Commentary: Bad News Ahead for Broadway, and Maybe the Rest of the Theater World

By Hap Erstein

T.S. Eliot was wrong. April is not the cruelest month. It is January, at least when it comes to the Broadway theater. Normally a tough month for the survival of marginally successful shows, next month is going to be disastrous for the New York commercial theater in the economy we are currently suffering through.

Eleven shows, from long-running hit musicals to a marginal drama, will close this January -- fully one-third of the productions on Broadway. It could be expected that Irving Berlin’s White Christmas would pack it in on Jan. 4, since it was always designed as a seasonal item for a limited run, but three best musical Tony Award winners -- Hairspray, Monty Python’s Spamalot and Spring Awakening -- will also close their doors next month, clearly responding to slowed ticket sales in hard times.

Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, a sub-par stage adaptation of his first-rate movie from 1974, will also close on Jan. 4. It never reported its weekly box office grosses for the year it was open, so we’ll probably never know how many millions it lost overall. Also shuttering on the 4th will be the Tony-winning revival of Boeing-Boeing, Grease, a short-lived musical called 13 and an off-Broadway transfer of a Horton Foote play, Dividing the Estate.

The Tony-winning musical revival of Gypsy, starring Patti LuPone, just announced it will close a month and a half earlier than expected -- on Jan. 11 -- “due to these uncertain financial times.” Also folding that day is Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, the production that was critically panned, but limped along thanks to the star-casting of Mrs. Tom Cruise, a/k/a Katie Holmes.

No, I’m not going to tell you that the theater is dying. Surely Broadway will rebound when the economy rebounds. But a disturbing study by the National Endowment for the Arts suggests a more pervasive and perhaps permanent decline for non-musicals. Since 1992, the audience for plays in the United States fell from 25 million to 21 million this year, and high ticket prices are not the primary factor. Instead, it seems, we have lost our taste for plays, with the supply of them outstripping current demand.

It is a bit depressing, but signs point to the fact that the theater’s problems are not strictly economic.

Theater review: "Mezzulah, 1946," Post-War Adjustment Challenge for One Rosie the Riveter

By Hap Erstein

The year is 1946. World War II is over and the residents of Monroe, Washington are eager to move on with their lives.

Except for teenage tomboy Mezzulah Steiner, who is intent on holding onto her wartime “Rosie the Riveter” job on the assembly floor of the local Boeing aircraft plant. The other women in town dutifully head back to their kitchens or resume making babies, but spunky Mezzulah not only clings to her job, she yearns to help design the planes that she has become proficient building.

The title character of Michele Lowe’s new play, Mezzulah, 1946, now on at Florida Stage through Jan. 18, may be small in stature, but she is the sort of larger-than-life lass that seems to leap straight out of a musical, and not just because she usually has a vintage pop song on her lips.

She is an iconic young feminist, ahead of her time, adamant about her right to do a job that others think should go to a war veteran instead. Worse yet, her employment could cost the Boeing plant some lucrative, job-adding contracts. No wonder the rest of Monroe wants her to give in and give up, for the good of the town, the company and, perhaps, the country.

If this sounds like it adds up to a strident play of social politics, that is not what playwright Lowe -- who penned the intricate, multi-threaded String of Pearls, seen in Manalapan three years ago -- has in mind at all. Instead, she creates a world on whimsy and occasional fantasy, as she sketches in the townsfolk surrounding Mezzulah, including the ghost of her father, a mythic war widow who travels from cemetery to cemetery in search of her lost spouse, and Mezzulah’s aunt, preoccupied with raising money for a memorial to Monroe’s war dead, even though there is only one casualty.

At times, these tangential characters threaten to pull focus away from Mezzulah, but gradually they form a patchwork community worth caring about, with concerns and struggles not that different from those we face today.

Still, Mezzulah is the heart of the play, largely because of the winsome Theo Allyn, who originated the role last year at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre. She manages to make the character very appealing, while also suggesting what an annoying pain she can be. Also standing out in the large cast -- well, by Florida Stage’s standards -- is Deborah Hazlett (The Count) as Mezzulah’s mom, struggling with allowing herself to find romance again after 20 years, James Denvil as the object of her tentative affections and Scott Borish (End Days) as Mezzulah’s chess-playing spectral father.

Director Louis Tyrrell renders this world with affection, glossing over some of its potentially cloying elements, and moving it along effectively on Richard Crowell’s slide-out sets, decorated with bits of the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci -- Mezzulah’s inspiration.

Although it loses a few points for neatness, Mezzulah, 1946 eventually coalesces into an evening worth savoring.

MEZZULAH, 1946, Florida Stage, 262 S. Ocean Blvd., Manalapan. Through Jan. 18. Tickets: $42-$45. Call: (561) 585-3433 or (800) 514-3837.