Wrestling with Willy Loman

There's talk of a Mike Nichols-Phillip Seymour Hoffman-Linda Emond Death of a Salesman on Broadway in 2011, according to Michael Riedel in the New York Post.

Bobo likes the idea of of PSH as Willy Loman; and he likes Riedel's irreverent tone toward Nichols' directing (and, especially, his Seagull) — no sacred cows here; and he especially likes Brian Dennehy's comments about "wrestling" with a great role for six months.

Which brings up a (conveniently localizing) thought: In a town where plays run for five weeks max (and usually much less), how does anyone really sink their teeth into monumental (or merely challenging) role?

What Bobo thinks he thinks: If Dennehy needs six months, then none of us locally are achieving the maximum in short runs. Possible partial solution: long-time pre-rehearsal preparation. (I'm thinking Brian Gunn in Buddy and what Damon Mentzer is doing for Richard III at SFCC next year: Total immersion, totally running with it even before the table reading, so that maybe, just maybe, by the end of a short run — and long after those picky critics see it on opening night — a given role can achieve full fruition.)

[ photo: Brian Dennehy in Death of a Salesman; from forgotmylines.com ]

They're tired of waiting for that boring Godot guy

They just want somebody to break out into song.
Any song. They don't really care if it's any good. Just something happy, and that takes our mind off our troubles.

Sunday's Tonys telecast is going to be even more frustrating than usual.
Just look at the list of award winners who won't be shown on TV, just so we can squeeze in another big production number from Mamma Mia! or 9 to 5 or Jersey Boys or Legally Blonde.
Kevin Spacey has called the CBS bigwigs a bunch of [very bad words].
Because, as everybody knows, Shrek: The Musical is way better than that slavery play (by August Wilson) that the Obamas flew down to New York to see last week.

That's where the future of American theater, and the Tonys, lies.

ADDED June 4:
The L.A. Times' critics weighs in with should win/will win's.

The Tonys: Making speeches and scenes

At the Tonys, why do mobs of producers get up onstage to accept the Best Play awards but not the playwrights? And why do they produce big musical numbers but not scenes from non-musical plays? Some remarks and quotes from Michael Riedel.

[ photo: Michael Riedel of the N.Y. Post at gawker.com ]

Pulitzer short list: no Labute

In the N.Y. Post, Michael Riedel boosts Neil LaBute and bashes Lin-Manuel Miranda.
The gist: Lynn Nottage's *Ruined* (about rape victims in the Congo) and Gina Gionfriddo's *Becky Shaw* (drunken disorderliness among thirtysomethings) seem to be Pulitzer front runners, with LaBute's "reasons to be pretty" and Miranda's "In the Heights" losing ground - and Yasmina Reza's "God of Carnage" ineligible.

*Playbill* presents nothin' but the facts, ma'am, here.
See the same publication's prognostications here.

[ photo: Lynn Nottage ]

Survey your audience ... or your imagination?

Michael Riedel in the N.Y. Post castigates the practice of audience surveys, as if musicals and plays aren't already workshopped to death and now require assembly by committees numbering in the thousands. Here's the most incisive comment, from Hal Prince on the current state of Broadway shows:
"We've become very good at giving people what they want. But there's got to be something more on the menu. The whole point should be to offer them something they didn't even know they wanted to see."
Artists and artistic directors should be leaders. Audiences didn't KNOW they had anything in common with people who want to kill presidents, or with domineering mothers, or with little old ladies from Appalachia. Show your audiences new facets of themselves.
(photo: Hal Prince with *Phantom* in Las Vegas)