On Monday of last week, Oct. 21, the $23.5 million Broadway musical adaptation of “Back to the Future” celebrated “Back to the Future Day,” the day when Marty McFly and Doc travel to October 21, 2015 in “Back to the Future Part II.” Don Fullilove, who played Goldie Wilson in the first “Back to the Future” film, made a cameo appearance.
However, just three days later, it was announced that “Back to the Future,” which opened during the summer of 2023 at the Winter Garden Theatre, would end its Broadway run on Jan. 5. After an impressive debut at the box office, the show has not continued to gross enough to meet its high weekly running costs.
In my review, I wrote that the show was a lavish but pointless tribute to the original film, combining the memorable orchestral music and songs (“The Power of Love,” “Back in Time,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Earth Angel”) of the film score with subpar new songs and minor changes to the screenplay. The production is primarily built around a handful of appearances by the DeLorean time machine, which suddenly materializes and disappears, and later even levitates and spins in the air. This is not unlike how the “King Kong” musical relied on a giant King Kong puppet – or how “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” back in 2005 featured a high-tech flying car.
The stage adaptation of the 2005 film “Good Night, and Good Luck,” starring George Clooney as broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow, is now set to open at the Winter Garden Theatre in the spring. While the Winter Garden is typically reserved for large-scale musicals (such as the original productions of “West Side Story,” “Funny Girl,” “Follies,” and “Cats”), Clooney’s Broadway debut and star power probably justify having the drama take the theater temporarily. Clooney appeared in the original film in a different role and was nominated for an Academy Award.
‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ trims runtime again
When “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” opened on Broadway in 2018, it was presented in two parts, each lasting about two-and-a-half hours. After the pandemic, it was streamlined into a single part with a running time of three and a half hours. Now, the producers are reducing the runtime even further to under three hours. The revised version will debut on Nov. 12 when a new company begins performances. The move is no doubt intended to make the show more appealing to out-of-town theatergoers and tourists. “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” centers on the children of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy.
Connelly Theater suspends operations following decision by church to monitor content
The psychological thriller “Job,” which just ended its Broadway run, and Kate Berlant’s inventive one-woman show “Kate” are just a few of the many Off-Broadway productions to have played the Connelly Theater in Alphabet City in recent years. However, the theater’s future is now in serious question due to a decision by the Archdiocese of New York, owner of the building housing the theater, to forbid shows that contain content the Catholic Church finds unacceptable. This caused the theater’s general manager, Josh Luxenberg, to resign, and the archdiocese to suspend future operations, as per the New York Times.
SheNYC Arts, which previously produced plays by women, transgender, and nonbinary writers at the theater, is now looking for a new performance space. “The Archdiocese has specifically called out our past shows at the Connelly Theater, calling them ‘inappropriate’ for discussing issues like reproductive rights and gender and making it clear to us that shows like that will not be allowed in the future,” the company’s artistic director Danielle DeMatteo said in a statement. Off-Broadway’s New York Theatre Workshop, which was slated to present “Becoming Eve” (about a rabbi who becomes a transgender woman) at the theater this season, is also now seeking another theater.
