On the Stage

ON THE STAGE

The British Invasion

The best-known British Invasion of the 1960s occurred in rock 'n' roll, but American theaters also experienced an influx of talent from the United Kingdom, prompting one member of Actors Equity to claim that "New York is a British Festival." Irish playwright Brendan Behan's The Hostage was widely discussed in 1960, as were Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey. In the 1960s American theaters discovered British talents ranging from Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard to the antic revue Beyond the Fringe.

Edward Albee and the Theater of the Absurd

One of the most respected dramatists, however, was an American: Edward Albee's one-act play The Zoo Story (1960) attracted the critics' attention and prepared the way for his biggest success, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). Albee, perhaps incorrectly, was lumped in with other playwrights identified by critic Martin Esslin in 1961 as creators of the theater of the absurd. According to Esslin, these playwrights incorporated the existentialist ideas of French philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, particularly their notions that life is essentially meaningless, that former supports such as religion and society have collapsed, and that all efforts to make sense out of life are absurd. The resulting works were said to illustrate this human condition. Playwrights identified under this label whose works were performed during the 1960s in America include Albee and Arthur Kopit along with French writers Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett and British playwright Pinter.

Few Outstanding Plays

American theater of the early 1960s, torn between depicting social realism and experimentalism, did neither to the satisfaction of critics. Apart from Albee, who blended each strand skillfully in his dramas, no single figure or play stands out. No "serious" figure, that is—Neil Simon's light comedies such as Barefoot in the Park (1963) and The Odd Couple (1965) launched a commercially successful if critically maligned career. One exceptional play was Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons (1961), about the Renaissance man Sir Thomas More. Many of the most innovative productions, of course, occurred Off Broadway, such as Albee's early one-act plays; Kopit's comic Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin So Sad (1962), directed by Jerome Robbins; Arthur Miller's autobiographical After the Fall (1964); and LeRoi Jones's powerful one-act play Dutchman (1964). Others premiered at regional theaters, including Terence McNally's And Things That Go Bump in the Night (1964) at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and Kopit's Indians (1968) at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.

Musicals

Two musicals by the last of the great Broadway partnerships were running in 1960: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's The Sound of Music, which premiered the year before, and Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's Camelot. Beyond that, the Broadway musical seemed lost, and Hammerstein's death in 1960 appeared to signal the end of an era. Meredith Willson and Richard Morris's The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1960) and Charles Strouse, Lee Adams, and Michael Stewart's Bye, Bye Birdie (1960) were minor successes, but neither was very influential. The most successful musical of 1961, Abe Burrows anc Frank Loesser's How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, was praised for its innovative dance routines, while Stephen Sondheim, Burt Shevelove, and Larry Gelbart's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) pleased audiences with its uninhibited humor. A better year came in 1964, which experienced three exuberant productions: Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart's Hello, Dolly! starring Carol Channing, Jule Styne, and Isobel Lennart; Bob Merrill's Funny Girl starring Barbra Streisand; and Jerry Boek, Joseph Stein, and Sheldon Harnick's Fiddler on the Roof starring Zero Mostel. An unconventional musical appeared on Broadway in 1968. A "tribal love-rock musical" by Gerome Ragni, James Rado, and Galt MacDermot, Hair was one of the most financially successful plays of the time—perhaps in part to its brief but controversial full-cast nude scene.

Ballet

The two powerhouses in the American ballet world continued to be American Ballet Theatre (ABT) and the New York City Ballet. Primarily a touring company, ABT spent almost half of 1960 in Europe and the Soviet Union on the President's Program for Cultural Exchange. To a large extent the New York City Ballet stayed in America, featuring new works by its artistic director George Balanchine. This pattern set the pro-gram for the two companies for the remainder of the decade.

Modern Dance

Just as Balanchine continued to dominate ballet, so Martha Graham continued to dominate modern dance during the 1960s. Other prominent figures include Alvin Ailey, Merce Cunningham, Alwin Nikolais, and Paul Taylor (particularly his comically disturbing Insects and Heroes, 1961). Younger dancers and choreographers, such as Twyla Tharp, began to push the barriers of modern dance even further in their avantgarde offerings.

Sources:

Doris Auerbach, Sam Shepard, Arthur Kopit, and the Off Broadway Theater (Boston: Twayne, 1982);

Martin Gottfried, Broadway Musicals (New York: Abrams, 1979);

Joseph H. Mazo, Prime Movers: The Makers of Modern Dance in America (New York: Morrow, 1977);

Don McDonagh, The Rise and Fall and Rise of Modern Dance, revised edition (Pennington, N. J.: A Cappella, 1990).