The Shubert Organization, which owns the Royale Theatre, has invoked the stop clause on the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's The Price. The show will close March 5.
Variety reported on Jan. 26 that the Shuberts took action when figures fell below a certain level.
Weekly reports from the League of American Theatres and Producers indicate that the drama had been operating at roughly 51 percent capacity.
The British Import, Michael Frayn's Copenhagen will be the next tenant at the Royale, confirmed a production spokesperson for the show. The play will begin previews March 23 and open on April 11.
The closing of both The Price and Wrong Mountain leaves only two proper plays currently running on Broadway, Noel Coward's Waiting in the Wings and Peter Shaffer's Amadeus. The only other non-musical productions are one-person shows by Jackie Mason and Dame Edna. *
As previously reported, Philip Bosco, whose many credits include Lend Me a Tenor, Moon Over Buffalo and the recent Lincoln Center Theater Twelfth Night, co-stars in Copenhagen, opposite Blair Brown and Michael Cumpsty. Brown, who recently moved with the rest of the off Broadway cast of James Joyce's The Dead to a limited run at the Belasco Theatre, has also appeared in Cabaret and The Secret Rapture. She's arguably better known for her film work in "Altered States," "Continental Divide" and "One Trick Pony," and for being television's Molly Dodd. Cumpsty's recent Broadway roles have included 1776, Racing Demon and Translations.
Michael Blakemore, fresh from his success with Kiss Me, Kate, will direct Frayn's three-character, psychological drama. Producing the work are The Nederlander Organization, Roger Berlind, Scott Rudin, Ray Larsen, Jon B. Platt and Elizabeth I. McCann, with Michael Codron and London's Royal National Theatre.
Copenhagen received its world premiere at the RNT's Cottesloe venue May 28, 1998 and later transferred to the West End's Duchess Theatre, where it is still running.
The play follows German physicist Werner Heisenberg, who, in 1941, made a trip to Copenhagen to see his Danish counterpart, Niels Bohr. They were old friends, and their work together had opened the way into the atom, but now they were on opposite sides of a world war, and the meeting would end in disaster. Scientists and historians have argued ever since about why Heisenberg went and what the two men said to each other. Copenhagen retraces their journey through the mysteries of the world around us -- and on into the even stranger mysteries of the world within.
Director Blakemore has had a long association with Frayn, staging many of the plays mentioned. Before Kate his most recent work was the musical The Life by Cy Coleman in New York which received 12 Tony nominations, and the award-winning City of Angels in the West End. He had an Off-Broadway hit in 1995-96 with Death Defying Acts, three one act plays by Woody Allen, David Mamet and Elaine May. A former associate director at the RNT, Blakemore's many productions there include The Front Page, Long Day's Journey into Night and After the Fall.
