Theatre Thursday

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/theater/10love.html?scp=1&sq=phantom%20of%20the%20opera&st=cse

http://theater.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/theater/reviews/26cher.html

http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/theater/reviews/23after.html


Ok, here we have the reviews for three sequels to perennial classic plays (although, to be fair, "After Miss Julie" is more of an adaptation than a sequel), and my only question is Why??

Neither "After Miss Julie" nor "The Cherry Orchard Sequel" were written by the original author, and "Love Never Dies" was written by Webber decades after the original was performed. In fact, when I thought about it I could only think of a very slim few who write follow-ups to their original work. The most prominent examples are Tony Kushner (who wrote "Perestroika," the sequel to "Angels in America," only after being begged by producers to do so), and August Wilson (whose plays progress throughout the 20th century decade by decade, but only rarely have some overlap in actual characters).

This, to me, is one of the most interesting differences between film and theatre, and obviously it comes down to money. In film, where the bottom line is always number one, a movie with any kind of financial success always gets a sequel, often announced before the original has finished its movie theatre run.

By the way, apparently there is going to be an Avatar sequel. Number one, God help us all. Number two, was there any plotline left open that could be used in the sequel? Was there any question that we had unanswered at the end of those three hours we spent on Pandora?

To solve the latter problem, many Hollywood movies are just writing in cliffhangers to every movie so that if it does get picked up for a sequel, they're ready to go.

But I digress. It's Theatre Thursday. I think that we can unanimously agree that in movies, sequels are almost unanimously worse than the original (though there are notable exceptions like Godfather II), but does it work the same way in plays? My guess is yes. For one thing, for a play to receive a sequel it has to have a very strong following, and you can only get that through extremely popular initial runs, or years and years of popular syndication. This usually means that the authors who receive sequels are extremely well-established (like Chekhov or Strindberg or Webber), and it's almost impossible to live up to expectations laid down by the initial works themselves.

GTG... More later.