THEY SAY THE NEON LIGHTS ARE BRIGHT...

More like "oldest shows still running".

While waiting for my bulgur and millet porridge to heat, I took a break from
listening to the UK news and turned my attention stateside. Specifically, NPR's 25-minute deep dive that can be boiled down to Whatsamatter with Broadway, Anyway? The two people interviewed were a lawyer and a "Broadway sensitivity specialist". 

Well, there's your answer. Producers shell out good money on shysters and people who create fancy-sounding job titles that nobody can understand. Well, that and A-list movie stars (Denzel Washington, George Clooney) and B-list pop singers (Mel B, JoJo, and others you haven't heard of) getting paid sky-high salaries, leading to outrageous ticket prices which go sky-higher via Ticketmaster, StubHub, and other bandits.

Other problems mentioned were the plethora of revivals, the dearth of new quality plays, and stars needing to take time off due to "exhaustion" -- or what Alan King referred to as "the rich man's disease."

They didn't even have time to change out of
their pajamas.

Exhaustion -- hah! If only they went through what the Four Marx Brothers did in 1929, filming The Cocoanuts in Astoria during the day, then doing Animal Crackers onstage in the evening. And three of them had to commute from Long Island for the pleasure of driving themselves to the brink of nervous breakdown.

High salaries and yet another revival of Death of a Salesman aside, allow me to offer my own problem, at least with musicals: nobody writes great songs anymore.

It seems like a dream now, but there was a time -- early 1930s to mid-1960s -- when musicals featured songs that became hits. Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart, followed by the likes of Lerner & Lowe, Rodgers & Hammerstein -- giants of the theater world whose music became part of the American landscape like Mt. Rushmore. 

My toes are tapping already.

Somebody can correct me, but it seems like the last time a Broadway show tune
song became a massive hit you couldn't escape was "Send in the Clowns" from A Little Night Music in 1973. Only the most rabid theater fan could name any song from Wicked, Maybe Happy Ending, The Great Gatsby, The Lost Boys, Two Strangers, and whatever else was running lately. The only shows with familiar songs are either based on movies (The Lion King) or are of the jukebox genre (Just in Time). 

Giants one roamed Times Square.

If you want a real shock, go the YouTube page of filmmaker Max Hechtman and watch his "supercuts" of the 1961 and 2021 movie versions of West Side Story's production numbers. You'll know the songs immediately and will probably recall most if not all the lyrics. Now imagine what opening night audiences at the Winter Garden felt in 1957. That's what happens when you have Stephen Sondheim writing the lyrics and Leonard Bernstein composing the music. 

Wicked can run from now until climate change burns down the Gershwin Theater. The movie version can be remade as a CGI cartoon and turned into a streaming series, and none of the songs will have the massive cultural impact as any one of West Side Story's numbers. 

Maybe next time NPR wants to figure out Broadway's problems, they can interview the ushers -- you know, the people who watch the shows night after night. They might have a better p.o.v. than the sensitivity specialists. 

Irony alert: "Send in the Clowns" is the one Sondheim number I never liked.

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