Broadway: Now you see it, now you don't. Oh, wait! Now you do, again.
On, then off, now it looks as is "Clybourne Park" will be back on the Broadway schedule this season, again.
The scheduled Broadway opening of Bruce Norris' new play, Clybourne Park, which was much anticipated for April in New York but was shelved, is back on again.
The Broadway production had been cancelled earlier 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 pulled out of Clybourne Park on Broadway, leaving the production to scramble for new money.
Early Friday, Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters -- the owners of the Broadway theater where Clybourne Park had been booked to run -- indicated in an announcement that his company would produce the play, or at least had lined up other producers to do so. Roth sent this concise announcement over the Internet:
In Philadelphia, the Arden Theatre Company on Wednesday opened its own production of show about racism and gentrification. Many Broadway insiders believe that if Clybourbne Park does make it to Broadway during this season, it's a shoo-in for the best-play Tony Award.
--Howard Shapiro