Hissyfitting, Broadway style
April's Broadway opening of "Clybourne Park" -- the new play that the Arden Theatre Company opened in its own production Wednesday night -- has been cancelled for now.
The scheduled Broadway opening of Bruce Norris' new play, Clybourne Park, which was much anticipated for April in New York, has been cancelled. That leaves the Arden Theatre Company -- which opened the fierce and funny show about racism and gentrification in its own production Wednesday night -- as the only sure-shot in a 100-mile radius to see the play, which some people believe would have been a shoo-in for the best-play Tony this year. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama last year.
The Broadway production was shelved this week after Norris --an actor as well as a playwright -- backed out of a role in a pilot for HBO that his Broadway producer, the heavy-hitting Scott Rudin (The Book of Mormon on Broadway, film's No Country for Old Men) was backing. An angry Rudin this week pulled out of Clybourne Park on Broadway, leaving the production to scout for new money. The imbroglio was first made public in a New York Post article Wednesday.
--Howard Shapiro