Rachel Chavkin directed the hit “Hadestown” and the short-lived “Lempicka.”
At Joe Allen, a restaurant on Forty-sixth Street where denizens of the theatre world have been convening for nearly six decades, the walls are lined with posters of Broadway’s legendary duds. In the early days, for a show to make the display, it had to close in less than a week. Qualifying flops included such productions as “Drat! The Cat!,” a sex farce about a Victorian cat burglar (eight performances), and “Via Galactica,” a seventies rock opera about a trash collector who lives on an asteroid (seven performances). Joe Allen specializes in comfort food— burgers, banana cream pie—and there is something oddly comforting, too, about its morbid choice of décor. No single misfire stands alone; failure is its own kind of rite of passage, to be commemorated along with success. The first poster that the restaurant ever hung, in 1965, was for “Kelly,” about a man who jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge and survives. The show was such a fiasco that the writers sued the producers even before it premièred; it opened and closed on the same day.
Denne historien er fra June 03, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra June 03, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
THE HOME FRONT
Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
PRESIDENT FOR SALE
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.