years after the first revival, which was 14 years after the original. Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin were Martha and George and Irwin won a Tony for his performance. He had earned the admiration of Albee when he stepped in to do The Goat after Bill Pullman had departed. The play alternated seven and eight performances bi-weekly and played for 177 performances. Since the 60’s when Hagen and Elizabeth Taylor (who won an Oscar), the role of Martha has eluded the top prize but George in the three out of four major Broadway productions has provided Tony Awards for its interpreters.

The most acclaimed revival came to Broadway in a very roundabout way just seven years after the Turner-Irwin. For the first time the artist who staged the play was a woman who had done resident theatre productions of The Play About the Baby (Philadelphia Stage Company), The Goat or Who is Sylvia (the Alley Theatre) and the world premiere of Pete and Jerry at the Hartford Stage Theatre; the latter served an opener to The Zoo Story.  Pam Mackinnon, the director, had the previous season brilliantly directed the award-winning play Clybourne Park and wanted to do Virginia Woolf with Amy Morton as Martha Henry. Molly Smyth, Artistic Director, was all set to do the production, which had been approved, when Martha Lavey, the Artistic Director of Steppenwolf, insisted that as Amy Morton was a member of the company it had been to be done at that theatre first. Albee had never allowed a play of his to be done at Steppenwolf, but Mackinnon was persuasive and the play began its life there in 2011-2012 and then traveled to the Arena Stage. The response to the production was overwhelming, there were two performances left, when Lavey called the New York producer Jeffrey Richards and ask him to come and see the production, noting his relationship with Amy and Tracy Letts (portraying George) from August: Osage County and Superior Donuts. The matinee performance was magnificent, so much so that Richards and his producing partner Susan Gallin immediately decided to bring it to New York. Albee’s agent, Jonathan Lomma, was called who met with Richards the next afternoon and granted the rights. The play now titled Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? again awarded the George (Tracy Letts) with a Tony Award, Mackinnon with the Best Director Award, and the play won Best Revival. Noteworthy note: it was the first time two American women directors had won the Tony Award in the same year (Mackinnon for Woolf, Diane Paulus for Pippin).

When Richards met with Albee, he asked why it was now called Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.  Richards had retitled, with the playwright’s permission, the generic The Best Man to Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. Albee said he had seen a program of a production in a resident theatre in which his name was so small that he felt that it would never happen again if his name was in the title.

At intermission when the play opened, 50 years to the actual date of the first production, Albee agreed to come onstage at the end of the performance and received a standing ovation.  It was the last time he was to appear on stage at the conclusion of one of his plays.

A production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was scheduled to open in March 2020 with Rupert Everett (initially Eddie Izzard had been announced) and Laurie Metcalf as George and Martha and Joe Mantello was the director.  Sadly it was one of the productions which never reopened after Covid and it was the production which signaled the beginning of the Broadway shutdown when an usher at the theatre was found to have Covid.  

by Jordan Levinson

With rumors currently spreading regarding a forthcoming transfer of Once Upon a One More Time at the Marquis Theatre in the spring, it means New York City is being treated to three different musicals in the 2022-23 season using fairy tales as their inspiration (also Into the Woods and the forthcoming Bad Cinderella). 

Why fairy tales? Perhaps the answer lies in the colorful utopia in which these stories are set: a perfect world free of corruption, plague, and strife, and full of love and magic defined by larger-than-life creatures, humans or not. In this second full Broadway season back from an 18-month COVID-19 shutdown, it can be assumed theatregoers want to forget their troubles and be transported to a different environment — and the familiarity of centuries-old fairy tales can help their cause, serving as lighthearted, bubblegum fare to all those in need of it.

But there’s a twist though…this season, these stories that have been told and retold for generations are not always the ones you think you know. Audiences will head to their seats expecting the familiar, but instead be treated to new, diverse tales with some recognizable figures. 

Take, for instance, Once Upon a One More Time. While utilizing the impressive back catalogue of pop princess Britney Spears, Jon Hartmere’s book brings the Brothers Grimm’s princesses together at a book club. There, a fairy godmother introduces the group to Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique”, inspiring them to gain new perspective on themselves and their lives. The women eventually realize that waiting for their princes or knights in shining armor to arrive and kiss them may not be the only path to “happily ever after.” 

Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods also combines multiple Grimm stories to form an original creation. Though the show begins rather lighthearted, it eventually becomes the darker side of a fairy tale. James Lapine’s book introduces a common everyman and everywoman — the Baker and his wife — and their quest to start a family. To do so, they must reverse the curse that a witch has placed on their house. The two interact with Jack, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood. It turns out, they all have something they wish for — and the latter half of the show teaches audiences a harsh truth: granted wishes have consequences and repercussions, so “careful the wish you make.”

A second revival kicked off the current Broadway season in late June 2022; it was originally staged in 1987 and revived for the first time in 2002.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bad Cinderella will begin previews at the Imperial Theatre on February 17, prior to a March 23 official opening. Here, the famous titular damsel in distress is both a damsel and a distress. Cinderella is a goth-dressing, rebellious outcast in Belleville, a town that prides itself on beauty and attractiveness. Also, her beloved Prince Charming (as seen in other works) is seemingly dead; his younger brother — the shy Prince Sebastian — is Cinderella’s only friend and love interest. Other plot points in this new adaptation include reflections on body shaming and some recast gender relationships. 

Some credit must also be given to Between the Lines, which had a brief Off-Broadway run at the beginning of the season. Although it isn’t based on any particular fairy tale (the basis is Jodi Picoult’s YA novel of the same name), this musical follows a high school girl who escapes her difficult life at home and school by reading books. In particular, she is struck by a fictional fairy tale involving a prince who she has a crush on. When the prince starts talking to her, she longs to escape into his world; however, if the two want to stay together, they must change the story he is stuck in so that they can control their own narrative. 

Of course, adapting fairy tales into Broadway musicals is not a brand-new trend; more traditional productions have popped up through the years. As early as 1903, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — considered by some to be America’s first great fairy tale — was musicalized for the first time before receiving a legendary film adaptation in 1939 and a Motown makeover in 1975’s The Wiz. Wicked — the backstory of the two witches of Oz — provided a prequel of The Wizard of Oz in 2003 and is still currently running on Broadway. 

In 2013, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella opened on Broadway for the first time. Although more traditional (and true to the Grimm original) than something like Bad Cinderella, librettist Douglas Carter Beane adapted the old tale by throwing in some small additions to bolster the show’s running time, including a romantic subplot, several new characters, and a sympathetic stepsister. 

The various stories of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen have also made their way to the Great Bright Way; in 1959, his The Princess and the Pea was adapted into Once Upon a Mattress. The plot chronicles a far-off place in which its inhabitants must abstain from marriage until Prince Dauntless — the Queen’s son — finds a bride of his own. The Mary Rodgers tuner received a Broadway revival in 1996. 

Finally, no list on musical fairy tales would be complete without mentioning the success of Disney on Broadway. Under the leadership of Thomas Schumacher, the Mouse has launched many of its films into the theatrical medium. The venture launched in 1994 with the purple-and-gold warhorse known as Beauty and the Beast, running for 13 years at two different houses and ushering in a new era of commercial Broadway theatre that continues to this day, before closing to make way for a splash-hit adaptation of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid (which in turn, was given a Caribbean twist in Once on This Island). 

Andersen’s most recent Broadway adaptation was a twist on his short story “The Snow Queen.” Following the runaway success of the 2013 animated feature Frozen, Disney did not miss a beat and brought a stage version to New York five years later. The heartwarming story about two sisters who find love where they least expect it thawed many cold hearts, and it had a solid run at the St. James Theatre before the COVID-19 shutdown provided its knockout punch.

Gore’s first venture in the theatre was the result of a teleplay that had been produced on the Goodyear Playhouse in 1955;  It was described thusly:  “A visitor from another planet arrives on Earth and seems anxious to provoke a war- “one thing you people do really well”.   The teleplay starred Cyril Ritchard, at the height of his US popularity having created the role of Captain Hook in Peter Pan.  He starred as Kreton, the visitor who had hoped to cover the United States during the Civil War, and through a time warp, had arrived in the 1950’s, upending the household of a General in Manassas, Virginia.  The popularity of the Playhouse presentation inspired Gore to expand the “Visit” into a full-length play and it opened to mostly positive reviews in February of 1957.

Brooks Atkinson in the Times called “Planet” “uproarious” and Life Magazine called it “the freshest and funniest invasion of the Broadway season.”  Not only did Ritchard create the role, he also directed the production. The play was later adapted into a Jerry Lewis film which bore little resemblance to the original. In the fall of 2000, there was a special reading of “Visit to a Small Planet at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre.  The cast included Alan Cumming (as the Visitor), Lily Tomlin (in the gender-changed role of the General), Philip Bosco, Christine Baranski, Kristin Chenoweth and Tony Randall, directed by John Tillinger.  One could have charged premium tickets.  While the reading was positively received, its future was dimmed when Cumming, who was approached to continue in the role, was unable to schedule a commitment.

His most famous play would open three years later. When it opened in 1960, it was simply titled “The Best Man” and acclaimed as one of the best political plays ever on Broadway.  It ran for over a year at the Morosco Theatre and the leading role won Melvyn Douglas the Tony Award for Best Actor.  In the fall Douglas had portrayed President Warren G. Harding in “The Gang’s All Here” but here he was merely a former Secretary of State who was was an aspiring Presidential Candidate at a convention. The play was written pre-primary politics which has subsequently become a staple on the American scene, though that spring there would be the first highly publicized major Presidential primary with Senators Stuart Symington, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy vying to be the Democratic candidate. In the play the opposing candidates were famously drawn upon Adlai Stevenson who had twice been the Democratic presidential candidate and Richard Nixon. Almost stealing the spotlight was the character of the ex-President and potential kingmaker (patterned after Harry Truman) portrayed by Lee Tracy, who recreated the role in the film, which co-starred Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson.

When the play was revived in the year 2000, it came on the heels of the popular film “The Best Man” which starred Taye Diggs. When the producer Jeffrey Richards, with director Ethan McSweeney,  travelled to Ravello to meet with Vidal, it was suggested, to avoid confusion, that the play be retitled “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man”. Gore’s response:  “I thought you’d never ask”.   The production which co-starred Charles During, Spalding Gray, Chris Noth, Elizabeth Ashley, Michael Learned and Christine Ebersole won both the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Revival and was a surprise success of the fall season. It also benefitted from the five week delay in the Presidential contest which resulted in the George Bush presidency.  A line that before the election did not get a laugh was noted to receive one after November 4^th when the putative candidate Joe Cantwell remarked “and the last thing we want is a deadlocked convention.”

There was a second revival of the play in 2012 with another all-star cast including John Larroquette, James Earl Jones, Eric McCormack, Angela Lansbury, Candice Bergen, Jefferson Mays, Kerry Butler, and Michael McKean.  Again the play was a success. Gore attended the second week of rehearsals in a wheelchair and serenaded the company with stories about the original production and the night that JFK attended a performance. Unlike the first revival in which he joined the company on stage at a glittering opening night with celebrities in the audience included Woody Allen, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Bebe Neuwirth, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick among others, Gore was unable to attend the second re-opening. He died later that year, during the engagement of the production, which focused attention on his life and work and, consequently, resulted in an extension of the play with a replacement cast of Cybill Shepherd, John Stamos, Elizabeth Ashley and Kristin Davis.

Gore’s third Broadway play was an adaptation of Frederich Durrenmatt’s “Romulus” about the last of the Roman emperors. premiered on Broadway in 1962; once again his director and star was Cyril Ritchard (Vidal quipped- “Cyril was a wonderful actor but as a director he would just tell the actors to stand there, in a line and recite the dialogue”) and Dame Cathleen Nesbitt and Howard DaSilva were also starred.  

His fourth play reunited him with the original director of “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man”, Joseph Anthony, but did not repeat the success.  The play was “Weekend “and a one sentence description of the play read as follows:  “An unscrupulous Republican senator’s son brings home his black girlfriend”.  The play opened in March of 1968;  the previous December the Spencer Tracy-Katherine Hepburn-Sidney Poitier film had a similar racial theme in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” and was Oscar-nominated and a big box office success.  “Weekend” was neither a box office success, despite a starry cast which included John Forsythe, Rosemary Harris and Academy Award winner Kim Hunter and introduced Carol Cole, Nat King Cole’s daughter, as the girlfriend, nor was it well received. The producers advertised it without quotes calling it THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE. It wasn’t. It played three weeks at the Broadhurst Theatre.

Gore’s fifth and final play on Broadway was in 1972; a blistering satire called “An Evening With Richard Nixon and…” with George S. Irving in the title role.  Originally scheduled to be directed by (Sir) Peter Hall, it was directed by Ed Sherin, who had staged “The Great White Hope”. It opened 50 years ago and was budgeted at $150,000; there was a cast of fifteen (with a very young Susan Sarandon) portraying a gallery of over 50 characters ranging from George Washington to JFK, including, FDR, Harry Truman, Thomas E. Dewey, Dwight Eisenhower, FDR, Gloria Steinem and Pat Nixon – Clive Barnes in his review said “I laughed a great deal at this political bloodletting” but had reservations about the play’s cumulative impact.  So did audiences, and without the star power that had been associated with previous Vidal entries, the play last only two weeks after opening at the Shubert Theatre.

Gore’s final play that received a production premiered at Duke as part of Duke Theatres’ Previews in 2005.  A glittering cast headed by Charles During, Chris Noth, Michael Learned, Harris Yulin, Richard Easton, Isabel Keating and David Turner brought “On the March to the Sea” to life for a brief engagement.  Directed by Warner Shook, who had brought “The Kentucky Cycle” to Broadway, “Sea” was a noble effort that failed to march on to New York.  The play concerned a Georgian family’s trial by fire during Sherman’s famous march during the Civil War.  Vidal delighted students at a writing class with various bon mots such as “The best writers have been actors…Shakespeare, Shaw, Twain, Wilder.”;  “Reading is like going to bed with someone.  Save Jane Eyre for a dismal night” and on the staged reading format of the play “naked language…the eye is not distracted by the adventurous and dangerous set designer”…

Gore had developed and was retooling a script inspired by his novel Lincoln (which had also been a mini-series on television in the late 80’s) when he passed away. A reading had been scheduled and ultimately was not realized.

Mother Nature has her faux fur coat on the foot of her bed and she’s almost ready to step out for New York’s hottest shows. We are here to celebrate the eight shows that will open up on Broadway before October.

October 2
Leopoldstadt (Longacre Theatre)

• Olivier Award Winning NEW play by Tom Stoppard
• Features 38 actors
• Tom Stoppard’s “most personal work of his career”
• From Director Patrick Marber (Closer, Tom Stoppard’s Travesties)

October 3
Cost of Living (Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)

• Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize
• Martyna Marjok is a new playwright with a very promising future (she’s penning The Great Gatsby with Florence Welch)
• Kara Young stars after exploding onto the Broadway stage after Clyde’s

October 6
1776 (American Airlines Theatre)

• Reimagined revival with an all woman presenting cast
• Jeffrey L. Page (Violet, FELA!) and Diane Paulus (Waitress, Pippin, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, Jagged Little Pill) co-directs
• Carolee Carmello is back on Broadway after 6 years

October 9
Death of a Salesman (Hudson Theatre)

• Marianne Elliott (Company, Angels in America, Warhorse) directs this critically-acclaimed West End Transfer
• Tony Award Nominee and Multi-Olivier Award Winner Sharon D. Clarke, Wendell Pierce (HBO’s The Wire) and the incomparable André De Shields round out this powerhouse cast
• The Black actors portraying the Loman family during the 1940s transcends the writing making an even harder hit for Willy, his wife and his boys

October 13
The Piano Lesson (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)

• Samuel L Jackson and Danielle Brooks return to Broadway in this much-anticipated revival
• Directed by Latanya Richardson Jackson
• August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize Winning Masterpiece about how we perceive our past

October 20
Topdog/Underdog (John Golden Theatre)

• The first ever Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning drama revival
• Kenny Leon directs
• New York Times says it’s “the Greatest Plays of the last 25 years”

October 27
Take Me Out (Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre)

• The hit revival is back from it’s sold-out run at the Helen Hayes
• Jesse Tyler Ferguson won his first Tony Award for this hilarious and heart-breaking role
• A scintillating drama about being authentically oneself and the importance of friendship and community

October 27
Walking with Ghosts (Music Box Theatre)

• Gabriel Byrne (Hereditary, HBO’s In Treatment) returns to Broadway with his one-man staged biography
• The incredible Lonny Price directs
• The Times calls it “Spell-binding”
  

NOVEMBER OPENINGS

November 3 – Almost Famous (Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre)

November 10 – Kimberly Akimbo (Booth Theatre)

November 13 – Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man & the Pool (Vivian Beaumont Theater)

November 17 – & Juliet (Stephen Sondheim Theatre)

November 20 – KPOP (Circle in the Square Theatre)

November 21 – A Christmas Carol (Nederlander Theatre)