On Broadway, there’s been no trickle down from the banner season for musicals to their proverbial poor cousin, the plays. The revival of A.R. Gurney’s “Sylvia,” with Matthew Broderick as a helpless mutt lover and Annaleigh Ashford as the title canine, went to the dogs rather quickly. And from a critical point of view, it’s been open season on David Mamet, Al Pacino, and “China Doll.” The poor notices have no doubt served to dampen the box-office. But Pacino may have the last laugh. The drama, about the misfortunes of a law-skirting billionaire, is still the highest-grossing play on Broadway at the moment with an average ticket price ranging between $150 and $166.By comparison, the two best-reviewed plays, “King Charles III” and “A View from the Bridge,” are hovering around an average ticket price of $110 and $82.50, respectively. Bettering those is another star vehicle, “Misery,” whose ticket price started out at a $134 and is now around $115. The latter has a couple of brand names associated with it: Bruce Willis, who is making his Broadway debut playing the unfortunate novelist; Laurie Metcalf as his deranged fan; and Stephen King, on whose 1987 horror novel the drama is based. Whether the lack of enthusiasm among the critics will hurt either of the limited engagements of “China Doll” or “Misery” will not be fully seen until the winter doldrums set in at the box-office. My guess is that both are likely to tilt into the black prior to their closing dates: January 31 for “China Doll” and February 14 for “Misery.”Each season has their “snob” hit — the show that appeals to the chattering classes — and right now that crown goes to “King Charles III,” Mike Bartlett’s futuristic fable about the ascension of Prince Charles to the throne following the death of his mother. Given the good reviews, one might have expected the show to draw more strongly that it has been. And the comparatively large cast means that its break-even point is higher than the two-hander that is “China Doll” or the three-hander of “Misery.”Not far behind in appeal to the intelligentsia is Ivo van Hove’s acclaimed revival of “A View from the Bridge,” which will also be a very strong contender come Tony Award season. Brit Mark Strong, as Brooklyn longshoreman Eddie Carbone, leads an exemplary cast of eight in a production that celebrates two milestones: the 60th anniversary of the play and the centennial of Arthur Miller. James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson are giving their all in another two-hander, the revival of “The Gin Game,” D.L. Coburn’s Pulitzer Prize winner about an elderly couple whose card games degenerate into lacerating insults. Nonetheless the drama has been doing mediocre business. Meanwhile at the non-profit theaters, there was little enthusiasm for a trio of high-minded endeavors, despite the marquee names associated with them. Revivals of Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love,” starring Sam Rockwell and Nina Arianda, and Harold Pinter’s “Old Times,” finished their respective limited engagements with something of a whimper even though the latter had the star power of Clive Owen and Eve Best. “Therese Raquin,” a new stage adaptation of the Emile Zola novel, proved to be a less than stirring vehicle for the Broadway debut of Keira Knightley. The critics were sharply divided on “Raquin.” Jeremy Gerard, writing in Deadline, called it “a sexless bore,” while Elisabeth Vincentelli in the New York Post itemized what you got for your money: “An orchestra seat for Broadway’s ‘Therese Raquin’ costs $137, but this gets you heated sex, white-knuckle suspense, spooky gothic ambience and a murder in a real boat floating in real water. Oh, and a confident…performance from Keira Knightley, as a small-town adulteress.” The limited engagement closes on January 3.
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