With So Little to Be Sure Of '05
Given the generally negative attitude in the local press toward the work of Frank Wildhorn, one did not anticipate strong reviews for Dracula, yet another Gothic horror musical in the school of Phantom or Jekyll & Hyde, and it did not receive them.
I was wary of a Broadway revival of Sweet Charity without Bob Fosse's choreography and without a top-notch Broadway musical performer, and the resulting production seemed to bear out my fears, even if others were pleasantly surprised.
It was not hard to predict the reception accorded Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which is clearly an elaborate family entertainment geared to youthful audiences. Because Louisa May Alcott's Little Women had previously failed as a musical in London and off-Broadway, one suspected that the source material somehow resists musical treatment, a well-received opera version notwithstanding.
Everyone seemed to predict that Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays would do well, even if it proved even more successful than anticipated. And everyone except those involved in the production suspected that John C. Reilly was strange casting for Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Democracy falls between the predictable and the unpredictable. Given the play's London reputation, everyone expected it to be well-received on Broadway, and, for the most part, it was. What was less foreseeable was that the New York production would prove inferior to London's, thus resulting in audience disappointment and a foreshortened run.
Given the generally negative feeling toward jukebox musicals, one did not anticipate good reviews for the two examples of the genre that Broadway was getting. And appearances by Good Vibrations and All Shook Up on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade telecast were distinctly unpromising. Good Vibrations turned out to be worse than anyone imagined, while All Shook Up proved to be a respectable example of its genre, winning a number of favorable reviews.
Turning to less predictable events, I must admit that Spamalot did not look like a sure thing to me. I couldn't quite imagine how the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail could be transferred to the stage. And I also doubted that the material would play well when not enacted by the Pythons who created it. But then I didn't think The Producers as a stage musical sounded like a great idea either. And just as The Producers became an immediate comic smash in Chicago and a Broadway blockbuster, Spamalot seems to have worked from the moment it hit the stage in Chicago.
Few if any predicted that one of the season's outstanding dramatic successes would be Twelve Angry Men. This jury-room piece seemed like an example of earnest, creaky, golden-age television drama, and one doubted that it had much to say to contemporary audiences. But as directed by Scott Ellis, it proved unexpectedly gripping, with even its contrivances satisfyingly old-fashioned.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee must be deemed a surprise, if only because it was not even announced for New York at this time last year. True, its well-received run at Massachusetts' Barrington Stage last summer indicated that William Finn's latest piece might have a future. By the time the show began its off-Broadway run at Second Stage, buzz was strong that Spelling Bee might be the next Avenue Q and have a continued life on Broadway. It should be noted that between the July 2004 run at Barrington Stage and the New York premiere, James Lapine joined the production as director; the original directors were Michael Unger and Rebecca Feldman.
Another surprise: Pacific Overtures at Roundabout. That's because director Amon Miyamoto's staging of the Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical was first seen in New York, in Japanese, at the Lincoln Center Festival of 2002, in a production from Tokyo. Although its Lincoln Center run was brief, the production was hailed by New York Times critic Ben Brantley and other reviewers. So it was only natural to expect that when Miyamoto repeated his staging for the Roundabout, the result would be equally hailed. But something was clearly lost in the translation, and the Roundabout version felt underpowered. This writer would suggest that the Japanese version was not all that special and had been overpraised by local reviewers.
With names like Nathan Lane, Stephen Sondheim, and Susan Stroman, The Frogs looked likely for considerable success. As it turned out, those names guaranteed advance ticket sales that the production ultimately needed, as it was generally not well received, proving to be one of the season's disappointments.
And the enormous success of Doubt was similarly unpredictable, simply because the play came to New York quietly, in an off-Broadway production by Manhattan Theatre Club. Word of the play's strength began to circulate almost as soon as the off-Broadway Doubt began performances. But last year at this time, no one could have forecast how much acclaim and how many awards John Patrick Shanley's play would garner.