It was that unique Anglo-American Winston Churchill who observed that “the United States and the United Kingdom are two nations divided by a common language.”
But so far as theater language is concerned, Britain and America are as close as peas in a pod.
Eleven shows playing on Broadway right now are also playing in London’s West End. Seven more, although not in London right now, have been in London. Five more are expected in London next season.
That’s a total of 23 shared shows. Have a hit in Gotham and you’re on your way to Leicester Square; rake it in on the West End and you’ve got a ticket to the Great White Way.
It wasn’t always so. Just after World War II, all that was good in the English-speaking theater was American, though Broadway hits such as Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” and Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun,” did not always fare well in Britain.
Partly this was due to the fact that, while American actors could invariably do very acceptable British accents, British actors were hopelessly at sea with American ones.
I well remember making myself very unpopular as a London reviewer by pointing out that British comic icon Frankie Howerd was no match for Zero Mostel in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”
Those days are over. Here and now productions in both of the twin cities seem to be as standardized as a Starbucks franchise.
Whether you see, say, “Les Miz” or “The Lion King” in London or New York you get – like that cafe latte – absolutely the same thing.
In the past couple of weeks I have seen the musical “The Full Monty” in both London and New York, and also on Broadway the Royal National Theatre’s production of “Oklahoma!,” which I had originally seen a couple of years earlier in London.
How well do they maintain those standards?
Interestingly, four of the five guys in “The Full Monty” created their roles in the Broadway production, and the fifth, another Broadway actor, Jarrod Emick, is an ideal replacement for Patrick Wilson, who has moved on to the elephant-high corn of “Oklahoma!”
This old Broadway cast for “The Full Monty” is just a tad stronger than the current replacement cast on Broadway itself. The women – all British – are not just good but also convincing.
“Oklahoma!” is a reverse example of the new Broadway/West End replica business – and in this instance, it perhaps doesn’t work quite as well. Many people who first saw it in London have expressed a slight disappointment in the Broadway version.
This I think is not because of the casting – which is certainly as good as in London (though the glamour of Hugh Jackman’s Curly is missing). The problem is the theater.
The production was devised for the huge thrust stage and vast open overhead space of the National’s Olivier Theatre, and trying to put it onto the proscenium-arched Gershwin stage is simply not a perfect fit.
Yet both “The Full Monty” and “Oklahoma!” show how extraordinarily close our two theatrical centers are. Walk into many shows and you just wouldn’t know quite where you were.
Quick orientation tip: They charge for playbills and sell ice cream in the London theaters.
