How Publicity Becomes a Review

When a show is revived, there's got to be a basis for bringing it back. And if it's a new work, with an untried author or problematic theme, there are even more reasons to tout your product upfront, to generate buzz and consumer interest. Maybe it's a timely topic, maybe it's an audience favorite, maybe it's an anniversary for the play or the author. But there often are other factors at work, economic ones and agenda items, both of which may be hidden from view.

Press releases aside, I can say that from my perspective small casts (or few union-scale actors) are the first decision option many theaters consider in scheduling a season. Look around you and no matter where you turn, small casts are the rule: one- and two-handers, plus or minus one actor. The second is grant money, the more unrestricted the better. Also, up for consideration is the option for co-productions.

More often than not of late, I'm seeing a big disconnect between advertising and the production end of the theater, the spin versus the reality of a show. The playwright or director sells his or her version of what the staff needs to hear to promote a production, and then everyone pitches it to the media, which serves it up to you, the patron. And everyone talks it up until the pitch becomes the reality of the show, the one you read about after the opening.

First off is the marketing of the play, the catchy way the theater will promote or sell its product, often with the playwright's help. Just some of the many shows I saw recently in which this dynamic unfolded include American Buffalo, The Golden Dragon, Lungs, and Fahrenheit 451, and now that I think of it, Wit. Buffalo is promoted as a play for tough times, Dragon supposedly concerns globalization, Lungs deals with the "existential" decision to have children - the playbill and logo feature a baby - and Fahrenheit is about government repression and the evils of technology. Wit, about a professor dying of cancer, was billed as a play of redemption.

David Mamet's Buffalo (1975), a 3-man play, is a branded commodity, so much so that it was being performed on two stages in the area this month. Fahrenheit, an adaptation of a cult Sci-Fi classic by Ray Bradbury, which was made into a movie, is also a known, salable commodity, as was Margaret Edson's Wit, a Pulitzer prize-winner for drama. Fahrenheit was mounted, designed, and conceived elsewhere, before making the trek north, with much of the production cost subsumed and with a cadre of novice performers.

Lungs, by Duncan Macmillan, which features a pair of actors, is pitched to a twenty- or thirty-something audience, successfully I think, and deals with relationship issues of that age group, having children being one of many, and was part of a "rolling" world premiere - two other performances went on at the same time and shared the cost and glory of being the first to mount the show. The low budget Dragon - 5 actors, but not much design - is a mildly subversive work by Roland Schimmelpfennig, of the Cloud 9 type - age, gender, and race are changed - but where the director opted out of an all-white cast (which is how it had previously been performed), whose irony would have made it much more compelling dramatically. The inter-racial casting certainly was a point used in spinning the media release.

To be sure, all of these plays contained an aspect of the press release promo. But they weren't the principal feature or one that would necessarily catch the attention of a viewer. Buffalo and Fahrenheit, great plays in their own right, had a number of universal themes to highlight - freedom and values quickly come to mind. But since universal themes are not popular at present, and may in fact be politically incorrect these days, they were conveniently passed over. Buffalo in no way reminded me of "tough economic times out there" and Fahrenheit, while it nominally concerned state control, was much more frightening for the way we as a society cede our privacy and independence under the guise of technology, entertainment, and security, i.e., through third-party experts, a version of thought police. Wit, an excellent play in its own right, had a lot to say about institutions - their ability to stifle the individual in particular - and how an unlucky person might face death and just let go. I looked, but did not find redemption (or grace or God) in the live performance I experienced.

The two new plays each dealt with problems of communication - across gender, race, and cultures. But to promote Lungs as a baby play (across a "lifecycle" sandwiched into the final few minutes) or Dragon as containing some global message is to endow them with far more relevance than they possess. When your 70 or 80-minute one act feels long (and it did in both cases), the issue is something that marketing cannot solve. You've got a dramaturgical problem that needs to be addressed.

So read those feature stories and press interviews with a grain of caution. The "facts" about the show have been so tightly orchestrated they may seem more fanciful than what you are seeing in front of your eyes, which hasn't been censored. Yet.

[Update: I forgot Broadway (or off-Broadway) hits. I just read an interview with John Logan, playwright of Red, the Tony Award winner of 2010. Set in the late 1950s the 2-man show, now playing in Pittsburgh, is a bio-drama dealing with the artist Mark Rothko and an assistant. In the interview, Mr. Logan described Andy Warhol as a "third character." Mr. Warhol is just one of many figures that exercise the artist's imagination, but none has the cache or local significance (he was born in Pittsburgh) as the King of Pop. Doubtless, he'll be trotted out in the DC-area, when a different production visits next year. As an aside, Mr. Warhol, a commercial artist in the 1950s, when the play is set, had his first solo fine art show (of Campbell Soup cans) in 1962.]