Has That Moment Passed

Yet there were signs in the early and mid-1960s that a new kind of resident theatre was beginning to take shape throughout the country and, in its own way, in Chicago. As early as 1951, Tennessee Williams had written in a prescient letter to Claudia Cassidy about the need for something better than weak touring productions trundling across the nation from New York. “The only cure,” he wrote, “is decentralized theatre. So that plays can be done freshly all over again, off Broadway, in place after place, each time created brand new. Why don’t you take the stump for it in Chicago? No better place on Earth!”

~From A Theater of Our Own: A History and a Memoir of 1,001 Nights in Chicago, by Richard Christiansen

Yesterday I read Chris Jones' review of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in the Tribune, and this caught my eye:

If this were 1994, Broadway producers would be all over Dennis DeYoung’s musical version of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Hire somebody to write a new, richer book, they’d be saying. Find some hot designers. Seduce some star names. But whatever you do after this rough-and-ready outing at the Bailiwick Repertory Theatre, keep those brooding power ballads and thrilling melody lines. Very few composers can write such seductive hooks. And the theater needs ’em all. But time has moved on. Broadway is no longer in the thrall of throbbing, gothic tales set to grandiose rock-pop scores, but prefers more glancing, ironic fare. And so, I fear, it felt on Monday night like the moment has passed for DeYoung’s “Hunchback,” even though the joint was suffused with infectious musical passion and DeYoung’s soaring, populist score is surely the equal of any of the Frank Wildhorn creations that made millions in the 1990s.

Similar themes came up in other Trib reviews including, Knute Rockne All-American:

This is a brand new musical about the legendary Notre Dame coach from the 1920s. It is one of the very few musicals out there about sports (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s soccer-themed “The Beautiful Game” being one of the others). And this show, which features a book by Buddy Farmer, score by Michael Mahler and lyrics by Mahler and David H. Bell, is a wholly intriguing attempt to capture, in musical form, the pageantry, commitment and heart of the college game.

All week, I’ve been mulling whether this is the kind of show that might make it to Broadway.

And the Tribune review of Drowsy Chaperone:

At some point in their lives, most Broadway-musical lovers find themselves in the horrendous situation of being attached to otherwise pleasing people who do not share their passion for the art. Beloved cast albums mysteriously find their way to garage sales. Precious playbills are purloined to pad a litter box. A suggestion that Stephen Sondheim is an apt accompaniment for any self-respecting soiree is met with a withering stare. Something dies inside.

I should preface this by saying, for anyone who doesn't know, I read a lot of criticism. I read critics from all over the globe and every review published in a Chicago paper, magazine and most of the online ones I know of. When he's on, Jones writes as well as any critic in the country. And when across the spectrum coverage of theatre shrinks, there is still one paper who, while they can't close down a show, a rave from Jones can bring audiences flocking to Chicago theatres.

But there has always been an asterisk that he brings with him. The rap on our lead critic is that he has seemed, justly or not, more interested in New York and the road shows making their two week stops at Broadway in Chicago, than what goes on on our stages. I wonder if it is simply that Broadway is still seen by Jones as the end all be all of American Theatre. So, the only lens to be seen through, especially for musicals, is whether or not it could be a Broadway show. Often the gloves stay on when the big shows hit town. Poor shows get what amounts to an apology, excuses or a review written through a nostalgic haze--instead of the objective appraisal that most smaller Chicago-bred shows get.

It has to be hard to be always be compared to a predecessor, especially one who is remembered as a champion of Chicago theatres the way Christiansen is, whose influence has been credited both with the "Chicago Style" and the huge growth in theatres in the city. Let alone that little theatre in that church basement he championed in the early days. Now there is so much more going on, no one person can cover it all.

That makes it difficult for any critic to keep up with what goes on in our city. And when there is a disconnect you get comments in reviews of companies such as Steep Theatre (full disclosure, I was member of Steep for years) of how they are "fast-growing, buzz-heavy" and "up and coming." They were, five years ago. Truth be told, Steep isn't fast growing. They're not a flash in the pan, they have steadily been growing since 2001. It just took seven years for the larger papers to take notice.

Shortly after TimeOut Chicago's Bright Lights? Big Deal cover story, I was interviewing Chris Piatt, TOC's theatre editor (which I swear I will post soon.) I asked him about Williams' statements that Christiansen quoted. He pointed out something I hadn't given much thought to. He said that the era of centralization is over. Globalization is now what is taking hold in theatre just as in most industries. As Broadway has transformed, from the best of American theatre into the big theatrical tourist destination, theatres around the country have lined up to become part of the theatrical import/export business.

I asked Piatt a chicken or the egg question: whether more people go to the big road houses because they get more coverage, or they get more coverage because more people go there? He told me, in essence, that they get more people and more coverage because they have a marketing budget. He was acutely aware that for smaller companies, those who can't afford to plaster every bus and cab in town with ads, reviews are their de facto marketing and PR.

But what happens when the lead critic at the city's "paper of record" is stuck in an antiquated way of thinking, and can only see shows through the lens of will it play on Broadway? What happens when companies nearing a decade in existence are new and up and coming? When "weak touring productions trundling across the nation from New York" are given more coverage for their two weeks in town than companies that have been around for twenty-five years? How are readers and theatre goers better served by this?

I have to wonder whose moment is passing.