#Gladiator guild manager series

This was truly an ensemble affair, but a few performances left indelible impressions. Block, one of the most resplendent musical theater talents working today. But her replacement was none other than Tony winner Stephanie J. By the time I saw the production around the Christmas holidays, Sara Bareilles, who played the Baker’s Wife, was no longer in the company. The humor was so fresh and the direction so revitalizing that the revival was able to accommodate a rotating cast. New York audiences have seen their fair share of productions of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Into the Woods.” But Lear deBessonet’s revival (heading to the Ahmanson Theatre later this month) made this musical deconstruction of classic fairy tales seem newly minted.

Stoppard’s expansive vision was rewarded with a Broadway reception that matched the depth of the drama. The atmosphere of hushed reverence was only heightened by the intellectual humor of an octogenarian playwright at the top of his game. Tuned in to the historical pathos, the audience was just as attentive to the wit of Stoppard’s dialogue, not wanting to miss a beat of the banter, which resurrects in glistening theatrical form a vanished world.

#Gladiator guild manager series

I say this not because of the play’s autobiographical origins but because of its grand verbal design, which captures the shifting European zeitgeist in what can only be described as a series of conversational oil paintings. This is a work that only Stoppard could have written. I had a similar sense that something extraordinary was unfolding on that same trip last October when I saw “Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s Tony-nominated epic drama about a culturally engaged Jewish family in Vienna that’s nearly completely wiped out in the Holocaust. Everyone seated around me - the great majority of whom paid a king’s ransom to be there - understood just how lucky they were to experience this perfect confluence of performer and role. There was a widespread awareness that something momentous was taking place. Michele was delivering a tour de force, but the energy that was coming off the stage at the August Wilson Theatre was being returned with interest. When Lea Michele took over the role of Fanny Brice in the revival of “Funny Girl” at the start of the fall season, the electricity in the audience could have powered the entire theater district. Virtuosity among this set isn’t merely acknowledged but formally recognized. Arenas are certainly louder and stadiums more boisterous, but it’s hard to beat a theater crowd when it comes to ironic alertness and urbane discernment. There’s no sound in showbiz quite as crackling as a packed Broadway house. But after my marathon of shows, I left town with enormous gratitude to my fellow theatergoers for their genuine laughter, the seriousness of their attention, the generosity of their emotion and the graciousness of their applause. I joked, in curmudgeon uncle fashion, that the worst part of my job is sometimes the public. Horns were blaring, crowds were swarming and security was shouting for ticket-holders to get in the right line. Patti LuPone has loudly lamented the distracted, “dumbed down” audience for Broadway, which she says is becoming more like “Disneyland, a circus and Las Vegas.”Īt the start of my theater trip to New York this spring - an exhausting eight-show itinerary in 5½ days - I met my niece for a matinee of “Life of Pi.” It was pell-mell outside the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on West 45th Street. Actors, resuming their war on phones and hard candy now that masks are no longer required, are up in arms about bad etiquette. Critics are complaining that their conservative taste is holding the American theater back. Theater audiences have been getting attacked from all sides since venues reopened.īroadway producers and artistic directors are angry that they’re not showing up in pre-pandemic numbers.