A star being replaced early in a Broadway show’s run is usually a sign of trouble. They’re unhappy with their role, perhaps, and getting out at the earliest opportunity. Maybe they’ve been offered a better paying gig, and it’s worth it to them to buy out their contract and move onto greener pastures. So what does it mean when even before a show opens, the star’s replacement has already been announced?
In the case of the recently opened revue After Midnight (which boasts renowned trumpeter Wynton Marsalis as artistic director), it means the producers have deployed a whole new strategy, in which the show is designed to accommodate a rotating roster of headliners. While Fantasia Barrino, an American Idol runner up who has gone on to a successful recording career and who previously appeared on Broadway in The Color Purple, will steer the show through its first four months, she’ll be succeeded in February by KD Lang, who, after one month will in turn yield the stage to Babyface and Toni Braxton who will appear for just two weeks.
The producers have given Barrino top billing as ‘special guest star’ to indicate the transient status of the position, and she performs only four numbers in the show, which like most revues is essentially modular. It will be fascinating to learn what the producers have in store for those who follow in her footsteps, since their individual style may not naturally mesh with the same material.
Obviously, for people who enjoy the show, return visits will yield partially different rewards, since a handful of numbers in the 90-minute piece will at least vary in style and might, perhaps, be swapped for different songs. For members of the public less engaged with Broadway, they may be lured in by these pop performers appearing in an intimate venue. Without any pejorative connotation, After Midnight – modeled on revues at legendary nightspots like The Cotton Club – even evokes memories of vaudeville. If you don’t like this week’s bill, come back in two weeks.
This approach is a logical progression from similar efforts on the Great White Way. The producers of the long running production of Chicago have made a specialty of rotating stars of varying fame in and out on a regular basis, generating new waves of press every time a ‘bold-faced name’ steps in as Roxie, Velma, or Billy Flynn. Once again, the vaudeville style of the show itself ends itself to easy transitions; it’s not as if a new Lear was joining an acting troupe every four weeks. The Play What I Wrote also employed weekly mystery guest stars, and, as an aside, it’s worth noting that this Morecambe and Wise-derived show marks the only time Kenneth Branagh has performed on stage in the US to date.
Another precursor to this format was the series of post-show guests employed by Million Dollar Quartet, a largely fictionalised retelling of the one-time recording session of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. To bolster its sales, the show began offering two or three song mini-concerts after the final curtain to add to its marketing draw. Though I’d seen the show early in its run, I arranged to sneak in at the tail-end one night to see the real Jerry Lee Lewis duet at the piano with his Tony-winning doppelgänger Levi Kreis. It was, I have to say, a thrill.
I’m not advocating a parade of stunt casting. The risk is too great, even if, upon seeing stage novice Melanie Griffith in Chicago, New York Times critic Ben Brantley wrote: “Ms Griffith has only minimal command of the skills traditionally associated with musical comedy. She dances very little, and her well-known baby-doll voice has only a casual relationship with melody. Yet she is a sensational Roxie.” But that rave shocked even the show’s producers.
In this era of star appearances in theatre that run for only 12 to 16 weeks, perhaps this is a new paradigm which recognises that many stars can’t commit for long runs, and creates a way to deploy their drawing power in a manner totally organic to the show, for the benefit of audiences and investors. I for one can’t wait to see Madonna in After Midnight in 2017.
