Ad Wars

So, I bought the Sunday Times with the Fall Broadway preview in it, and was just so taken by the full-page, full-color, and, in some cases, colorless ads for all the new Broadway shows, I just had to do a write-up on them. I don't have a background in marketing or advertising, but I always disagreed with the old Entertainment Weekly poster reviews for incredibly valid reasons.

Noticeably absent from the ad pages? Banned-for-years but nonetheless still extremely popular revivals Spring Awakening and Les Miserables.

Let's get to this, shall we?

The Pirate Queen: Oops. I mean, "Riverdream PRESENTS Boublil and Schoenberg's The Pirate Queen: AN EPIC NEW MUSICAL." Groups on sale now! If you've seen the subway ads, you aren't missing much here. Just a simple graphic of a woman who isn't Stephanie Block with her face obscured by a mass of blue digitized hair. I mean, this doesn't leave much to be desired. All we know about this show is that it's from the creators of Les Miserables and it might come to Broadway late this February.

Which is exactly what happened with Martin Guerre. Hey! Remember that? C-

Jay Johnson: The Two and Only!: What a sad little number. No colorization, only less than half a page with some very encouraging press quotes with less of Jay, more of his puppets, and the interesting tagline "The new comedy about finding your voice...and throwing it."

Sue me for thinking ventriloquism is a lost art. I'd take this over The Pirate Queen any day. B+

High Fidelity: This won't be giving the cute novel cover, or even the old John Cusack Hard Day's Night-derived movie poster a run for its money anytime soon. It's just a nondescript black-and-white photograph of attractive, appealing leads Will Chase and Jenn Colella with their faces obscured and their bodies canoodling in indie rock shirts. It's not very sexy. The only color part of this is a gigantic decal-looking label that says "High Fidelity: Live and In Stereo," and even that covers Colella's strategically photographed torso. And it's in a highly pukey yellow shade. What we do know is the show is re-based on Brooklyn, and written by some amazing people. But you'd never know that..or anything else about the show except that it's a Broadway musical based on High Fidelity.

Are they going for an indie rock show poster feel? Or an album cover? What is this? It all looks forced. Aside from the so very "Clarissa Explains It All" Nickelodeon graffito font written "Every life has a soundtrack," you won't be able to find out much else about it. You'd have to squint just to find "TopFiveBreakups.com" nestled in there somewhere. C+

The Vertical Hour: This is the book my mother would reach straight for at Borders. Wait...you mean it's not a book? It's not even a play about books? Wait, no. It's "THE WORLD PREMIERE OF A NEW PLAY ABOUT THE CONFLICT ABROAD AND THE CONFLICT AT HOME." Starring "Four-Time Academy Award Nominee Julianne Moore and Golden Globe Nominee Bill Nighy, Directed by Academy Award Winner Sam Mendes." This is like those annoying ads for All The King's Men that purport to be smart, but are really just geared toward stupid people. Sure, they look stylish, but then you slowly begin to realize that it's really just a shameless, hackneyed remake of a much better classic film starring a lot of people who have been nominated for and/or won these many awards of some sort.

People, when will you get it through your heads? The Tony is not the Oscar. At this rate, the Oscar isn't even trying anymore. D+

Company: And, phone rings, door chimes, you know the drill. It's a nice composite graphic with pasted-on photographs around it, that spreads several different messages around a full page, with the uniting theme of "perfect relationships," and a scintillating log line: "Five married couples, three single women, and one conflicted bachelor try to balance romance, commitment, and sex in the city that never sleeps." That's a mouthful. Also? It's all so well-spaced. The show's star, Raul Esparza, isn't well-known outside of theat-uh circles, but he gets top billing, in more ways than one.

But the ice cubes? I know this is supposed to be set at a swank Manhattan cocktail party (it's like "Sex & the City" set to music), but this is not an "ice cube" show. It is pink and it is purple. But dark blue and glass panes? The poses of the actors playing the different characters are fine, as are their names in off-white serif type against a plain background, as opposed to something cooler, like a city backdrop of stars. It's like the seventies Woody Allen version of the poster, as opposed to the eighties romantic-comedy Nora Ephron interpretation. But it looks as if nothing's changed since the original regional production this revival is based on. At least one of the girls changed her hair. It was probably her image consultant's idea.

I'm sorry...it's just...I'm extremely excited for this show, I really am. I actually know two people in the cast: One through my job, and the other through mutual friends, and I couldn't be more ecstatic and happy for them about this huge opportunity. I love this show and the soundtrack CD, despite all bad experiences in the past I may inexorably tie to it. But I was recently referred to a "image consultant," because somebody from Company supposedly attributed the entirety of her success as an actress to this.

And I should get into this issue at some point with the blog, if I am reaching any desperately needy actors out there...Follow that link. Go see a life coach. Seriously. Take a career planning class. If you are completely disillusioned and impressionable at this point in your life, you really need to get your shit together, and you will listen to and truly believe anything, listen to positive affirmation above all else and believe it as such.

But when you surpass that plateau and gain so much confidence that you can go out there and pursue a real career on your own terms, a lot of the self-help mumbo-jumbo doesn't ring as true as it did before, and it sounds more like, well...self-help mumbo-jumbo.

See? This is exactly why I am trying so hard to get on a tour. I need to prove to my roommate that she can have this entire apartment to herself and live a normal adult life in it. I need to prove to my parents that I am independent enough to join Equity and seriously pursue this as something other than a hobby. (My parents: "Those Equity actors they got for the community theatre are the real deal...Who cares if they're not very good? They're in Equity...You'll never get into Equity, Rose, you're not as good as them..."). I need to prove to my friends that I can join them in this crusade, relate to them more as just peers, and live my life on my own terms. All of this has happened for a very good reason.

And, above all of that, I need to prove to a shitload of casting directors that I can be nice and talented and that I so need this. I want this and I need it a fuckload more than the old lady with a wig and kids to support does because I am not bitter and an asshole. I have no reason to be. Also? So I can join the union and find real legal jurisdiction in order to sue their asses for being inhumanly cruel to me because they can.

I have encountered a serious bias against educated people in show business. I don't know why, but I suppose the fact that we didn't devote the entirety of our four years in college to working as actors, singers, and dancers is actually perceived as a kind of hindrance. They assume that we were too busy playing with our chemistry sets instead of honing our craft, which is bullshit. They forget how much of a voluntary choice all of this really is.

So, when I had built enough of a trust with my life coach, I wanted to ask about how an educated person, like said actress, who doesn't have a degree in musical theatre, but nonetheless went to a top-ranked school, got to Broadway. What route did she take? And the answer, boiled down to two words, was, as such: "Image consultant."

So, I obsessed over my clothes and hair and went straight to point A again. At which point I realized that you do not get cast in a John Doyle show based on your clothes and hair: You have more of a chance based on your ability to play three musical instruments at once. As an actress friend of mine, who is also very well-educated, interpreted the real answer in three words: "Buy my shit."

When, really, it's totally free to decide, "Hey, I should dye my hair red."

Anyway, the poster is good, but not good enough. It promotes a product, but, by understatement, it just doesn't sell it the right way. Leading me to believe they do need some serious image overhaul...or else. B

Disney and Cameron Mackintosh Present Mary Poppins: "Wind's in the east, there's a mist coming in...Like something is brewing and 'bout to begin." We all know the brand. But this is ALL branding. There's the familiar logo of a silhouetted Poppins flying over the chimneys of England, but how do we know this isn't going to be like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: A West End import Americanized and compartmentalized right next to the McDonald's in Times Square?

There's no mention of stars Ashley Brown and Gavin Lee, who have certainly gotten their fair share of press attention. Instead, there's "Based on the stories of P.L. Travers and the Walt Disney film." Well, actually, even the understudies get as much play here as...Two-time Tony nominee Rebecca Luker? What's she doing in this? B-

Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia: For a show that's marketed squarely to snobby elitists and college drama geeks alike, they wasted no time clarifying how big this is going to be. The only two-page ad spread, it's a real eye-opener, with a weird panorama graphic, an extremely lengthy description of the plot, and a handy color-coded chart and mini-calendar denoting when each individual "chapter" runs concurrently, with the entire trilogy running at other times as a nine-hour marathon. Point is, as cluttered as it looks, they still make Stoppard the main selling point. This would be interesting, considering the sweeping, oil-painted portrait of a gigantic shipwreck, juxtaposed with the expansive, snooze-worthy, downright unreadable summary of it being about Russian intellectuals, if Stoppard really was the main selling point.

Because the cast is featured just as prominently, if in name only, and, if they aren't actually pictured in the ad...not showing them in character gives us reason to really worry. Someone on ATC accurately dubbed this thing "Coast of Wanktopia" because, given the fact that it's a Lincoln Center prestige piece that featured some of Britain's best natural resources in the original London cast, when it came time to recast this for American audiences, did they even look at their choices? Ethan Hawke? Amy Irving? Josh Charles? Wanks.

Just one qualm: This is a sweeping epic with forty-plus people involved. Every cast member gets very clear billing. Who are these people? I mean, David Pittu's in it, and I guess he was in King Kong, so, he's cool, but how did they find so many actors to put their names in boldface type for two whole pages? They couldn't have just found them at the EPAs. Strictly for Ben Brantley fans only. I miss Wendy Wasserstein. D

Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas: A very Manhattan landscape accentuates fun graphics, striking colors, and the sealer: "Catch the Grinch!" But, to quote an old evaluation of a forgotten movie poster, Liberty Heights, we're all just going to think that this is about one thing and one thing only: A big, ugly yellow car. D-

The Times They Are A'Changin': The phrase "Broadway musical set in a traveling circus" has about as much appeal as the operative words "a cover of the Foreigner classic 'I Wanna Know What Love Is'" or even "blackface." Nothing strikes more fear into the hearts of theatergoers. Luckily, the iconographic tents and wagons are painted so discreetly into the picture, they're barely in view. Crossing a prominent wooden signpost, with the Public Theatre-style sideways boldface type, this stylizedly plays up the involvement of big names Twyla Tharp and Bob Dylan over substance...and the neon scheme is a great touch, with a comet flying over this dusky sky.

But this is indoor entertainment, people. And, unlike the discreetly brilliant Movin' Out street sign logo, it just isn't the same. C

Grey Gardens: Doing everything right, this Broadway transfer recycles the original poster from its celebrated Off-Broadway run: "The Incredible True Story of Jackie O's Most Outrageous Relatives." A tantalizing portrait of the main character here, a tucked-in, but still very noticeably Brantley quote there, a non-drab, but not-too-flashy color scheme, and the demure denotations of stars Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson with a simple declaration of this as a musical, and you've got yourself the perfect New York Times ad. A

Losing Louie: The latest quirky British import from Manhattan Theatre Club, the show stars very few big names and almost necessitates a great poster in order to make it the sleeper hit we all should think it deserves to be. So, we get a black-and-white shot of the four actors, seemingly lying down from different directions, with blankly humorous looks on their faces, holding black roses and wearing ties and pearls. Clearly, this show revolves around a funeral. And, clearly, the quirky green typeface lets us know that it's got dark humor to spare, with an apparently untested playwright (Simon Mendes da Costa) and a tested director (Jerry Zaks) above the cast and crew. Based on the ad, and the deliberate lack of a tagline, surely, we can't really figure out that this comedy was actually a big hit on the West End, but I think some newbies will definitely be intrigued with this proposition. Those funny facial expressions could be worth the $49.50 AmEx special alone.

Just one quibble: What is this, anyway? My Big Dry British Funeral Party? MTC has a reputation for using the same stable of actors and playwrights, but I guess Brian F. O'Byrne was just too busy doing The Coast of Utopia. A-

Heartbreak House and Suddenly Last Summer: Underpaid stars? Limited runs? Sparse ad space? This must be the Roundabout. The Heartbreak House segment doesn't do much to promote anything other than the not-nearly-as-well-known-as-you'd- think title, with George Bernard Shaw's name slightly obscured and a strange illustration of a factory (house?) on water, and two cringeworthy slogans: "Classic is always in season" and "a timely comedy from a timeless master." Meanwhile, all Suddenly, Last Summer has to offer are gauzy headshot photgraphs of stars Blythe Danner and Carla Gugino. How quickly we forget this Tennesee Williams play is really about native boys devouring her son, Sebastian, and she witnesses every course, from soup to nuts. F

A Chorus Line: This is coming back? Oh, yeah. Here's a nice lineup with a bright, if distracting, color scheme: The actors, facing sideways in a diagonal pose, wearing the original seventies costumes from the iconic show. Effortlessly, it gets away with some subtle tricks here, like using the original show font, and, in subtly giving away the show's ending, dimming a spotlight over the cast that doesn't quite capture everyone pictured - an underlying theme of this seminal musical. You'd have to look closely to spot Cassie. At this point, it's too early to complain about why Sheila is black now, or why Zack isn't pictured with them, but we really do want to root for these kids, along with the innocent header: "Five, six, seven...8 days until performances begin." Of course, neither the cast nor the creative team are listed in this, and too much space is cut off for the real bottom line: This poster is dwarfed by a giant American Express ad. C+