The Irish are winning rave reviews in New York, writes Fergus Linehan
New York theatre has been called, among a lot of other things, "the fabulous invalid". For years it would be ailing, with falling audiences and indifferent shows, to the point that its demise seemed imminent. When I came here 10 years ago, as a camp follower of Dancing at Lughnasa, it was said that, amid all the musicals and revivals, Broadway could now only manage to produce one successful new play per year, because there simply wasn't the audience for any more. But the theatre has a habit of reviving when all seems lost, and all changed with the clean-up of the city in the 1990s, particularly of the crime-infested streets around Times Square's theatre district. The invalid, not for the first time, had made a recovery, and new audiences started to pour in.
Then came September 11th and, yet again, theatre was in trouble, as tourism fell and New Yorkers stayed away in droves. For a year, business was on the floor, but the fabulous invalid seems to be rallying. In 2002, box-office revenues were up five per cent and the range of new work was encouraging.
But now, with the city hit by a fiscal crisis, the economy still staggering and talk of war, there's an air of nervousness among theatre professionals. With Christmas over and winter's chill starting to kick in, bookings plummeted, leaving three-quarters of Broadway productions offering half-price tickets.
For the most part theatre on and off Broadway is still largely made up of long-running musicals, usually either stage versions of films or revivals of shows from the golden age of musical comedy in the 1950s and 1960s. However, interesting work is still being given a chance and some of the better current offerings running or on the way have an Irish connection.
The most recent of these opened last week at the American Airlines Theater on 42nd Street. A big handsome building dating from the early years of the last century, it had fallen into disrepair and was a porn cinema until it was restored and is now the home of the Roundabout Theater Company, which specialises in limited runs of classic plays. The latest of these is Moliere's comedy of religious hypocrisy, Tartuffe, directed by Joe Dowling, who is currently in Dublin rehearsing All My Sons by Arthur Miller for the Abbey. The leading roles in Tartuffe are taken by two British actors, Henry Goodman and Brian Bedford. Goodman, who plays the title role, is famous in New York for having been fired from the lead in the hit musical, The Producers within weeks of taking over from Nathan Lane, while Bedford, who plays Orgon, the wealthy land-owner whom Tartuffe dupes, is a much-respected, much-awarded veteran of the classical stage. Both of them, and indeed the whole cast (which includes another Irish link in Rosaleen Linehan, playing Orgon's battleaxe of a mother), have won golden reviews, especially from the critic of the all-important New York Times, as has Dowling's production, which takes a somewhat darker than usual view of the play. It looks like a palpable hit.
The other Irish success story on Broadway is of Fiona Shaw in Deborah Warner's production of Medea, originally produced in Dublin at the Abbey. Shaw is the only remaining member of that cast, but the play has lost none of its power and she is already being heavily tipped for a Best Actress Tony next June. For Broadway audiences, used to being cosseted by feel-good musicals and comedies, the raw horror of Shaw's passionate child-killer is sometimes too much, but as the New York Times puts it: "As upsetting as much of the production is, the show radiates such high theatrical energy and and intelligence that you can't help grin".
Elsewhere, several new-to-New York Irish plays are due to open shortly. At the Irish Repertory Theater, Enda Walsh's bedbound opens on January 24th with Brian F. O'Byrne in the leading role. The play was one of the hits in the 2001 Dublin Theatre Festival and, subsequently, at the Edinburgh Festival. As in the original, it is also directed by Walsh.
An older play, Frank McGuinness's Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, get its New York première on February 24th, with previews from February 6th at the Lincoln Centre with an all-American cast, directed by Nicholas Martin, director of Boston's Huntington Theater and well known for his work on and off Broadway. McGuinness has a good track record in New York - he won a Best Revival Tony award for his version of A Doll's House and picked up a Best Play nomintion for Someone Who'll Watch Over Me.
Finally, Conor McPherson's Dublin Carol, first seen in Dublin at the Gate Theatre, opens at the off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Company's home on February 26th, with previews from the 29th of this month.