Days of the great dark way

NEW YORK — On the face of it, the new Broadway musical “Avenue Q” is a delicious bit of fluff with its bright bouncy tunes and eccentric cast of slackers, a mix of humans and puppets, including the whimsically named Christmas Tree, Trekkie Monster, Lucy T. Slut and Gary Coleman. Yes, that Gary Coleman. But the central character, Princeton, just out of school and newly arrived in New York, faces a quandary out of Samuel Beckett: What am I doing on this earth?

His existential conundrum, as well as the story’s dabbles in racism, homophobia and Internet porn, are the darker shades that temper the comedy in this musical comedy -- shades that colored several other Broadway shows, which, like “Avenue Q,” opened during the 2003-04 season.

“The Boy From Oz,” based on the glitzy showbiz life of the late entertainer Peter Allen, included deaths from AIDS complications, a topic as well in the short-lived “Taboo,” which detailed the drug-soaked club years of pop star Boy George. The spectacularly lavish “Wicked” looked at the “Wizard of Oz” legend from a perspective of genetic tampering and segregation, the latter also being addressed in “Bombay Dreams,” about an Indian slum dweller’s rise to film fame, and “Caroline, or Change,” which revolves around a black maid’s fury in 1963 Louisiana. Perhaps only “Never Gonna Dance,” the flop adaptation of the 1936 Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie “Swing Time,” was a return to the frothy mindlessness long associated with musical comedy.

Weighty themes in musical theater of course are nothing new, dating to 1927, when “Show Boat” dared to treat the serious subjects of betrayal, abandonment and miscegenation, and carried on in any number of musicals from “Oklahoma!” to “Assassins,” which finally made its bow on Broadway this season. But at least from a commercial point of view, the recent trend seemed to be toward a return to the traditional sense of musical comedy. In 2001, “The Producers” became a phenomenon and swept up a record 12 Tony Awards. And the successes of “Mamma Mia!” and multiple Tony winner “Hairspray” seemed to underline that audiences, rattled by the bleak and despairing headlines after Sept. 11, were seeking a refuge in lighter fare.

But that premise has been tested to varying degrees this season, especially by the four nominees for this year’s best musical Tony Award: “Avenue Q,” “Wicked,” “The Boy From Oz” and “Caroline, or Change.” The awards will be doled out tonight at Radio City Music Hall and televised on CBS.

“I don’t think of qualities of darkness and light in the musicals I choose to do,” says Jeffrey Seller, who with his partner Kevin McCollum has been lead producer on “Rent,” “La Boheme” and now “Avenue Q.” “But I think what’s appealing is provocative material that takes you to a darker place but still manages to thrill with qualities we traditionally associate with musicals, like great songs and great dancing.”

Of all the shows with which he’s been involved, Seller adds, the one that most tested the audience’s tolerance for ugly or unattractive characters was “The Wild Party” at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2000, composer Andrew Lippa’s adaptation of a 1920s epic poem involving pederasty, alcoholism, jealousy and sexual and physical abuse. The show opened to some good reviews, but Seller’s planned Broadway transfer was quashed by a damaging pan from the New York Times. The producer said he felt that otherwise, the “extraordinary showmanship” of the piece would overcome any distaste for the subject matter, especially among younger audiences. (In fact, an arguably darker and more depressing musical adaptation of “Wild Party,” directed by George C. Wolfe, did reach Broadway that same season -- and failed.)

“Avenue Q”, which uses the conventions of “Sesame Street” to make its points lightheartedly, is arguably an easier sell. (And, in fact, it has become the first commercial hit of the season, having recently paid back its investment.) But even so, Seller says he and McCollum lobbied the creators -- book writer Jeff Whitty and songwriters Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx -- to end the musical with the entire company happily on stage rather than with just Princeton standing alone in the doorway, still caught in his existential quandary. “My instinct is to go with what is most pleasing to the audience,” Seller says, “but they argued -- quite rightly -- that this is not what the show was about. Life is always a struggle in finding your purpose.”

On the other hand, producer Ben Gannon, who shepherded “Boy From Oz” from page to stage, first in Australia and then in New York, says that appealing to the broadest possible audience was always uppermost in his mind. In his favor was the fact that Allen, at one time married to Liza Minnelli, was a consummate showman who could appeal both to gay men and the proverbial “blue-haired” matinee ladies. More problematic, the semiautobiographical musical had to address the composer’s and his boyfriend’s deaths from complications of AIDS in the early ‘90s as well as Allen’s abusive and alcoholic father, who committed suicide. (Not to mention the accidental overdose of his mother-in-law, Judy Garland.)

The show in Australia glossed over some of the sadder aspects. But Gannon said he knew that American audiences would demand “more depth.” Consequently, Martin Sherman, whose best-known drama in America had been “Bent,” about gays in Nazi Germany, was hired to add heft to the original book. “To tell the story truthfully, we knew we had to include these elements,” Gannon says. “But the last thing we needed was a scene in a hospital bed.” The solution? Get the AIDS deaths out of the way fast to reach what the producer calls “Rio Heaven,” the musical’s concluding fantasia of all the characters -- living and dead -- reunited in a extended play rendition of Allen’s hit “I Go to Rio.”

Of course, many people in the audience would be willing to go to hell and back because the guide is, after all, Hugh Jackman, who will host tonight’s telecast and has a bet-the-house lock on the leading actor in a musical Tony Award. “Hugh, like Peter, is incredibly charming and likable and that carries the day in terms of handling these darker issues,” Gannon says. “But we always knew that we would go only so far into that world if we wanted to have any hope of recouping our [$8.5-million] investment. You can’t ask people to spend $100 a ticket and then depress them.”

“Wicked” had wider latitude in telling its revisionist story about the Wicked Witch of the West, who is neither as wicked nor as witchy as she has been fixed in the popular imagination. According to its lead producer, Marc Platt, the show could have struck either “a bright bouncy tone” or a more “brooding and ominous one.” He says the fact that the creative team would aim for somewhere in the middle was clear from the first formal reading of the musical in Los Angeles in March 2001. “What surprised us was that people were not only entertained but also so emotionally involved in some of the darker undercurrents,” Platt says. “This is about a girl who is brutally rejected by her father because of her skin color and is abused by those in power.”

Positively ‘Wicked’

Among the boldest decisions taken was to entrust a $14-million musical to Joe Mantello (“Love! Valour! Compassion!” and “Take Me Out”), who had never directed a musical when he was tapped to do Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s “Wicked.” “Joe matched the sensibility of Stephen and Winnie to deliver mainstream entertainment that could deliver great songs, sets and music,” Platt says, “but surprise the audience by tackling more provocative themes, like the responsibility of power and who gets to write history. Like the Wizard says, ‘Back where I’m from, we believe all sorts of things that aren’t true. We call it history.’ ”

A hot ticket, “Wicked” should have no problem recouping its investment and launching a global franchise, something few people are predicting for “Caroline, or Change.” The musical by Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori is by far the riskiest commercial proposition to arrive on Broadway since Stephen Sondheim’s “Passion” (or, for that matter, “Assassins”, though that is protected by being presented under the auspices of the nonprofit Roundabout Theatre).

Like “Passion,” “Caroline” also features a sour lead character whose dreams are stuck in amber. Caroline’s best hope for the future -- a realization brought about after a particularly ugly exchange in the Jewish household in which she serves as a maid -- is simply one of resignation and calm, hardly the cathartic ending promised by most musicals. Nearly two dozen producers, including HBO, have ponied up $6.5 million to transfer to Broadway a show that has little interest in catering to audiences -- or critics (the show opened at the Public Theater to mixed notices). In fact, it seems unlikely the show would ever have transferred if not for the cachet of Kushner’s name, particularly after the acclaim he received for the HBO miniseries of “Angels in America.”

“I think whenever you’re blazing a trail, you just have to keep whacking away with a machete and be thankful for whatever you do get from audiences,” says Carole Shorenstein Hays, the San Francisco-based theater owner and producer (“Fences,” “Topdog/Underdog”). “I think if you ever try to do the safe thing, it rarely turns out to be that way.”

If Tony history is any indication, “Caroline” will have a tough time snatching the top award of the night from its competition. Almost invariably, the sunnier show has won: “West Side Story” lost to “The Music Man,” “Gypsy” to “The Sound of Music,” “Sunday in the Park With George” to “La Cage aux Folles.” But Hays, who insists that the show will tour nationally regardless of how it fares on Broadway, says that Tony or not, long Broadway run or not, she is convinced that “Caroline” will enter the canon of great American musicals, like “Show Boat.”

“When you’re a pioneer, sometimes it takes a bit of work and a bit of time,” she says. “Sometimes it’s better to leave it for history to decide rather than to try to second-guess these things.”

But second-guessing is what Broadway producers are paid to do in terms of the audience’s acceptance of whatever may be proffered. Those expectations change, as the revival of “Chicago” has proved so lucratively. When that John Kander-Fred Ebb musical opened in 1975, director Bob Fosse’s black comic vision of merry murderesses was widely considered by both audiences and critics as too cynical and nasty. Likewise, when “Assassins” bowed in 1991 off-Broadway, there was a revulsion expressed in many of the reviews that the subject matter of presidential assassination could be considered fitting for the musical idiom. The glowing reviews it has received this time around are a vindication of sorts for Sondheim and book writer John Weidman.

Still, Broadway producers are likely to proceed with caution in gauging audience expectations. Among the new shows slated for next season are more musicals like “Mamma Mia!” with plots loosely structured around songbooks, employing the hits of Elvis Presley (“All Shook Up”) and the Beach Boys, as well as an adaptation of the film “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” which is a fizzy yarn of two con men in the South of France fleecing a seemingly naive heiress.

The first musical out of the gate is “Dracula,” directed by Des McAnuff and composed by Frank Wildhorn, which tried out at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2001. According to McAnuff, the show, which features Tom Hewitt, smitten romantically with his prey, “will explore such fundamental questions as ‘What will you sacrifice for love?’ ” If there are any musicals next season that will further test the commercial limits of the art form, they are probably headed for the not-for-profit arena.

Venues such as the Public and the Roundabout are invaluable that way, Hays says, testing the viability of a show. “Or is that liability?”