Broadway braces for recession fallout

NEW YORK CITY —

Though dubbed The Fabulous Invalid for its ability to endure through decades of fiscal recessions and depressions, Broadway is hardly immune to economic downturns.

Amid dire predictions, Broadway got through the post-Sept. 11 financial crash well. But over time the famed theater district has become dependent on big cash-cow musical spectacles, as Detroit was on gas-guzzling SUVs.

So with tourism declining, unemployment rising and show investors wary, what's Broadway to do?

The precinct certainly will get leaner: More than a dozen plays and musicals are slated to close in coming weeks, including such lingering hits as "Hairspray" (which originated at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre) and such disappointing would-be blockbusters as the Mel Brooks musical "Young Frankenstein" (which debuted here at the Paramount Theatre last year).

So far, the 2008-09 season has spawned one musical hit, the British import "Billy Elliot." Another screen-to-stage effort, "Shrek the Musical" (also premiered at Seattle's 5th Avenue), opened last week to mixed but positive notices, but its long-range fate is unclear. (Read a report on "Shrek the Musical" in the accompanying story.)

But can Broadway alter its boom-or-bust mentality, downscale ticket prices and diversify its fare to meet current financial realities? One key to weathering the storm will be the health of not-for-profit subscription companies like Lincoln Center Theater and Roundabout Theatre Company, which rely less on commercial investors to fund their Broadway shows and single ticket-buyers to see them.

In a slow fall season that will heat up after the first of the year, here are some quick takes on new Broadway (and Off Broadway) shows that are drawing attention.

"Billy Elliot: The Musical"

Imperial Theatre

www.billyelliotbroadway.comThis gritty Cinderella story of a working-class British youth with a gift for ballet dancing began as a hit indie movie. It was deftly adapted for the London stage by the film's director Stephen Daldry ("The Hours"), its writer (Lee Hall) and that ubiquitous Broadway tunesmith Elton John.

Seeming contradictions abound in "Billy Elliot." The tickets are top-dollar, but the show's sympathies are with the hard-up striking coal miners in the Thatcher union-busting era (among them, Billy's widower father and the boy's older, angry brother).

The show is gay-friendly — in its machismo-bashing and touching depiction of Billy's cross-dressing best pal — but it is ambiguous about its young hero's budding sexuality.

And while the travails of the defeated community it depicts are not sugarcoated, "Billy Elliot" ends on an up note of individual triumph, like many a feel-good fairy tale.

Bracingly rough one moment, a little schmaltzy the next, "Billy Elliot" rides aloft on such conflicts — largely because of its eruptions of hard-stomping, high-flying dances (choreographer Peter Darling's best number involves ballerinas, riot police and tap-dancing strikers); its winning protagonist Billy (played the night I attended by wonderful Trent Kowalik, who alternates in the part with two other teen actors); and a Brecht-meets-Broadway aesthetic that mixes razzmatazz with lower-depths grime.

"Pal Joey"

Studio 54 (Roundabout Theatre Company)

www.paljoeyonbroadway.com

Is there a better Broadway score in a jazzy-snazzy mode than this Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart gem?

Maybe ... but it's hard to beat a song list with "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," "I Could Write a Book," and such delectable toss-offs as "Do It the Hard Way" on it.

What a treat to hear those sophisticated, catchy odes played with such brassy luster and verve. And Richard Greenberg's revised book — about the romantic misadventures of a ruthless nightclub hoofer in 1930s Chicago — is an improvement over John O'Hara's maligned original script.

But this "Pal Joey" is in that good-not-great zone. It lacks a leading man in the same charisma league as its original star, Gene Kelly. Though acted and danced with vivacious intensity by Matthew Risch (former understudy of original star Christian Hoff, who departed during previews), Joey needs more killer charm.

You gotta believe a jaded rich dame like Vera (a glammed-up Stockard Channing) and a patient innocent like lovely Linda (Jenny Fellner) would both fall for this louse, and fall hard. And that's a stretch.

Channing is no singer, but she can sure talk her way through a witty Hart lyric. And who knew Martha Plimpton would have such a lark as Joey's saucy ex-flame Gladys? Or that she has a smoky alto singing voice, gracing tunes like "Zip," the show's famous ode to egghead stripper Gypsy Rose Lee?

The dances also sparkle, as do the splashy '30s costumes.

Hey, sometimes good-but-not-great is just fine.

"Dividing the Estate"

Booth Theatre

www.lct.orgThe first of several newish American plays expected on Broadway this season, this richly understated, achingly comic portrait of a past-its-prime Texas clan is a sure Tony nominee for Horton Foote, a 92-year-old writer of remarkably spry wit and insight.

Devoid of melodrama, Foote's study of a once-high-and-mighty family brought low by its own indolence is bone-dry hilarious in its unsparing candor.

As elders die off in this Lincoln Center Theater production, grief is quickly eclipsed by self-interest and scheming over how to perpetuate a style of living no longer sustainable — for the squabbling white relations, or the black family that's served them far too long.

The Booth Theatre cast, led by Elizabeth Ashley as a formidable matriarch and Arthur French as her African-American counterpart, is first-rate, making the bad behavior and wistful longings natural.

All the actors (among them Hallie Foote, the playwright's daughter) get the best from a text that triggers queasy recognition and too-close-for-comfort laughter. Foote is not called "America's Chekhov" for nothing; with this play, the accolade really fits.

"The Seagull"

Walter Kerr Theatre

www.seagulltheplay.comSpeaking of Anton Chekhov, a transferred London production of the Russian dramatist's early masterpiece has proved controversial, despite some heady raves. (The show's limited Walter Kerr Theatre run ends today).

The debate has not focused on Christopher Hampton's new English adaptation of the Russian text, but on some unorthodox performances.

Director Ian Rickson and his cast took very literally character references in the script that often go unheeded, or are heeded more gently.

The idealistic young writer Konstantin, as played by Mackenzie Crook, is not just lonely and cash-poor but emaciated and utterly despairing.

His neglectful, famous-actress mother, Arkadina, is portrayed by film star Kristin Scott Thomas as a bipolar narcissist whose moods swing wildly. And as Arkadina's writer-lover Trigorin, film actor Peter Sarsgaard is essentially a charmless lunk.

"The Seagull" is a sturdy bird that's been reinterpreted in countless ways, and it can take all the buffeting. But the show lurched high and low, depending on the actor spotlighted, rising on the pungency of Zoe Kazan's impish, unrequited Masha and the daring of Scott Thomas's complex Arkadina, whose compulsive selfishness is matched by her inescapable guilt.

"A Prayer for My Enemy"

Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage Theater (Off Broadway)

www.playwrightshorizons.orgThis Craig Lucas play about the fraught interactions, and internal struggles, of a Iraq war vet and his family was well-received in its 2007 world premiere at Seattle's Intiman Theatre.

Too bad the New York reception for this messy but brave and piercing gaze at a collective psyche in turmoil has been less than welcoming (the monthlong run ends today).

Again directed by Intiman head Bartlett Sher, the Playwrights Horizons production is less forcefully acted in some respects than in Seattle. But it still takes you on a brief, bleakly comic ride through fear, rage, loss and confusion.

Jonathan Groff ("Spring Awakening") as the conflicted, reluctant soldier Billy, and memorable Victoria Clark ("The Light in the Piazza") as a woman who is linked to Billy's shattered family through an incident of road rage, are strong assets in a rare play that looks hard at Americans' worst impulses, without discounting our saving graces.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com