I’m often asked by journalists for observations about trends, on Broadway, Off-Broadway, or about theatre in general. One recent call queried me about the prevalence of shirtless men on Broadway this season, a topic on which I had little to say.
Although I was taught in my press agent days that two similar items are a coincidence but that for journalistic purposes, three similar items make a trend and get covered as such, I still tend to look at confluences on Broadway in any given season as accidents. Shows come together (or not) at certain times for many reasons, without co-ordination. But it’s hard not to look at the spring Broadway crop of one-actor shows and let it go unremarked.
In a span of only eight weeks, four of Broadway’s 40 theatres will be home to new one-person shows – all genuine plays, not musical revues or autobiographical monodramas – representing four of the ten new plays due this spring. They tell the stories of three influential women, all deceased – Hollywood agent Sue Mengers (I’ll Eat You Last), Texas governor Ann Richards (Ann) and Jesus’ mother (The Testament of Mary) – and those Scottish social climbers, The Macbeths. Not having seen any of them as yet, I know that the Scottish play has a single actor (Alan Cumming) playing every role; whether there are multiple characters portrayed in the other shows is to be seen.
Is this confluence the result of ‘star casting’ run amok? Not really, since of the four actors involved– Cumming, Bette Midler, Fiona Shaw and Holland Taylor (in alphabetical order) – only Midler is a multi-generational ‘big name’ in the U.S. The other three are all accomplished and honoured actors, and Cumming’s star has risen sharply since he joined the cast of TV’s The Good Wife, but none is necessarily box office catnip. Taylor last appeared on Broadway three decades ago in the infamous Moose Murders, while Shaw’s only prior appearance was as Medea during a brief run 11 years ago. Midler, we hear, won’t be singing, the feature of her previous Broadway forays in the 1970s.
So what to make of this monomania? In all likelihood, it’s simply a quirk of fate, but it has potentially lasting effects. As new plays on Broadway are typically launched into long lives in regional and later amateur theatres, is the theatrical canon being expanded with this work? One only has to see how Red and The Mountaintop have flourished around the US to see the Broadway effect on plays’ future lives, perhaps due to their tiny casts helping to balance out large plays elsewhere in a theatre’s season. Will these solo plays make the same journey – or are they taking the place of larger pieces that need a marketing boost to make that leap?
One-person shows place a significant burden on one person’s shoulders. In any venue, there’s the risk of the actor becoming ill or being injured; while subsidised theatres in the US often don’t use understudies – they’ll carry them on shows like these. But will any audience want to see a substitute for the person truly charged with the singular task of holding a stage by themselves?
If the shows are hits, and do spawn future productions, they could further diminish cast sizes nationally. The economic temptation will be there, and perhaps playwrights who worry now about writing shows that require even six or seven actors will start to think in a smaller scale, to the detriment of the dramatic canon. We can ill-afford a scenario in which God of Carnage is a theatre’s ‘big’ show.
I look forward to each of these plays, which promise a variety of subject and style. But if solo shows become Broadway’s dramatic bread and butter, they’re likely to be met with the sound of one hand clapping.
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