“Convicted rapist Mike Tyson starts previews tonight on Broadway,” went the tweet, and there’s no arguing a single one of those words, as they are absolute fact. Since Tyson’s one-man event was announced, his conviction and jail sentence for rape has been prominent in accounts of the 12-performance gig, and surely they’re not being copied from any press release.

When actor James Barbour withdrew from a production of The Rocky Horror Show at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre last summer, the ostensible reason was to, as the Los Angeles Times reported, “deal with issues of his wife’s pregnancy.” But that was viewed by many as suspect, since a public uproar had begun in the days just prior, when the local community learned of Barbour’s charge of sexual misconduct with a child, which was plea bargained to two counts of endangering the welfare of a minor.

Charles S. Dutton served time in prison for various charges, most notably for manslaughter. Yes, the esteemed Dutton killed someone.

Now I am not capable of discussing the moral relativism of these crimes, or the particulars of the cases and their outcomes; I decry them all. I make no excuses for any of them, nor am I personally seeking to rehabilitate or further vilify anyone or their reputations. What strikes me though is how two of these men are, apparently, forever labeled with their crimes, while another would appear to have transcended them. One is embraced in the theatre community, one’s career is surely severely impaired, while the third has now, as a novice, turned to Broadway for the kind of career renaissance that fading movie stars have sometimes sought.

Perhaps a key differentiation is that Dutton’s crimes occurred before he came to theatre, that he found theatre in prison, before he was known. His story only mattered to people once he had wowed audiences in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, committing manslaughter on stage no less; Dutton also had an august mentor in Lloyd Richards. Barbour and Tyson were already known (Tyson was truly famous for sports, not theatre) and their crimes were sexual, which may well be more unforgiveable than murder in the court of public opinion; every week Law and Order: Special Victims Unit reminds us that sexually based offenses are “especially heinous.” Dutton has always expressed remorse over the man who died at his hands; Barbour has tried to move on (although he is required to notify employers); Tyson hasn’t necessarily made the public penance some might desire.

Whatever his show may be, Tyson is in a likely a no-win situation. If he ignores his crime, he will be accused of glossing over that part of his biography; if he rationalizes it or attempts to defend himself, he will refuel the outrage that has never fully settled down; if he makes light of it, he will be condemned.

These different histories are far from identical, which is why I can draw no conclusion in which they are united. Indeed, I can only raise their apparent differences within the uniting realm of stage entertainment. Yet I read countless stories of prison programs in which theatre is a rehabilitative aid, and I marvel at the stories that emerge from such programs, about men finding themselves not necessarily as career artists, but through the therapeutic and emotionally revealing process of theatre. So I wonder about the role that theatre plays, as therapy, as career, as vehicle, as another convicted criminal comes to Broadway tonight. Can people transcend their past through theatre, can they come to terms with it, and will audiences accept them if they do? Or are we always in the jury box, dozens upon dozens of angry men and women all, rendering our own particular verdict on a case by case basis?

It cannot be easy being a “public critic,” or ombudsman, so I have a certain sympathy for Arthur Brisbane, The Public Editor of The New York Times. Although he is in their employ, he is charged, as I understand it, with acting as the voice of the people at the paper, exploring issues and practices at the paper  independent of the  regular news and editorial staff. The practical, personal, professional and ethical issues are complex, no doubt, and it’s worth noting that the paper’s first Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, has turned to the comparably relaxing world of the professional theatre as an alternative.

But despite this sympathy, I have to say that The Public Editor’s newest work, “The View From The Critic’s Seat,” is a disappointment. While written with Brisbane’s usual clarity, it sets up a premise and then utterly fails to address it, leaving this audience member to wonder whether late cuts muted his commentary or whether he simply wasn’t able or willing to confront head on an issue which he himself had highlighted.

In his first act, running a brief 5.5 column inches, Brisbane relates stories of readers who have expressed their displeasure with the tone of several articles in the arts pages of the Times. Since none of those he cites are a Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee, NJ, I have to trust that these are direct quotes from actual readers, not composites or inventions.  The readers expressed reservations about pieces on the singer Jackie Evancho, principal dancers in a performance of “The Nutcracker,” and the late artist LeRoy Neiman. I know little of the work of the first artists’ named; my closest connection to Mr. Neiman was a free Burger King book cover I received sometime in the early 1970s, adorned with Mr. Neiman’s Olympic art. Therefore, my response to the column is not compromised by any personal feelings about those discussed by The Public Editor.

But after setting up the premise that he will address what some readers see as unduly harsh assessments of artists, Mr. Brisbane pivots suddenly, referring to complaints about criticism as “a certain backwash of discomfort,” employing a negative, unappetizing metaphor unilaterally to this particular subgenre of reader correspondence.  He then ceases to utilize his own ostensibly opinionated voice for his disproportionately long Act II, preferring instead to dedicate some 17 column inches to the culture editor Jonathan Landman discussing the scale and challenge of covering all that the Times culture desk endeavors to encompass. And while the scale is almost certainly as wide ranging and logistically complex as Mr. Landman asserts, it has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of opinions which may step beyond an undefined line of propriety and into character assassination.

It’s a shame that The Public Editor didn’t go beyond a single source, since within his own paper he can find evidence of ethical quandaries when it comes to authors personal opinions, what appears in the paper and what is appropriate. Perhaps Mr. Brisbane might have explored Charles Isherwood’s declaration that he no longer wished to review Adam Rapp’s plays, an internal issue given a public airing that allowed Mr. Isherwood the opportunity to once again cast aspersions on the work of an author even as he was saying that he no longer wished to be forced into the position of casting comparable aspersions.

That aside, it is the inexplicable avoidance of the very topic he sets up that proves such a letdown and, as if to exacerbate matters, he tosses in a coda at the end of his encomium to the Times cultural reportage saying that it “should never come at the expense of the subject’s dignity.”  Well, has it, Mr. Brisbane? Has it? Had he spoken to the various subjects of Times criticism, or conversed directly with the letter writers, I suspect they could have given him numerous examples where they feel that line was crossed, so that Mr. Brisbane could have made his own assessment.

The Public Editor’s column can, at his or her discretion, be a monologue; in this instance it was a two character piece adopting the form of an interview. Had Mr. Brisbane chosen to bring in the active voices of others who are affected by this issue, and not simply spoken with Mr. Landman and quoted from letters, he could have provided a compelling picture of the ongoing struggle between arts and critics, newspapers and their public, and perhaps even between a Public Editor and his employer.

Despite his hagiography of the Times culture section, which I also admire, I shall continue to follow The Public Editor’s work with interest, in the hope that he will challenge authority, play devil’s advocate and on occasion ruffle a few feathers. For those of us who care about (and pay for) quality journalism, The Public Editor has the potential to be one of the most valuable voices in journalism, as a check and balance against the reporting of the news itself.

Update, July 16 at 1 pm: Timing, as they say, is everything. Barely two hours after I posted this piece, The New York Times announced that Arthur Brisbane would be succeeded as public editor by Margaret M. Sullivan. While my criticism of yesterday’s column by Brisbane stands, so do my hopes for the role of the Public Editor and, therefore, Ms. Sullivan. I look forward to her tenure, which beings in September. 

Data doesn’t lie, they say, which is why I decided to take a data-based look at Broadway musicals. In the first part of my inquiry, I was trying to see whether musicals based on movies and “jukebox” musicals using scores created for other media were crowding out new, wholly original musicals. My conclusions were essentially that: movie material and even, within reason, existing music, are not scourges of Broadway, but the limited number of new musicals produced in any year pose the greater threat to sustaining the form with original books, music and lyrics. Logically, the next step was to look at revivals and their role in the ecosystem.

The conventional wisdom is that we’re overrun with revivals. Many feel that the musical theatre past is constantly being dredged up on Broadway: three Gypsy revivals in less than 20 years; two Sweeney Todd revivals in the barely 30 years since the show’s debut, with a current London production eyeing New York; three Guys and Dolls in just over a 30 year span. This is the sort of evidence that’s given of Broadway going back to the same musical well over and over. But those are the exceptions, not the rule.

Once again looking at the period from 1975-76 through the 2011-2012 Broadway season, a span of 37 years, I found 138 revivals. This includes return visits by Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly  and Yul Brynner in The King and I (twice each in 20 seasons, with Pearl Bailey and Lou Diamond Phillips toplining third incarnations), though recurring Broadway stands like those of Channing and Brynner  are now rare. My count of 143 also includes the new trend for returning holiday entertainments (for this study, the second runs of How The Grinch Stole Christmas and White Christmas are revivals). But still, that yields only 138 revivals, for an average of only four per season (3.73 to be precise).  And in fact, of those 37 years, only five of them ever saw seasons with more than five revivals, balanced against two seasons with no revival musicals and four with but a single one.

Has there been a huge jump in musical revivals of late? While 2011-12 and 2009-10 each saw seven revivals, the year in between saw only two. The years with seven  are the anomalies, not a trend, at least not yet.  And while there was a marked lull in the mid-80s, revivals were always part of the landscape; in the three earliest years that I examined, the revival count was four, eight, and five. So everything is hunky-dory, right?

In recent years, there’s been a remarkable consistency to the number of new musical productions, be it new work or revival: since 2002-03, there have never been less than 12 new musical productions on Broadway, nor more than 15; the 37-year average is 12.5. What has happened is a seemingly natural homeostasis: in years with lots of new musicals, there have been fewer revivals, and vice versa. While it’s impossible to know which book houses first, new shows or revivals, and surely it varies show to show, year to year, it does demonstrate that the limited number of Broadway venues, narrowed by long-running hits and further reduced by the number of musical-optimal theatres, has created a limit on overall musical production. Chicken (new musicals) or egg (revivals)? I can’t say whether one controls the other. But together, they seem to have found their level. And it doesn’t add up to an enormous amount of new musical productions of either kind.

Since new Broadway musical theatres are unlikely to be built, advocates seeking to raise the level of new musicals above the nine-per-season average might hope that theatre owners would exercise artistic control and favor new works, but that’s a naive position.  Theatre owners will book the shows with the best prospect of running, whatever their vintage. There might also be a desire to lobby producers to focus on new work, but given the ever increasing costs of Broadway, reviving proven work can seem even safer than new shows with familiar titles drawn from films or scores assembled from the work of road tested composers. In either case, the deciding factor will often be money: those who actually assemble a production and manage to assemble the financing as well will book the few available theatres. And as for success? Once again, a key element is whether they are actually done at all well.

Personally, I would not like to see revivals vanish from Broadway and, finding that they rarely exceed four a season (perhaps 10% of an entire Broadway season), think they’re at a level which doesn’t do any damage. Broadway does have the ability to play a single production for a very large audience  and, as a draw for New Yorkers and tourists alike, it seems proper that our musical theatre heritage maintain a place where it first made its mark. My concern is that with an average of only nine new musicals a year, and of course fewer that which succeed, the pool of musicals worthy of being revived is growing awfully slowly – especially since the biggest hits now seem to run for a generation in their first appearance. Since the producing and critical community tend to express the sentiment that we should only see a work revived once in a generation, especially if the prior incarnation was a hit, the options narrow.

I think revivals actually create a greater problem outside of New York for the overall health of the form. Let me explain. In the mid-70s, when my survey starts, musicals were primarily the purview of Broadway, a range of civic light opera companies, summer stock, and the rare regional theatre like Goodspeed (where I once worked). Since that time, the regional theatres that emerged beginning in the 60s as dramatic companies have discovered the lure of the musical, and it is now rare to find the large regional theatre that doesn’t program one musical a year (at least). But I will hazard a guess (I’m not backed by data now) that the tendency is for more of the regional companies to do known commodities than to undertake wholly new shows. In their seasons, the musical slot is the budget balancer, the show that pays for new plays and large classic; new musicals primarily appear when a commercial producer wants a low-cost try-out and dangles enhancement funds as a lure, or when the new tuner is so small in scale that it remains affordable. When it comes to new musicals, are our largest not-for-profit theatres risk averse?

As before, that is not to suggest that there are not worthy organizations dedicated to the development and growth of the new musical repertoire. The question is how much of that material finds ongoing life, and begins to be recognized as a work considered part of the popular musical repertoire?

So to come back to the concern I expressed at the end of my last post: how will new musicals find audiences and how will their creators make lives in this business? If Broadway has but nine slots a year, if not-for-profit companies primarily seek the tried and true, how will new musicals develop creatively and develop a public profile? There needs to be a new model for musical production, one which doesn’t rely solely on Broadway for artistic or commercial success and affirmation. America needs more places to do new musicals, in a variety of styles, in which Broadway is simply one alternative, not the pinnacle from which all success derives. To achieve this would require a major reinvention of the ecosystem I referred to at the top of this post.

But musical revivals are in no way hogging the Broadway spotlight, and as with Shakespeare, each generation’s great performers should get the chance to play great roles. And perhaps those classics should be celebrated, because they can often show the current generation what craft and talent in the form has looked like in the past, in order to inform the future.

*   *   *

Notes on process: as noted at the end of my first blog on the subject of new Broadway musicals, I am working with information drawn from multiple sources. To reduce inconsistencies, I completely re-charted the seasons, relying solely on the Playbill Vault. As a result, my number of new musicals crept up; what I originally counted as 309 became 322, as I worked through such fine distinctions as “musical vs. play with music” and discovered that a forgotten work such as Censored Scenes from King Kong should have been called a musical.  Consequently, the annual average number of new musicals shifted from a bit over eight to closer to nine, which is why there’s not a precise match with the prior post. I have no doubt that were someone else to undertake this review, or even were I to go over it another time, the counts might shift slightly yet again. But as I said in the notes to the first piece, the ratios and trends remain consistent. And those are what tell the tale.

I wrote this essay for HowlRound, the online journal of the Theatre Commons, now based at Emerson College. It was posted there on June 30, 2012, unwittingly for all concerned only a day before the national celebration of Canada Day by our northern neighbors. The piece provoked a great deal of comment, and while you can read my original thoughts here, you would benefit from many views other than my own, which can be found in the comments section of the original post.

Canada, land of plays largely unknown to Americans

Quick, name five modern Canadian playwrights (Canadian natives, put your hands down). Can’t do it? OK, name five Canadian plays that aren’t The Drawer Boy or The Drowsy Chaperone. Having trouble? I bet you are.

I’ve probably seen somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 to 2,500 productions in thirty-four years of active theatergoing in the U.S., with occasional trips to England and, yes, Canada. But while I can minimally exceed my own low threshold by citing George F. Walker, Joanna Glass, Michel Tremblay, Morris Panych, Tom Cone and Michael Healy, that’s the sum total of my knowledge of Canadian authors. That puzzles me.

The United States and England may be two countries separated by a common language, but the fact remains that theatrical literature flows fairly freely across the Atlantic, with Irish and the occasional Scottish work thrown in for good measure. If you use theatrical awards as any kind of a yardstick, it’s often hard to tell, based upon nominees and winners in any given year, whether you’re looking at results for The Tonys or The Oliviers. While provincialism may rear its head in certain quarters, there’s no arguing that Miller and Williams are staples of the London stage just as Stoppard and Churchill are revered here—and of course that Shakespeare guy is everywhere, and not just because his works are royalty-free.

But what of Canada? Surely U.S. Customs is not stopping Canadian plays at the border, which seems sufficiently porous to allow U.S. works to make the northbound trek unencumbered. It’s not as if there isn’t a theatrical tradition in Canada (remember that Sir Tyrone Guthrie started the Stratford Festival ten years before founding his eponymously named Minneapolis venture) and thriving theater communities in the major cities of each province. And even if our northern neighbor has mixed English and French heritage, let’s remember that authors as diverse as Samuel Beckett, Marc Camelotti and Yasmina Reza have written their plays in French, all of which have gone on to international success—so language can’t be the barrier.

The love affair between the British and U.S. theater may be rooted in our common heritage, although it’s not as if shows shuttled between the countries constantly since we settled our differences in 1776. But the American stage, which began coming into its own in the early days of the twentieth century, could look to London for a rich, centuries old heritage of authors and actors; a healthy Anglophilia fueled camaraderie. As the glitter of our Broadway evolved the form known as musical comedy, British theatergoers came to love the form as well, beginning a reciprocity that would ultimately expand beyond that particular form. Canada seems to stand outside that mutual admiration society.

It’s not as if Canadian culture has not been embraced by Americans. There are countless Canadian actors who have become big Hollywood box office (some quite venerated, as evidenced by the many awards heaped on Christopher Plummer over the years); Canada’s SCTV and The Kids in the Hall proved as seminal to U.S. comedy and satire as did Saturday Night Live and The Second City; Toronto emerged as a key Broadway tryout town (boosted, no doubt, by a once favorable exchange rate). So where are the plays?

I am taking it on faith that there are a lot of terrific new plays being done in Canada because Canadian theaters’ seasons, based on a cursory survey, aren’t made up solely of imported works. New work is being done and (presumably) people are going to see it. So I first have to ask what’s happening in Canadian literary agencies? Are they aggressively courting the literary offices and artistic directors of American companies—and if they are, is the response welcoming? As for the theater companies themselves, I am used to seeing a barrage of advertising from the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, often in glossy inserts to newspapers and magazines backed by tourism councils. But where are the companies that specialize in new works? Are they the victim, like so many companies that focus on what’s new, of taking a backseat to that which is bigger, higher-volume and already better known? In point of fact, Canada’s greatest cultural export is a commercial enterprise, Cirque du Soleil, the circus behemoth that encircles the globe with its particular style of circus arts. Maybe the clowns are blocking everyone’s view.

The aforementioned festivals, terrific as they are, probably aren’t helping matters much either. They are major tourism attractions with huge audience capacity, and because they are at their height during the summer, they offer the vacation and junket-ready U.S. media the perfect opportunity to take a northerly jaunt to see many plays in a concentrated period of time, fulfilling some unspoken quota of Canadian theater coverage while visiting bucolic towns. But what’s on display there are fine classics by Shakespeare and Shaw and, with increasing frequency, U.S. musicals. The work is Canadian theater, but rarely Canadian literature.

I’m compelled to point out that I’m not lobbying for Canadian plays because I find something wanting in new American plays, and I hastily acknowledge that there are already too few opportunities for new work to be produced here as it is. But there is a cultural lacuna when it comes to Canadian theater that seems perpetual. We owe it to Canadian artists to see beyond our own borders and the theaters of the West End, especially when we can get to major cities in Canada in perhaps one-fifth the time it takes to get to London, and if we’re of a mind to, we can even drive (not an option for London, as you know). To those who say that Canadians have a different sensibility than Americans, I say so do the English, the Irish, the Scots and the French, yet we don’t have any problems there (although some do start quivering the moment any play mentions cricket). And if anything, the Internet should have helped to erode this invisible barrier, since we can now read Canadian theater reviews online at will, rather than trying to hunt down copies of the Globe and Mail at our local, dying newsstand.

For all of our interest in international exchange, in world theater, it is work from other continents that excites the programmers of our own cultural festivals and the centurions of our literary offices. Perhaps proximity breeds indifference, since Canadian work is not familiar enough to us to breed contempt. But I for one would like to know more about what’s going on up there and can’t help but think that at least some of it belongs down here. After all, Canada theater veterans produced the greatest television show about theater ever made, Slings and Arrows, which transcends national boundaries. There must be more.

P.S. Yes, yes, what about Australia, I hear you cry. They speak English too. But that’s half a world away. Let’s look in our own backyard first.