We've Hit Peak Theater

Nobody knows how to succeed on Broadway anymore.

- Boris Kachka

One of the last premiere parties of the Broadway season felt a little on the nose. The Great Gatsby, a ballad-belting, pyrotechnic glow-up of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American tragedy with two onstage cars and a budget approaching $25 million, celebrated its official opening on April 25, the night of the Tony-nominations deadline, with an after-party at Tavern on the Green. The theme was the Roaring ’20s—the louche decade of easy money that preceded the Great Depression.

Producers in newsboy caps raised their coupe glasses to actors in feathered flapper fits. They were not necessarily in the mood to talk about the specter haunting the ball. Spring 2024 saw a frenzy of new shows opening (21 since January) in the face of two formidable obstacles: costs that have nearly doubled over a decade and an audience almost 20 percent smaller than it was pre-pandemic. Yet Broadway was partying on, stuffing 12 premieres into the nine days before the Tony deadline. “It’s like the planes lining up on the tarmac at La Guardia in bad weather,” as one publicist put it.