Elm City gives its regards to Broadway - again

These were the so-called "golden years" of American theater. A vibrant community of actors, writers, producers, and crew members lived and worked in New Haven near the Shubert. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein were outspoken fans of the College Street theater. For tourists, the tryout theater scene was a thrilling place to spend an evening. Theater-goers came from across the Northeast to mingle with the likes of Sir Alec Guiness and Tennessee Williams before enjoying their latest onstage work.

When the 1960s came to a close, theater began to change, and the Shubert had to follow suit. Higher production costs, lower attendance, and smaller profit margins demanded that shows preview in New York to cut prohibitive out-of-town preview costs. The city's theater scene quickly dried up, and the Shubert paid the price. In 1978, after sending more than 600 shows to Broadway--300 of which had enjoyed their world premiers in New Haven--the theater was forced to close its doors.

The Shubert reopened in 1984, this time as a non-profit organization. It quickly began attracting light-hearted musicals and commercial dramas that had appeared on Broadway and then gone on tour, a mix it has basically kept until the present day. Premieres are far scarcer than they once were.

But the Shubert Theater may soon start to look more like its old self. Last month, a Broadway-bound musical, The Civil War, conceived by Jekyll and Hyde composer Frank Wildhorn, played at the Shubert for three weeks--an authentic pre-Broadway tryout before New Haven audiences. It was the first world premiere of a musical at the Shubert since
the '70s--and it attracted upwards of 28,000 theatergoers. Along with the premiere of Triumph of Love at the Yale
Rep during its '96-'97 season, The Civil War may indicate a renewed New Haven-Broadway partnership. But is this recent flowering a renaissance or just a fluke?

Comings and goings

Like the tryouts of the past, the short run of The Civil War provided an opportunity for fine-tuning--allowing its creators to gather audience feedback and make cuts and additions. By the end of the show's three-week tryout, the first number had been replaced, and the small African-American girl who opened and closed the show by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance was relieved of her duties.

"The Shubert audience got to participate in the reworking of the show," said Robert Refnikoff, director of public relations and marketing at the Shubert. "The creators gauged how the show was playing from viewer reactions. It changed considerably while it was here."

Still, the tryout of The Civil War lacked one crucial element--even in the face of mediocre reviews, there was never any doubt that the show would end up on Broadway. As a result, the old suspense just wasn't there.

In light of the New Haven tryouts of The Civil War and Neil Simon's Proposals last season (the eighth time Simon has previewed a show at the Shubert before its New York run), Refnikoff thinks the Shubert will continue to attract more Broadway-bound shows. "In the '40s and '50s, it made a lot of sense for producers to take their shows elsewhere to preview them," he said. "In the '70s, it was no longer economically viable to do that, but we think it's going back in that direction."

If the Shubert does rekindle its past glory, it will be on a much smaller scale--and of a much different character. In recent years, Broadway has primarily shown interest in surefire hits, leading to a surfeit of revivals and other proven audience-pleasers. Few producers want to fund tryouts in distant cities when they can preview in New York. As a result, the Shubert ends up with an overabundance of "mega-shows" on tour after their appearances on Broadway.

"It seems to be a post-Broadway house as much as a pre-Broadway house, maybe even more so," Drama School Professor Murray Biggs said of the Shubert. "More and more it seems that plays begin in New York and then go on the road, like Les Misérables and Ragtime, rather than the other way around."

Away from all the glitz

Even if the Shubert does bring big tryouts back to New Haven, will it matter? Will the theater community be significantly changed? Many in the Connecticut regional theater community that formed since the '60s say no.

"Theater didn't leave with the Shubert, because there is so much theater here," said Stan Wojewodski, Jr., artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theater. "New Haven has always had a critical mass of theater."

The Rep was founded in 1967, at the beginning of the Shubert's decline. Since then, it has produced a full range of theater, from musicals to small dramas, often in collaboration with other
theater troupes.

"The Rep exists to take advantage of working together, professionals working with a director and the community working with and taking part in the theater," Wojewodski said. In the minds of proponents of serious regional theater, bringing Broadway to New Haven would not necessarily improve the overall quality of a New Haven theater scene that has forged its own distinctive, and valuable, identity.

"My humble opinion is that it doesn't matter too much whether a show ends up in New York," said Christopher Arnott, who writes a theater column for the New Haven Advocate. "We have a working theater culture here, and people don't seem to care about that. I think the quality here is as good as anything you would expect to find in
New York."

This quality comes from the Rep and the Long Wharf Theater, which have produced a number of off-Broadway shows in the last few years. Last year, the Long Wharf Theater produced a play by first-time playwright Margaret Edson called Wit, the story of a professor of poetry in the throes of terminal cancer . The show had an excellent run in the smaller of the Long Wharf's two theaters and eventually ended up
off-Broadway, where it has played to exceptional critical and
audience response.

"Broadway producers looked at it, and it was decided that, even though this was a stunning success, this was not Broadway material," Arnott said. As Wit's experience in New York demonstrates, there is a real difference between what constitutes a success on Broadway and in regional theater. Still, regional theater advocates are proud of having made the jump to New York. "I think what this means is that we're doing work that's so good that New York can't ignore it," Arnott said.

Photos by Julia Tiernan. Graphic by Sara Edward-Corbett.

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