Well, well, hello, oldie!
This is the time of year when the region’s subscription theaters lay down their cards, revealing what they’ve got in their hands for the new season, which begins around Labor Day. The idea, of course, is to tantalize playgoers with the upcoming slate, in the hope that they will be motivated to pull out their checkbooks and credit cards and make advance ticket purchases to many if not all of the as-yet-unrealized offerings.
(Scott Suchman/Scott Suchman) - Colonel Pickering (James Valentine), Henry Higgins (John Vickery) and Eliza Doolittle (Carla Schaffel) in the first act of ‘My Fair Lady’ at Wolf Trap from August 2005.
(Carol Pratt/Carol Pratt) - Sally Murphy as Eliza Doolittle in Signature Theatre's ‘My Fair Lady’ from October 2006.
The transaction is an investment in theater futures — even if, in some cases, you might feel this year as if it’s a bit more like theater past.
The uptick on the rosters of several big companies in and around town is in the category of titles you’d generously have to call extremely tried-and-true. For Signature Theatre, musicals on offer in 2012-13 include, from 1978, “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” (1,584 Broadway performances); the 1981 “Dreamgirls” (1,521 performances); and, in a co-production with Ford’s Theatre, that schmaltzy standby from 1964, “Hello, Dolly!,” whose original incarnation resided on Broadway for 2,844 performances.
At the Kennedy Center, where the crop of productions is mostly tours, the lineup features a visit by the 1997 musical “Jekyll & Hyde” (1,543 Broadway performances). And over at Arena Stage, the new season will see the region’s third revival in six years of “My Fair Lady” (2,717 performances), in a version that artistic director Molly Smith staged last year at Canada’s Shaw Festival.
Who knows? Any of these might prove to be a rousing entertainment or a surprising confection. Still, the shuffling of so much old baggage onto so many of Washington’s distinguished stages in one season is not only unusual — it is also a little, well, let me say it, cringe-worthy.
This trend is not confined to one city: Harvard University’s American Repertory Theater, founded and formerly run by director and theater critic Robert Brustein, disclosed this month that it will be reviving the fondly remembered 1972 Stephen Schwartz musical “Pippin” (1,944 Broadway performances).
Without doubt, companies devoting ample resources to chestnuts — musicals are far more expensive to mount than most plays — have their rationales. Signature describes its 2012-13 menu as “a season of reinvention,” and Smith, whose smash “Oklahoma!” revival rechristened Arena’s refurbished, renamed Mead Center for American Theater, has long demonstrated a soft spot for American musical “classics”: her “Music Man” begins performances there in May.
But let’s be real about these retreads, and one wishes that theaters would be more candid about them, too. Revivals of commercial hits are also-rans of theatrical imagination. Although they are not lazy efforts — one had only to see Signature’s recent, polished revival of “Hairspray” for proof of this — they are expedient selections. Sure, there’s a slight risk that in choosing a show that may have been last year’s featured production at (insert your local high school’s name here), you run up against cases of OFSTF: Overly Familiar Show Tune Fatigue. Yet the clear bet theaters are making is that these shows will be far easier to market, and thus their auditoriums will be easier to fill.
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