Broadway's Strangest Comeback
"The Ed Sullivan" show went off the air in 1971 and its much-caricatured host (the hunched shoulders, the Nixonesque stiffness, the self-congratulatory references to "a really big shew") died three years later. But Sullivan seems to be staging a comeback this holiday season. The man comedians once affectionately referred to as "Old Stone Face" and his show are important plot points in two big musicals: White Christmas (where the song and dance team in the show are supposed to be headliners on Sullivan's variety show) and Bye, Bye Birdie (where a girl chosen to give an Elvis-like rock star a final kiss before he enters the army and her family appear on the Sullivan show.)
The musicals are revivals or remakes of shows that first opened when Sullivan used to draw as many as 70 million viewers to his Sunday night show but I'm not sure how many current theatergoers under 40 (and yes, there are theatergoers under 40) even know who he is. The audience at Friday night's performance of Bye, Bye Birdie giggled when an actor, standing in the shadow, assumed Sullivan's classic pose but I think they were just in a giggling mood.
I, alas, was not. That's not because I think the show is as bad as all the critics have said (although I can't say it's good either) but because although various websites list the curtain time as 8 p.m., the show started at 7. And my sister and I weren't the only ones to get there late. A steady stream of people trickled in until around 8:10 or so. Still, the crowd seemed to have a good time and the renovated Henry Miller's Theatre looked fairly full, despite the fact that, according to the latest box office figures, Bye, Bye Birdie's attendance fell 2.2% last week to 84.5%.
The latter number would probably make the folks at White Christmas as happy as a four-year-old who finds a Zhu Zhu under the Christmas tree. Attendance at White Christmas rose 1.5% last week but the show still only managed to fill 77.8% of its seats. I can't say I'm surprised and I don't place all the blame on the recession either. This year's version didn't strike me as being nearly as charming as the one I saw last year.
Maybe producers of both shows should have considered updating the Sullivan reference and placing their characters on David Letterman's show. After all, the "Late Show with David Letterman," which is enjoying rising ratings, airs from the Ed Sullivan Theater.