Sex in the City alum Cynthia Nixon took home a Tony Award on Sunday night for her lead role in the play, The Rabbit Hole.
Although Nixon has successfully balanced her stage career with her television career (she made her debut at the Lincoln Theater when she was only 14), her win highlighted the fact that drama critics are up in arms because of the trend of celebrity casting on Broadway.
In hushed tones, they discuss the epidemic, a virus, an illness that has sickened and weakened the craft of stage acting. Not everyone agrees. Given that theatre has to fight for its economic survival and battle to stay culturally relevant, surely the presence of a few sparkling A-listers is just the adrenaline injection needed?
From Denzel Washington who played Brutus last spring in the Broadway Revival of Julius Caesar to Julia Roberts, who made her Broadway debut in Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain to Gwyneth Paltrow who went to the Williamstown Theatre Festival to play Rosalind in As You Like It, Tinseltown's brightest are flocking to New York and stages around the country, drawn perhaps by delightful theatre scripts and to flex their acting chops.
Their presence doesn't guarantee sold-out performances - David Schwimmer's performance in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial was panned and the play closed early. Clearly he didn't have enough friends, fans or fame to overcome the brutal reviews.
So, is this the end of true artistic creativity? Does it mean the end of undiscovered talents getting a big break on Broadway? No and no.
First of all, massive commercial productions like The Lion King and Tarzan had already saturated the market long before any stars came knocking. Broadway is celebrating a very successful season - with record attendance and box-office grosses - so even though the gulf between artistic and commercial is vast, critics and audiences love an underdog. Basically, hope springs eternal. And what talent agent, director, or producer isn't on the look-out for the next big thing?
