A Theater Nerd's Report: Want to See a Movie? Head to Broadway

Hollywood and Broadway have always been kissin' cousins, but their relationship used to flow in a different direction. In the old days, Broadway shows would get turned into movies, and Broadway actors would become film stars. Now it's the other way around: Eleven of the 37 shows currently on Broadway are based on movies, and there are enough movie stars performing on the Great White Way to fill an Oscar ceremony.

Films ranging from Xanadu to The 39 Steps, from Legally Blonde to Cry-Baby, have inspired some of Broadway's current productions. Previous seasons have included new stage versions of Beauty and the Beast, Footloose, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Big, Sunset Blvd., The Wedding Singer, and The Full Monty, to name just a few.

And the occasional flop aside (Big? Seriously?), audiences are eating them up. I needn't repeat for you the phenomenal success of Broadway's The Lion King, Hairspray, and The Producers, the last two of which were so popular that they inspired new film versions. Broadway has often been accused of being too populist and middlebrow, and I guess you need look no further than the success of movie-based musicals for evidence of that. The purists scoff -- but The Producers, which is as broad and "low" a comedy as you can imagine, also earned a record number of Tony nominations and wins. So those scoffing purists are outnumbered, and I suspect a lot of them are secretly as entertained by the shows as everyone else is.
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I was in New York last week on vacation and caught three new shows based on movies: Mary Poppins, Spamalot (based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail), and Young Frankenstein. All three have been very popular, and two of them have attracted audiences that don't normally go to Broadway shows -- children for Mary Poppins and young heterosexual men for Spamalot. (Young Frankenstein, pictured above, cuts right down the middle of the typical Broadway demographic.)

(Side note: Spamalot currently has Clay Aiken playing Sir Robin, with the unfortunate byproduct that the audiences are packed with Claymates -- i.e., giddy teenage girls and sexually frustrated middle-aged women -- who scream and cheer at literally everything he does, extra-loud if it involves moving his body in any way. This would be sad if it weren't so annoying.)

Mary Poppins uses many of the songs and some of the plot from the Oscar-winning Disney film, but it also goes back to the original P.L. Travers books for additional story elements. The result is something that you keep wanting to be the magical film you grew up with -- and, frustratingly, that sometimes IS that film -- but that often goes in very different directions. ("Let's Go Fly a Kite" should be the exuberant finale where Mr. Banks learns to have fun with his children, dammit, NOT a throwaway number sung by Bert in the park!) But once you get used to the mix of old and new, it's a fairly enchanting show, with some nifty on-stage special effects.

Spamalot sticks pretty close to the basic story of The Holy Grail, and the script, by Eric Idle, retains quite a bit of the film's famous dialogue. Idle also uses the opportunity to throw in some other Python bits, apparently figuring that this is the closest thing to an all-encompassing Python tribute on Broadway that we're going to get. So "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" (from Life of Brian) appears, along with parts of "The Finland Song" and a reference to a bird with "beautiful plumage."

Spamalot is a suitably absurd and very funny show, and Idle's songs (with music by frequent Python collaborator John Du Prez) fit the group's irreverent, anarchic tone. Even the playbill -- which rarely gets messed with on Broadway -- has fake credits. The only problem (other than the Claymate-packed audience) is that it's strange to hear famous Holy Grail dialogue being spoken by non-Python actors. You realize it's not just the words you remember: It's the inflection, the voices, and everything else about the original performances. Frankly, as cleverly written as the scene with Dennis the peasant is, it's not nearly as funny when it's not Graham Chapman and Terry Jones enacting it.

I found that to be a problem with Young Frankenstein, too, a glitzy and over-produced Mel Brooks musical created to capitalize on his recent Producers success. The songs are frequently clever but seldom laugh-out-loud funny. Many of the movie's most memorable bits are re-created ... but it just isn't the same without Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, and Cloris Leachman. Ironically, the best audience for these movie-to-stage adaptations might be people who aren't familiar with the original films, who don't already have firm ideas of what the stories ought to look and sound like.

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I mentioned at the top that major film stars are flocking to Broadway. Right now you could drop into a show and see: Terrence Howard and James Earl Jones in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Laura Linney in Dangerous Liaisons; Patrick Stewart in Macbeth; Nathan Lane, Laurie Metcalf, and Dylan Baker in November (written by frequent filmmaker David Mamet); Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand, and Peter Gallagher in The Country Girl; Marisa Tomei in Top Girls; and Laurence Fishburne in Thurgood.

Big names help to draw in crowds, of course. America is a movie-oriented culture, and sometimes you gotta coax people into playhouses. Surely the success of the current incarnation of Macbeth is at least partially due to Capt. Picard's affiliation with it, and I know Terrence Howard and James Earl Jones have drawn people into Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But once the lights go down, you realize these are fantastic productions, and that these actors are more than just famous: they're also really good. Maybe a little stunt-casting is OK if it gets butts in the seats, and if the show is good enough to keep them there.