Is Business Really Boffo? Factors in the Broadway Equation

Extract

Our impressions of Broadway tend to be a compound of past glories as reflected in new musicals, ritual laments of lack of intellectual substance, and the no-less-confusing mix of tawdriness and glamour in the place itself. The showbiz press, meanwhile, concentrates on the hard cash of the theatrical situation. However, as Glenn Loney here suggests, even economic generalizations can falsify the details of a complicated picture: and he considers other relevant factors, from pressures for environmental preservation to the paranoid fear of ‘the Times review’, and the often-overlooked attitudes of the playwrights and performers themselves. Glenn Loney is a widely-published writer and teacher, who contributed a survey of American academic drama to NTQ20, and here he provides a clear overview of the current Broadway scene for a British readership, while offering some lateral thinking which will also prove stimulating for an already-informed American audience.