ADIEU, ADIEU, ADIEU …

Well, my Broadway loving brethren – and “sisthern” (I have officially declared 2012 “Year of the Contrived Lisp”) -- the New Year’s ball has dropped and so have two more Broadway shows: Relatively Speaking, the star-packed trilogy of new one act comedies by Ethan Coen, Elaine May and Woody Allen will be exiting the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Sunday, January 29.

And so, good-bye to Caroline Aaron, Bill Army, Katherine Borowitz, Lisa Emery, Ari Graynor, Steve Guttenberg, Danny Hoch, Julie Kavner, Jason Kravits, Richard Libertini, Mark Linn-Baker, Max Gordon Moore, Patricia O’Connell, Allen Lewis Rickman, Grant Shaud and Marlo Thomas, the versatile ensemble cast -- especially comic sitcom veterans Ms. Thomas, Mr. Linn-Baker and Grant Shaud -- and, of course, Mr. Libertini, who will forever live in my most sublime surrealist of memories for his whacko dictator in the original (1979) version of the film The In-Laws.

Also leaving the TKTs roster of half-pricers is Lysistrata Jones -- a musical about a losing basketball team (and the babes that date them) -- beloved by Ben Brantley and teen-to-20s theatergoers, but evidently not enough so to keep it afloat beyond January 8th’s matinee performance at the Walter Kerr. Inventive, perky but evidently a tad too lightweight for January’s diminishing audiences, the show is the second new musical of the fall/winter season to bite the dust, the first being Bonnie & Clyde, which was gunned down on December 31.

KA-CHING, KA-CHING, KA-CHING….

In the plus column -- along with those super sell-outs The Book of Mormon and Wicked -- SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark has been raking in the big bucks, ringing in 2012 as Broadway’s single-week highest grossing show ever, taking in $2,941,790.20 (playing to 17,375 audience members: 100.02% capacity at Foxwoods Theatre).

Acknowledging this awesome accomplishment, Bono and The Edge, who wrote the ear-catching score, issued the following statement:

“What a fantastic bit of news to kick off 2012. It just goes to show that you can't keep a good superhero down. We are raising our glasses to our indefatigable cast and crew, and the theatre-goers who watch them every night. Broadway is a very special place, we love being a small part of it.”

Posted on January 05, 2012 - by