Amid Covid surge, Hamilton and other Broadway shows cancel performances
The cancellations come at the worst possible time as holiday season is typically most lucrative time of year for theatre
New York
SEVERAL of Broadway's biggest shows, including Hamilton, Hadestown and Aladdin, are cancelling all performances until after Christmas, and Jagged Little Pill announced it was closing for good, as a spike in coronavirus cases batters the performing arts throughout North America as well as in London.
The cancellations, prompted by positive coronavirus tests among cast or crew members, come at the worst possible time for many productions, because the holiday season is typically the most lucrative time of year.
It has been a trying week for the performing arts.
On Saturday (Dec 18) and Sunday, about one-third of Broadway shows cancelled their performances.
On Monday, Jagged Little Pill, a rock musical featuring Alanis Morissette songs that had paused performances on Saturday after positive tests, said it would not reopen at all. The musical had still been finding its financial footing when the pandemic hit, and then was rocked again by the Omicron variant; its producers said in a statement that "the rapid spread of the Omicron variant has, once again, changed everything".
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And, with the Omicron variant driving a surge in cases, there were multiple Covid-prompted cancellations off-Broadway, as well as in Chicago, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles and other cities.
Hamilton, a sold-out juggernaut that had been the top-grossing show on Broadway, cited breakthrough Covid-19 cases in its company as the reason for the cancellation. The show has been dark since Dec 15 - the matinee went on as scheduled that day, but the evening performance was scrapped - and the first possible next performance is Dec 27.
Hadestown, a contemporary retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, also cancelled performances until Dec 27, as did Dear Evan Hansen, about a high-school student with anxiety; Ain't Too Proud, about the Temptations; Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a sequel to the fantasy novels; and MJ, a new musical about Michael Jackson that is still in previews. And Aladdin, which weathered a 12-day shutdown in October, announced on Monday that it would be closed until Sunday.
Most shows are still running - there are currently 31 productions on Broadway, and at least two-thirds of them, including long-running hits such as The Lion King, Wicked and The Phantom of the Opera, continue to perform. And a strong-selling revival of The Music Man, starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, started previews Monday night.
But sporadic cancellations are now widespread, on Broadway and beyond.
In recent days, many of the Broadway cancellations have been at large-cast productions, for reasons that are not entirely clear. But there are exceptions: On Monday, the Manhattan Theater Club announced that it was delaying its Broadway production of Skeleton Crew, a new play by Dominique Morisseau. Previews, which had been scheduled to start Tuesday, would instead start Dec 27, "due to company members having tested positive" for the virus.
Also Monday: the musical Six cancelled a performance, citing "Covid breakthroughs". In most cases, producers say, the positive coronavirus tests are associated with mild or asymptomatic cases, but the performances are being cancelled because there are not enough understudies or replacement workers to substitute for those who must miss the show.
The news of the last few days has been grim for those hoping the performing arts had finally moved past the devastatingly long pandemic shutdown.
The timing was particularly terrible for the Rockettes, who last week cancelled all remaining performances of their annual Christmas Spectacular, a holiday staple for many tourists.
Other holiday shows were affected, too: A production of A Christmas Carol at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles cancelled all performances until after Christmas, while in Houston 2 performances of the Alley Theater's production of the Christmas staple were cancelled as well. In Ontario, the Shaw Festival Theater cancelled all remaining performances of Holiday Inn and cut capacity in half for A Christmas Carol.
A performance of Handel's Messiah at Carnegie Hall by Musica Sacra that was scheduled for Tuesday was postponed after a small number of positive tests, the ensemble announced.
Britain has been dealing with a raft of cancellations - so much so that the National Theater in London simply shut down until January.
Concerns about the Omicron variant are also starting to take a toll on future productions: The first North American production of Tom Stoppard's acclaimed new play, Leopoldstadt, was cancelled entirely; it had been scheduled to begin a 7-week run in Toronto on Jan 22. And in Ottawa, Ontario, Hamilton postponed a scheduled run by 6 months.
The pandemic is once again hitting touring Broadway shows: Ain't Too Proud postponed its run at the Kennedy Center in Washington by 2 weeks; Pretty Woman cancelled its final several performances in Chicago; The Lion King has cancelled several performances in Denver and Wicked has done so in Cleveland.
In the dance world, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater cancelled performances at New York City Center, while Mark Morris cancelled performances over the weekend at Zellerbach Hall at the University of California, Berkeley.
Although the cancellations have been prompted by the testing of arts workers, there are indications that safety protocols for audiences are likely to shift: The Metropolitan Opera announced last week that it would require Covid booster shots for patrons, as well as employees, starting in mid-January. The Public Theater said it would require not only proof of vaccination, but also a negative Covid-19 test, for entry; in the short term that new policy will only affect audiences at Joe's Pub, which is the only part of the Public with performances scheduled over the next few weeks.
And, in a flashback to earlier pandemic practices, some organisations are rethinking live audiences. Saturday Night Live last weekend performed without a live audience. Play-PerView, a streaming platform born in the first weeks of the pandemic, cancelled a live reading in Los Angeles on Monday, opting to stream only, while a New York cabaret space, the Green Room 42, said Monday that it would begin livestreaming all of its shows, while still continuing to welcome in-person patrons, "until this wave passes". NYTIMES
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