Graceland Heads East

Ellen Fairey's Graceland, which opened in May and is now set to run through November 15th, is set to move to New York.

The play opened at Profiles Theatre in May and has been extended four times, moving just down the street to the National Pastime Theatre. More information on that run here. (By the way, check out the "reviews" tab there, and compare their quote to my actual review. None of the words change, but the tone sure is different when you add exclamation points.)

According to Playbill, the play will be staged Off-Broadway at the Duke Theatre as part of Lincoln Center Theatre's LCT3 program, devoted to smaller-scale productions of emerging works. It is set to run May 3-29, with an official opening the 17th of that month. No casting announcement has been made, but given that it is to be directed by Henry Wishcamper (who has done some work in Chicago, most recently the Goodman's Animal Crackers), rather than Profiles' Matt Miller, it's a fair bet that the cast will be all New Yorkers.

A huge congratulations to Fairey and everyone at Profiles on the continued success of the play. I'm still a bit mystified--I thought the play had great dialogue and interesting characters, but  found some of the behavior inexplicable and the plot in general pretty predictable, though the strong acting and direction helped a lot. Still, it's never bad when a show strikes a chord, and I hope that Graceland goes on to more success--and Fairey's next play is even better.

Cromer Watch

So David Cromer's production of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs opened last night at the Nederlander on Broadway. The Times gave it a mixed but respectful review, others are generally more positive, with the relationship between the two brothers and the set coming in for the the most praise. And all of the reviews focus specifically on how Cromer's direction impacted the play. Some variation on the same formula--that the original production was a comedy with dramatic moments, while the current one is a drama with comic parts--was repeated in nearly every review. Cromer's quieter style was mostly praised, though some thought it attempted to give the play a depth it couldn't support and the Times thought he managed the two-person scenes much better than the full-cast ones. (My favorite quote comes from NY1's Roma Torre, saying that Cromer "could probably locate the human qualities in a head of cabbage.")

So Cromer's career is booming--once Broadway Bound the third part of of Simon's autobiographical trilogy, opens in rep on Broadway, he'll be directing the American premiere of Australian playwright Andrew Bovell's When the Rain Stops Falling at Lincoln Center's Off-Broadway Mitzi E. Newhouse in February, followed by A Streetcar Named Desire at Writers' Theatre north of Chicago in the spring, and, amazingly, Kirk Lynn's Cherrywood at Mary-Arrchie, a tiny storefront in Lakeview above a liquor store. (By the way, I got to appear in Cherrywood at Northwestern, directed by the awesome Shade Murray as his first-year MFA project, and it's an amazing show. It's written as a series of lines without any attribution or dramatis personae, and it's up to the director and actors to figure out who says what and what the play is. I can't wait to see a different interpretation of it.) Then once fall 2010 rolls around, he'll be back on Broadway, in a just-announced revival of Picnic by William Inge, based on his production at Writers' last fall. (The producers of this revival are giving credit to Writers' for originating it, which is an improvement over the producers of Our Town, who as far as I know gave no credit or money to The Hypocrites, who put up the cash and resources for the Chicago production on which the current New York revival is based. That's showbiz.)

So talk about a local boy making good! From the sadly small amount of his work I've seen, Cromer is a hell of a director, and it's great to see him being recognized, particularly since he is continuing to direct in Chicago, not abandoning us for New York. (Or film? Who knows...) I hope he continues to do well in both cities.

One other interesting note--I think that this is a rare, heartening example of the power of critics to actually affect the theatrical discourse in a positive way. I'd say it was the raft of positive reviews for Cromer's Our Town in spring 2008 that first put him on the national radar, and Charles Isherwood's laudatory profile of him in the Times that really put him in the New York theatre consciousness. (Terry Teachout's rave about the Writers' production of Picnic doubtless is the reason that production is the next to make the move, but Teachout is a twit, so I'm reluctant to give him any credit.) It's all too rare, but critics served a part of their purpose--recognizing excellence and helping it to be seen on a wider scale. Hopefully Cromer will continue to produce at a level that justifies the hype he's gotten so far--and we'll be able to continue seeing the work.

Tempest in a Teapot of the Day

Snobbishness goes in all directions.

In a recent article in the New York Times about the difficulty Broadway producers are having finding capitalization for their shows, and the increasing number of shows closing in January, Nancy Coyne, head of the PR firm Serino Coyne made a remark that one might politely call really dumb:

“The good news is that so many straight plays are now coming in the spring, and I think New Yorkers will come out for them once the tourists go away,” Ms. Coyne said. “We’re horrible snobs. We hate tourists from Cleveland.”

The Times has a piece about the ensuing flap here. Predictably, the focus has mostly been on the last sentence--regarding the opinion of Clevelanders--and not the second to last, in which Coyne admits New Yorker's snobbishness. Tony Brown's writeup of the incident in the Plain Dealer has elicited the expected barbs towards 1) Nasty, wealthy, elitist New Yorkers who have no interest in the rest of the country and 2) Theatre, which on Broadway consists of nothing but frothy musicals, and which no real person cares about. Who says New Yorkers are the only ones with  judgmental views of those outside of their world?

I am a Clevelander who has frequently visited New York. I like to think that my tastes are not those of the stereotypical tourist (how many 16 year olds see Ibsen and Strindberg on one trip?) but I can not deny the lure of Broadway. To a certain extent this is because I, like many, grew up loving big Broadway musicals, and never have (and hopefully never will) gotten over that love. When done well, nothing is better.

Also, people in any major city can get tough, experimental shows at home. In Cleveland, Dobama, CPT, and many other places produce exceptional work that pushes all of the boundaries. What Cleveland doesn't have in the same degree is big stuff--yes, there are the touring Broadway shows, but in my experience those are generally poor substitutes for the real thing. Touring theatres are generally much larger than those on Broadway, and it makes a difference in the experience--being one of 1,000 in the audience of New York's Spring Awakening is certainly different from being one of 2,500 in Cleveland.

However, having observed a lot of tourists in New York, I can say that the criticism of them is sometimes valid: walking slowly and blocking pedestrian traffic, treating the city like a garbage can, and generally being inconsiderate is enough to drive the most patient person mad. And New York is not an environment that breeds patience. However, those who live in New York would be well advised to remember that tourism is a major part of the city's economy, and, especially these days, it might be wise to do everything you can to make the city welcoming to those few who can still afford to be tourists.

As for Broadway: yes, there is a lot of crap there, but it doesn't take much work to find stuff that is serious and interesting. Just among currently running shows August: Osage County, Avenue Q, Boeing-Boeing, Dividing the Estate, Equus, In The Heights, Pal Joey, South Pacific, Speed the Plow, Spring Awakening, The 39 Steps, and The Seagull all have something more than flash to recommend them. When you add in Off-Broadway, there is plenty to engage an audience with good taste.

Also, a word in favor of snobbishness: it sometimes just means someone who really cares about something and has trouble with the disrespect so many people have for the art. Looking at what is and is not successful in the world of theatre, I am not ashamed to be a snob.

Besides, I live in Chicago, which is obviously vastly superior to either Cleveland or New York.