FOR OFF-BROADWAY, UNCERTAINTY TAKES CENTER STAGE.Byline: Peter Marks Peter Marks is the Chief Executive of the British retailer the Co-operative Group. Background Peter V Marks was born in Bradford in 1949. Career Peter Marks first joined what became Yorkshire Co-operatives in 1967 as a management trainee in the Food Division. The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times Daryl Roth, a veteran theater producer, had just about given up hope. For months, her efforts to find an off-Broadway house in which to bring back ``Old Wicked Songs,'' a critically acclaimed play that had a successful limited run last fall, had come to naught: The commercial playhouses of off-Broadway were booked solid with new productions and established hits. Then, about six weeks ago, the logjam log·jam n. 1. An immovable mass of floating logs crowded together. 2. A deadlock, as in negotiations; an impasse. Noun 1. broke suddenly. Play after off-Broadway play closed. Several new productions flopped and several established hits fizzled. Theater owners who had been offering Roth places on their waiting lists suddenly wanted to offer her something else: their places. The reversal of fortune that benefited Roth spelled trouble for other off-Broadway producers. This spring, virtually the entire lineup of shows in commercial off-Broadway theaters faded, folded, or decided to hit the road in search of new audiences. In quick succession, eight of the most expensive and highest-profile off-Broadway shows closed or announced they would this month, including ``Zombie A computer that has been covertly taken over in order to perform some nefarious task. It is estimated that millions of PCs around the world have been compromised and, under the control of a third party, routinely transmit messages unbeknownst to the user. Prom,'' ``After-Play,'' ``Below the Belt,'' ``Nixon's Nixon,'' ``I Do! I Do!'' ``The Food Chain'' and ``Picasso at the Lapin Agile Picasso at the Lapin Agile is a play written by Steve Martin in 1993. It features Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, who meet at a bar called the Lapin Agile (Nimble Rabbit) in Montmartre, Paris. .'' The question echoes through suddenly vacant playhouses all over town: What killed the artistically rich off-Broadway season? Was it competition from an unexpectedly robust Broadway? Was it the rising cost of an off-Broadway ticket (top price: $45) or a shrinking audience for serious theater? Had the life of each production simply run its course, or were some shows yanked before their time by producers fearful of the summer doldrums doldrums (dŏl`drəmz) or equatorial belt of calms, area around the earth centered slightly north of the equator between the two belts of trade winds. ? In the complex marketplace of New York theater, the answer, it seems, is all of the above. Some off-Broadway producers and theater executives say the season's collapse reflects the very nature of off-Broadway, where small houses and narrow profit margins make the life of a production especially precarious.Others, however, say that a combination of factors peculiar to this season conspired to do off-Broadway in. ``There is only so much theater dollar, and there was so much competition,'' said Robert Straus, one of the producers of ``The Food Chain,'' Nicky Silver's comedy of manners comedy of manners Witty, ironic form of drama that satirizes the manners and fashions of a particular social class or set. Comedies of manners were usually written by sophisticated authors for members of their own social class, and they typically are concerned with social and appetites, which closed Sunday after a 10-month run. |
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