These are not the best of days for Broadway. As Patrick Healy wrote in the New York Times, the theater lights are vanishing in what he called a "weak Broadway season defined by unusually long vacancies." It is getting so gloomy that an apparent new booking that showed up on the St.James Theater marquee was actually a fake. (Alas, it was part of a movie shoot!)
If the angels need a new tenant to nourish the box offices, we have a candidate: The U.S.Congress. It would guarantee an extended stay, because political plots are never played out in three acts. For example, the Republicans' tireless effort to destroy Barack Obama is now in its fifth year (that I can remember) with no denouement in sight.
Where but on Broadway's make-believe circuit could you stage 37 or 38 revivals of
Kill Obamacare as the House of Representatives has chosen to do with moronic pratfalls only to revive its childish histrionics after each defeat.
And where, as the New Yorker has noted, would a script call for a serious debate over the proper number of eligible Tibetans to be admitted in the immigration debate as a subplot line - even for a comedy?
The saner customers in the seats would be rolling in the aisles.
Such dark theatrics , of course, is not a new idea. It has been called the theater of the absurd. And since all of us must chip in to pay these B-rated thespians, there should be nothing paid to the cast while it is appearing in this special road show. Other than to amuse us, they are accomplishing nothing in their chosen line of work. So, yeah, cart them off to Broadway to be a little more useful. Who couldn't use a good laugh these days?
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