Just When You'd Thought They'd Gone...

Playbill.com has just announced that the West End revival of La Cage aux Folles that originated at the Menier Chocolate Factory is moving to Broadway in spring of 2010.

I'm thrilled for the Chocolate Factory. I saw their production of tick, tick...BOOM! (with Neil Patrick Harris as Jonathan!) back in June 2005, when nobody had even heard of them. I don't remember how I'd heard about the production since the Chocolate Factory was in its initial season, and since I knew nothing about it, I didn't know what to expect. But since I loved both the show and Neil Patrick Harris (his version of "If You Can Find Me, I'm Here" off The Frogs/Evening Primrose recording had me sold), I figured it was worth the risk. Clearly, it was, since the Chocolate Factory has been having success after success with its musicals--the most notable being its Olivier and Tony Award winning revival of Sunday in the Park with George. In the past few seasons, the theatre has joined the Donmar in providing an intimate space for musicals that aren't exactly commerical hits--something that, in my experience there, London needs.

Consequently, I'm excited that yet another Menier musical is not only on the West End, but is moving to Broadway. But does it have to be a show whose last Broadway revival was five years ago?

I'm worried that the recent success of the 2008 Gypsy revival has set an unhealthy precedent. Since I'd missed the Encores! production the summer of 2007, I was desperate to see Patti LuPone and Laura Benanti's takes on the show, and was ecstatic upon hearing it was getting a Broadway run. Sure, there'd been the revival with Bernadette Peters in 2003, but that was a different production with a different director and a different star. And it was GYPSY. Come on. Who doesn't want that show constantly playing somewhere in New York? I hadn't gotten hooked on musicals until fall of 2003, so while I'd seen that Gypsy revival twice, I'd been too busy catching up on other shows to see it more than that, and I'm not sure how much I'd fully appreciated it, anyway. The Patti Gypsy was my chance to make up for that.

I wasn't too upset with Les Miserables coming back to Broadway a mere three years after the original production closed, either. I like the show well enough; it's got some thrilling moments, and I can understand why it appeals so strongly to so many people (though I'm not one of them). It's not anything I'd go out of my way to see, and even if it was, reviving a show three years after the original production closed is ridiculous any way you look at it. Especially when the show in question originally ran for sixteen years.

But it was easy to justify even this revival. For one thing, it was a limited run of a touring production--not an open-ended run of an entirely new one--and my understanding is that it was filling a house that would have been dark otherwise (correct me if I'm wrong) until the next scheduled tenant moved in. Granted, the revival did extend multiple times if I remember correctly, but it always had an end date in sight.

The other thing about the Les Miz revival was the cast. With Norm Lewis as Javert, Alex Gemignani as Valjean, Daphne Rubin-Vega as Fantine and Celia Keenan-Bolger's Eponine, it was a theatre queen's dream. Daphne and Celia were particularly fascinating. Daphne because her portrayal of Fantine was the rawest I'd ever heard or seen, with her "I Dreamed A Dream" so jagged you knew life had broken this woman beyond repair; Celia because her Eponine revealed in the romantic fantasty she had to actively remind herself was a lie. It's hard to complain with a cast like that.

This 2010 revival of La Cage aux Folles, however, doesn't have any of those factors, so it's difficult to see what the point is. I'm sure the West End production deserves to be on Broadway, but I don't see a reason for bringing it over so soon--if at all.

These sorts of things are tricky for me, because I can be far more forgiving when it's a show I love. Or, in the case of Les Miz, when there are cast members I love. When it's a show I don't like, don't care about, or don't know, that's when I can look at an issue without adding "...but...it's [insert show obsession here]." I try as a general rule to think about how I'd feel if weren't Gypsy, if it weren't Norm Lewis in Les Miz.

Now I'm forced into objectivity with La Cage, and I have to say I'd rather forgo Patti!Gypsy than have Broadway houses filled with boomerang shows--or worse, boomerang revivals. I feel very strongly about revivals, especially ones that re-interpret the material in some way; that's how you keep older shows from becoming museum pieces, and how you help a modern audience connect to a world that might otherwise seem dated and foreign. But you need distance from a piece to get something new out of it. That's why I can go for years without listening to my favorite recordings, and why I need to take breaks from the shows I write. If something becomes too familiar, it stops becoming a challenging, living reflection of its audience, and starts becoming comfort food.

That's not good for audiences, and it's not good for Broadway--or for musical theatre as a whole. Longer running shows mean fewer empty houses, and that means fewer new shows. When you can extend a show's life by bringing it back within five years--within a decade--you cut the number of new shows that can open in a given season down even more. That type of environment also discourages a culture of risk-taking; why bring in unknown work when you can bring in a show that's extremely fresh in the audience's memory? There's enough of that going on as it is.

I hope the La Cage revival is nothing like the 2004 revival. I hope it changes how people look at the piece, and I hope it brings even more acclaim (and money!) to the Menier Chocolate Factory. But I also hope boomerang shows don't become a trend.