It's curtains for four shows

Today marks the final performance for two Broadway plays I loved, Joe Turner's Come and Gone and reasons to be pretty; along with a third I enjoyed very much, Exit the King.

I took a pass on the fourth show that's closing, Guys and Dolls. I really want to see this musical on stage someday but with lackluster reviews and a cast that didn't excite me well, I guess I'll have to wait for the next revival. According to Playbill, the producers are planning a national tour for 2010-2011, so maybe I'll catch up with it then.

Of course, like most Broadway plays these days, Joe Turner, produced by Lincoln Center Theater, and Exit the King were limited runs. Reasons to be pretty, a transfer from off-Broadway's MCC Theater with some cast changes, was open-ended.

Lincoln Center's Bernard Gersten told The New York Times that a presidential visit and a Tony for cast member Roger Robinson for Best Featured Actor in a Play weren't enough to justify an extension. “We ran the risk of extending and playing to half-empty houses."

It's too bad Exit the King couldn't have extended on the heels of Geoffrey Rush winning a Tony for Best Actor in a Play. As a dying monarch who isn't ready to leave life's stage he gives an amazing performance that's part comedy, part tragedy. Maybe Rush simply had other commitments that precluded it.

But I feel especially bad that August Wilson's Joe Turner and Neil LaBute's reasons to be pretty failed to find bigger audiences. Even though they're very different they were two of the most enjoyable experiences I've had on Broadway this season and I thought both casts were wonderful.

Joe Turner is a compelling story about the lives of African-Americans at the beginning of the 2oth century that had me enthralled for close to three hours. Reasons to be pretty's story of four working-class twentysomethings had me laughing hysterically and cheering for its hero.

I'm not sure what, if anything, could have been done to draw more people to these plays.

I was looking at ibdb.com, and it seem as if the only August Wilson play to run for more than a year on Broadway was Fences, from 1987 to 1988. Most closed far short of a year. And while LaBute has a long list of off-Broadway credits, this was the first of his plays to make it to Broadway.

I know all the arguments - Broadway depends on tourists, who want to see musicals or stars they recognize from movies or tv. But that doesn't mean it's not sad all the same.

Exit the King

Gratuitous Violins rating: *** out of ****

I think I was probably a senior in high school when I first became intrigued by theatre of the absurd.

I've always been interested in cultural history - the way artists and writers respond to events going on around them. And I knew that many of the plays in this genre had been written in the aftermath of the death and destruction of World War II and the advent of the Cold War.

Back then, the questions those works raised seemed so deep and profound. - What was the meaning of life? Was human existence ultimately futile? (I could go on but it would just be morbid and anyway, you get the idea.)

My philosophical ruminating was all so theoretical, though. In those days before cable, even before VCRs, I don't think I ever actually saw any theatre of the absurd - I'd just read the plays and analyses of the plays.

So imagine my shock three decades later when I settled into my seat at the Barrymore Theatre to watch Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King and found those theoretical questions, embodied in Geoffrey Rush's Tony-winning performance, suddenly seemed all too real. This was no longer an intellectual exercise.

Rush plays Berenger, a 400-year-old monarch who, we learn right at the beginning of the play, is dying along with his crumbling kingdom, represented so well by Dale Ferguson's set and scenic design. (Best prop - the tiny suit of armor statue. I want one!)

I know this sounds like a cliche but Rush made me laugh and he made me cry (or come close to it.) He gives an incredible comedic performance as he tries to stall, bargaining for more time, unwilling to accept the inevitable - a little bit slapstick, a little bit vaudeville. It's almost as if they invented the phrase tour de force to describe it, he's such a commanding presence in this role.

But his performance is way more than simply doing shtick. There's a point where he gets serious and talks about wondering where the years went, learning to accept his fate.

I know Rush and director Neil Armfield, who first staged this production in Australia, intended the audience to see some modern political parallels. But honestly it was the personal, not the political, that made the biggest impression on me.

As a dying monarch working his way through the stages of grief, Rush made me think of people I've loved who are gone. He made me think about how 30 years can pass almost in the blink of an eye. Isn't that really the most absurd thing of all - how quickly time passes. Watching him at that moment was almost unbearable. And I mean that as the highest compliment.

But I don't want to give the impression that Exit the King is a downer of a theatre experience. It's a very funny play.

I thought Andrea Martin was hilarious as Juliet, the royal family's long-suffering servant. Brian Hutchison was great, taking a small role as the palace guard and playing it to the hilt. Lauren Ambrose was good as Marie, the younger and more adoring of Berenger's two queens who fawns over him and wants to spare him the pain of realizing that he's dying. And I liked William Sadler as the doctor who tries to give the king a big dose of reality.

As the older Queen Marguerite, Susan Sarandon seemed to be playing things a little straighter than everyone else in the cast. To some extent, that was her role - she's tired of Berenger, has no sympathy for him and wants him to accept his fate and just go already. I'm not sure Sarandon hit quite the right note but I've enjoyed so many of her movies over the years that it was great seeing her onstage.

I think my biggest criticism is that Exit the King does drag a bit. By the end of Act II, I was getting a little squirmy and just wanted the king to finally make his exit. When he does, it's one final, stunning moment in Geoffrey Rush's amazing performance. I am so glad I had a chance to see it.

Fun and games on Broadway

In preparation for my upcoming trips to New York I've been scouring Broadway show Web sites:

Coolest download: Virtual Zippo lighter app for your iPhone at Rock of Ages. (Because you can never be too ready for a power ballad.)

Dumbest game: "Shoot your boss," at 9 to 5. I know it fits with the plot and all but isn't it a tad in poor taste?

Best use of video: Vblog entries from the cast of Hair are fun. The Easter Bonnet competition featuring the cast of 33 Variations doesn't tell you much about the show but it's very witty. Shrek's 10-part online video series on bringing the musical to Broadway is the most interesting and provides reasons to keep coming back to the site.

Best marketing slogan playing off a line from a song: Hair - We got merch, brother!

Best e-cards: Shrek, with their funny takeoffs on other Broadway shows.

Most unfortunate video trend: Watching scenes from plays without the sound. You can see a montage from God of Carnage, you just can't hear the actors. Instead, they play some background music. What's the point? At least Exit the King gives you a few lines of dialog before the montage.

Best blog: It's hard to beat Jane Fonda at 33 Variations. Although, strangely, I couldn't find a link to it on the show's site.

But I wish the two queens from Mary Stuart had kept up their blogging. Here's a sample from Mary, Queen of Scots: "I am in rehearsals for my upcoming trial. I am training hard as I suspect it will all be physically hard to endure. I have discovered protein shakes and they are helping me."

Catching up on theatre TV

The only time I watch The View is when they have Broadway-related guests. Otherwise, I'm not really into the banter. But this week featured a great lineup. You can watch the interviews here.

On Thursday, the guest was Angela Lansbury, currently appearing as the medium Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit. Miss Lansbury looked wonderful - so fit and full of energy. "I love being back on stage again," she said. "It gives me a tremendous lift and it's made me feel not my age - which you probably all know." I do, but I'm not going to tell.

Then today, Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon, the royal couple from Exit the King, made an appearance, walking into the studio looking appropriately regal in their floor-length robes. It was hilarious, and what a great way to promote the play. "We had to wear them today," Rush explained, "because Susan and I are both deeply method actors." Although Rush's crown did look like something they hand out at Burger King.

And Theater Talk took a road trip from New York to visit the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Since I made my first trip to the Guthrie in September, to see the Little House on the Prairie musical, it was neat to learn a little bit more about its history from artistic director Joe Dowling.

A highlight: Getting to see the backstage area where the sets and costumes are put together. This video shows how the Guthrie craftspeople made the individual stalks of wheat for the Little House on the Prairie set.

For your reading and viewing pleasure

I'm not usually into mob stories but I loved The Sopranos. It's so hard for me to separate James Gandolfini from Tony Soprano that I can't imagine what it would be like to see him on stage.

Gandolfini is currently starring on Broadway in God of Carnage and there's a good, short interview with him by John Heilpern in Vanity Fair. Part of the interview is conducted in Gandolfini's Toyota hybrid SUV, as the pair drive around Manhattan looking for a quiet spot for lunch on a Saturday.

In 1995, Gandolfini appeared on Broadway in a very short-lived production of On the Waterfront. He tells Heilpern that he was fired for "being too mouthy." In 1992, he was an understudy in A Streetcar Named Desire that also featured his Sopranos sister, Aida Turturro.

But he says he's had a lot of experience playing small roles in small theatres. “Standing in public in other people’s clothes, pretending to be someone else. It’s a strange way for a grown man to make a living.”

Then in Variety, Gordon Cox wonders whether nonmusicals can give Broadway a boost. I like this quote from Geoffrey Rush, who's starring in Eugene Ionesco's absurdist drama Exit the King, which Cox says some theatergoers might consider a "gloomy existentialist downer."

The youngest theatergoers might be the ones with the fewest preconceptions, Rush theorizes. "Anyone under 25 has no problem with Ionesco," he says. "They all grew up with Ren and Stimpy and SpongeBob SquarePants."

Okay, I never connected Ionesco with those two television shows but maybe I should check them out.

And finally, Sheila O'Malley, at The House Next Door, writes a very moving tribute to Natasha Richardson. She remembers what it was like to see her on Broadway in 1998 as Sally Bowles in Cabaret. "It was one of the most exciting nights of theater of my life."

It was really interesting to read how Richardson took a role that had been so inextricably linked to one actress - Liza Minnelli - and made it her own. O'Malley gives you a great sense of what it was like to see that memorable, Tony-winning performance.

Also, while she was doing Cabaret, Richardson took part in an American Theatre Wing Working in the Theatre panel discussion, which you can watch here. She also participated in an ATW panel in 2005 on interpreting Tennessee Williams and in a 1993 program on Anna Christie, with her soon-to-be husband, Liam Neeson, among others.

Double the absurdity

For Theatre of the Absurd fans, it's another reason to rejoice. Not one but two classic examples of the genre will open on Broadway this spring. Who says life has no meaning? (That's a joke! For more background, click here or here.)

Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon will star in a revival of Exit the King, by Eugene Ionesco. Previews begin March 7 at the Barrymore Theatre. And Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, with Bill Irwin, Nathan Lane, David Strathairn and John Goodman, starts previews April 3 at Studio 54.

This production of Exit the King, directed by Neil Armfield, was presented at the Belvoir St. Theatre in Australia in 2007, with Rush in the title role. A review in the Sydney Morning Herald raved about the Oscar-winner's performance.

Now, allow me to indulge in some shameless name-dropping. No, not Sarandon or Rush. I once met Eugene Ionesco. (Yes, I know, my brushes with greatness are rather obscure.)

I heard him speak in Boston when I was in college and I got his autograph afterward. (I went with a cute French boy I'd met in the campus bookstore!) Ionesco was nearly 70 then, and a kindly, formal gentleman from what I remember. He signed my copy of Tueur sans gages (Known in English as The Killer.)

Sadly, it's been a long time since I've used my high school and college French, so I can't read the play in its original language anymore. And I lost touch with the French boy. Quel dommage!