Peter Marks: As tourist-friendly musicals take over, Broadway no longer belongs to playwrights
Posted by: MockingbirdGirl11:45 pm EST 12/27/17
In June, four original dramas by highly regarded playwrights vied for the Tony Award for best play of the Broadway season. Three months later, all four were gone.
Their truncated lives reflect an imbalance that has all but eradicated a once thriving category of American entertainment: the commercial new Broadway play. For decades, the theaters of Broadway — now numbering 41 — were the moneymaking breeding ground for these plays. But what was once the rule on Broadway is now the rare exception. And the traditional for-profit, new Broadway play is disappearing almost as surely as the dodo...
