While the successful Broadway playwrights of the 1980s and ’90s were primarily male, and gay, there was also room for a Jewish woman with a comedic flare. From Fanny Brice, Molly Picon and Sophie Tucker to Joan Rivers, Gilda Radner, Rita Rudner, Joy Behar and Sarah Silver-153
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man, Jewish women have always had a knack for making audiences laugh.
Despite the wealth of Jewish comediennes, there have been few females to tickle the funny bones of Broadway audiences with original plays.
Wendy Wasserstein not only brought comedy to Broadway through her work, but not unlike her male counterparts, brought forward her own social concerns. Wasserstein presented the voices of women on stage, particularly in her breakthrough hit, The Heidi Chronicles, in 1988.
One of five sisters, Wendy Wasserstein grew up in Brooklyn. Her father was very successful as a textile executive, and her mother was an amateur dancer who immigrated to the United States from Poland. Her grandfather, on her mother’s side, was a playwright, and an influence on Wasserstein, who would go on to earn a master’s degree in creative writing from the City College of New York and an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama.
In The Heidi Chronicles, Wasserstein used her knack for sharp comedic dialogue to shed light on the social issues faced by women includ ing liberation in the 1960s, feminism in the 1970s and betrayal in the 1980s. She made audiences laugh while also making them think about the changing issues that women faced. The show, which opened Off Broad way, later moved to Broadway for over 600 performances and won not only the Tony Award for best play but also a Pulitzer Prize for Wasserstein.
While there were few plays with Jewish themes in the 1990s, one that garnered attention Off Broadway and later on Broadway in 1993, running for 556 performances, was Wasserstein’s follow-up to The Heidi Chronicles, entitled The Sisters Rosensweig. The comedy about three middle-aged Jewish-American sisters in London to celebrate one of their birthdays was described by Wasserman in the Huntington Theater program as: “A practicing Jew, a wandering Jew and a self-loathing Jew are sitting around a living room in London.”1 But the show proved to be much more than that, as it epitomized the strong bond between these three very different women. From personal revelations to their ongoing sibling rivalry, they draw in an audience by way of Wasserstein’s richly humorous dialogue that drives the show forward.
Wasserstein would continue to write plays through the 1990s and into the new century, including Isn’t It Romantic, The American Daughter and Old Money. Sadly she died in 2006 at the age of 55. In her plays, 154
7. Young Playwrights with a Message, Inflation, Disney and Me Wasserstein utilized her Jewish sense of humor to bring the female voice to Broadway in a manner that had not been done before. As a result, stars such as Jane Alexander, Madeline Kahn, Linda Lavin, Joan Allen and other notables appeared in her plays.
No longer accused of being Communist for standing up for social issues, the Jewish playwrights of this era, from Kramer and Kushner to Wasserstein, were able to make their voices heard without having to look over their shoulders. They followed Odets, Kaufman and others in their belief that the theater was, and still is, a forum for expression and a means of making an impact.
“More Traditional” Newcomers
Among the other new Broadway talents to emerge in the ’80s and
’90s were Maury Yeston and Jerry Zaks. Unlike the new breed of playwrights, both were more closely associated with the more “traditional”
style of Broadway musicals. Yeston surfaced as a composer and lyricist, while Zaks had a brilliant sense for directing, preferably comedy.
Yeston, who grew up in Jersey City in the 1950s, was, like many Jew ish composers, the grandson of a cantor. Both of his parents also had musical talent. So, like many of his musical predecessors, Yeston was weaned on music and took to the piano at a very young age. An early trip to New York City to see My Fair Lady, not unlike my own trip to Manhattan to see Little Me, turned out to be an eye-opening experience for Yeston who, like myself, was immediately drawn to the theater.
Yeston possessed great musical talent that would become quite evident as he grew up. By the time he attended Yale University to study music composition and theory, he had studied all sorts of musical styles and was proficient on several instruments. He would not only go on to receive his Ph.D. from Yale, but would teach music for nearly a decade at the Ivy League institution.
In the early 1980s Yeston would emerge as a Broadway lyricist and become known for his contributions to three successful musicals. Based on Fellini’s film 81⁄2, Yeston provided music and lyrics for the musical Nine, a show fueled by director Tommy Tune whose persistence brought it to Broadway. Also based, in part, on Fellini’s own mid-life crisis, Nine opened on Broadway in 1982, and later returned in 2003 for a revival.
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The original production ran for 729 performances and garnered a Tony Award for Best Musical.
The second significant musical for Yeston was the 1989 hit Grand Hotel for which he wrote most of the music and lyrics. Based on a 1929
novel and a 1932 film, the musical focused on the stories behind the guests at a German hotel in 1928. Grand Hotel saw 1,077 performances on Broadway before closing its doors.
The third of Yeston’s triumphs was the musical Titanic in 1997, with Peter Stone, of 1776 notoriety, writing the book. An unusual subject for a Broadway musical, the show, unlike the ship, stayed afloat for two years, despite soaring costs that precluded it from seeing a profit. None -
theless, it sailed away with the 1997 Tony Award for Best Musical.
Yeston also wrote Off Broadway shows, an album about the life of Francisco de Goya and classical compositions. His flair for “old-school”
composition was welcomed in an ever-changing progressive theater environment and has made him a highly respected composer by his peers and by the theater audience.
One of the premiere directors to emerge during the late 1980s was Jerry Zaks. Born in Germany to Holocaust survivors of Russian and Polish descent, Zaks’ family immigrated to the United States in 1948, when Jerry was two years of age. Zaks grew up in New Jersey where his father owned a kosher butcher shop. He later recalled in interviews that while his parents did not talk much about the horrors of their Holocaust experi -
ences, he was led to believe that the world was a very hostile place and that being Jewish meant you had to be especially careful and even fearful.
While Zaks enjoyed music during his childhood in the 1950s, he was not a musician nor did he have any particular interest in theater. It was, however, when he attended Dartmouth College that he not only discovered theater but fell in love. Wanting to be popular, Zaks took to acting. He appeared in everything he could at Dartmouth and then went on to Smith College where he received a master of fine arts degree in theater. Upon moving to New York City, he became one of the founders of the Broadway Theater Ensemble from which he honed his acting skills in Off Broadway productions and commercials. But by the time he made it to Broadway as Kenickie in the musical Grease, he had become more fascinated by directing than performing.
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7. Young Playwrights with a Message, Inflation, Disney and Me Zaks began directing Off Broadway shows at the start of the 1980s, with a focus on comedy. It was the off beat Larry Shue comedy The Foreigner that first drew significant attention in 1984. The show went on the win the Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best New American Play and Best Off Broadway Production. Zaks would then go on to win his first Tony Award in 1986 for John Guare’s tragic comedy The House of Blue Leaves, which was staged at Lincoln Center Theater. But it was a revival of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes in 1987 starring Patti LuPone that con -
firmed Zaks’ place on Broadway. The musical revival received excellent reviews and ran for over 800 performances.
Zaks would move into the 1990s with Lend Me a Tenor and the John Guare play Six Degrees of Separation, which explored the premise
that everyone is connected to everyone else in the world by a chain of no more than six connections. The concept has continued to intrigue people long beyond the successful run of the show, which opened Off Broadway, and then ran for nearly 500 performances on Broadway.
Having enjoyed success with the revival of Anything Goes, Zaks then decided to bring back Guys and Dolls starring Nathan Lane. The result was 1,143 performances and four Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Musical. Zaks was clearly on a roll. After teaming with Neil Simon on Laughter on the 23rd Floor and bringing the music of the 1950s to life for over 2,000 performances of Smokey Joe’s Café, Zaks would pull off another successful revival with the comedy classic of the early ’60s, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, this time starring Nathan Lane, and later Whoopi Goldberg.
Along with television credits for directing episodes of popular sitcoms such as Frasier and Everybody Loves Raymond, and film credits that include Outrageous Fortune and Crimes and Misdemeanors, Zaks continues to be the consummate director of comedy, bringing Little Shop of Horrors and most recently The Addams Family to Broadway in a directing career that is now in its fourth decade.
Inflation and Broadway
By the late 1980s, inflation had kicked in and Broadway was feeling the effects. While Cats, Les Misérables and Phantom of the Opera, the 157
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three longest-running Broadway musicals ever (as of the writing of this book) all emerged in the 1980s, many producers and theater owners opted for revivals of tried and true hits rather than take on new shows.
Zorba, Sweet Chariot, Anything Goes, On Your Toes, and Carousel were among the many classic Broadway musicals that saw revivals in the 1980s and ’90s. The cost of putting on a musical was becoming prohibitive, and as a result taking the chance on a new show was a greater risk. In some cases, revivals took a creative approach, such as the musical Crazy for You, which was an adaptation of Girl Crazy, bringing back the music of the Gershwins not only from the original show but including other Gershwin songs as well. Crazy for You won a Tony Award in 1992 for Best Musical. Despite over 1,600 performances, the musical hit did not see a profit until it went out on tour.
The problem of inflation was indeed making it harder to make money for those backing Broadway shows. The costs of production continued to rise rapidly, and star performers were seeking enough money to make it worth their while to commit to a Broadway engagement rather than take on a film or television role. From the $700,000 that it took to stage Annie in 1977 to the $3.75 million to bring Woman of the Year to Broadway in 1981 to the $5 million it took to stage La Cage aux Folles in 1983, the costs were indeed rising quickly, and ticket prices lagged behind. Even hugely successful musical talents, such as Paul Simon and Peter Allen, were unable to buck the odds and land hit shows during this risky era for Broadway. Simon’s show Capeman lasted only 68 performances on Broadway, after a ten-year gestation period and a cost of $11
million. Allen’s Legs Diamond actually lasted longer in previews (72) than with actual performances (64). Even with Harvey Fierstein writing the book, the doomed show closed in 1989, epitomizing the high risk of bringing a new musical to Broadway.
One avenue that proved fruitful, and took some of the gamble out of staging a brand new production, was to import an established hit show from Great Britain. While this was not an entirely new concept, it became more common to seek out shows that had an English pedigree, so to speak. Such British hits typically had already enjoyed box-office success when brought to America, not unlike many shows that took the reverse route from Broadway to London. Evita, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Cats, Starlight Express and Me and My Gal were 158
7. Young Playwrights with a Message, Inflation, Disney and Me just a few of the influx of shows that came over in a London invasion of Broadway musicals, largely with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice leading the charge. While not all of the British imports were hits, their overseas success gave producers a greater level of comfort, having seen audience support for these shows in London. Two such shows were the work of an international Jewish writing team. Les Misérables made its way from Paris to London’s West End, where it became the longest-running musical in history. The American version would land on Broadway in 1987 for an amazing run of more than 6,000 performances. The other significant musical of the era from the same writing team was Miss Saigon.
Similar in story to that of Madama Butterfly, only set during the Vietnam War, Miss Saigon opened in 1991 and dazzled theatergoers for over 4,400
performances.
The team behind the two blockbusters was Claude-Michel Schönberg, a French songwriter, actor and composer, who wrote the music for both shows, and Alain Boublil, a librettist born in Tunisia who met Schön berg in France. On Les Misérables, the talented duo were joined by Herbert Kretzmer, an older Jewish writer with credits that ranged from British television to screen documentaries to newspaper columns.
Kretzmer, originally from South Africa, provided English lyrics. All three walked away with Tony Awards for their work on Les Misérables.
Of course there’s no sure thing in the theater business, as proven by Schönberg and Boublil several years later. Following two of the most successful box-office and critically acclaimed musicals in Broadway history, the duo worked diligently on the story of 17th century Irish pirate Grace O’Malley. The resulting show, Pirate Queen, ran for only two months on Broadway, at a loss of roughly $16 million.
Along with revivals and British imports in the ’80s and ’90s was the growing practice of moving shows that had enjoyed prolonged success Off Broadway onto Broadway. This was also not a new concept, but had become more common largely thanks to the efforts of Joseph Papp whose shows, such as Hair and A Chorus Line, had grown to prominence Off Broadway before their lengthy Broadway runs. Many shows such as Secret Garden and those of the new breed of Jewish playwrights mentioned earlier were sustained Off Broadway by students and niche audiences who were not always able to afford the spiraling cost of Broadway tickets.
The shows gained notoriety through word of mouth and favorable 159
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reviews, making them more likely to succeed at the higher ticket prices of Broadway.
Despite some major musical hits, by the start of the 1990s Broadway attendance was off, and the number of new shows was down. Higher ticket prices, the new popularity of home theater and video entertainment and the increasingly unsafe area around Times Square and the theater district all factored into the attendance woes. Something had to change
... and it did.
The Decade of Disney
The 1990s marked the cleanup of 42nd Street which had steadily declined after the depression years, especially after World War II, forcing some of the older theaters on the street to close or show movies. The actual Broadway theater district now started a block or two north of the famed street that had been the impetus for a major film and smash Broadway musical. The area around Times Square, with a rising crime rate and an increase in drug traffic and prostitution, had been deemed unsafe for what was now becoming four decades.
Redevelopment of the area was a must. So, along with New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, the charge for change was led by a mouse named Mickey. Yes, The Walt Disney Company announced in 1994 that they were going to bring their own family brand of theater to, of all places, crime-ridden 42nd Street. Naturally, the optimism of Disney’s exec utives was met by cynicism from those who doubted that their efforts would make a positive impact. After all, the area declined steadily for many years and was anything but Disney-esque. In fact, David Letterman epitomized the cynics with his Top Ten List of upcoming Disney Pro ductions that included Hookers of the Caribbean and Beauty and the Bobbitt.
Nonetheless, Disney, led by Chairman Michael Eisner, pressed on.
Eisner, born to a Jewish family in Mount Kisco, New York, spent much of his youth growing up in Manhattan. He was still a New Yorker at heart,
despite spending a number of years in Los Angeles where he worked briefly at all three major networks before becoming the Chairman of Paramount Pictures in Burbank. It was from there that he established himself as a major player in the entertainment industry. Films including 160
7. Young Playwrights with a Message, Inflation, Disney and Me Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Raiders of the Lost Ark were made during his tenure, along with major hit television shows including Cheers and Happy Days.
In 1984, Eisner was brought into Disney where he began expanding the already successful Disney name, starting with the film The Little Mermaid in 1989 and continuing with some of the most significant animated movies of all time. Eisner called the 1990s the Disney Decade, and was it ever. The company grew, buying up movie studios, expanding their theme parks and adding their own cable network plus ESPN and other television properties.
Broadway, however, was uncharted territory for Disney, and 42nd Street was uncharted territory for anyone since the days of Ziegfeld.
Devel opers had come and gone, throwing up their hands in dismay at the challenge that stood in front of them. Commercial office buildings might provide jobs, but at night lurked a seedy crowd that frequented the peep shows and porn theaters. The key for Disney was not simply to add structures, but to transform the ambiance and infuse entertainment that could jump-start the neighborhood in a positive uplifting Disney manner.
Ironically, despite the decline of the area, much like the lost city of Pompeii, classic, elegant art nouveau theaters sat unscathed in the midst of the chaos. One of those theaters, built in 1900 by Oscar Hammerstein, called the Theatre Republic, featured a Venetian-styled façade with a grand exterior staircase leading to the first of two balconies. It was elegant with a dome ceiling. The theater had opened shortly after the turn of the century with the show Sag Harbor featuring Lionel Barrymore. In a short time, the Republic would become home to vaudeville shows and to Abie’s Irish Rose, one of Broadway’s longest-running productions of the 1920s. But in the ’30s the depression made it difficult to stage major productions, so it was taken over by Billy Minsky and turned into Minsky’s Burlesque featuring Gypsy Rose Lee. In 1942, Minsky’s, however, would close, and by the 1970s the theater would sink to a new low, emerg ing as the city’s first XXX theater.
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