Creative Dying
By JASON ZINOMAN

There's something a little silly about an actor dying onstage," Mark Harelik, the star of Amy Freed's hit comedy "The Beard of Avon," said in a recent phone conversation. "It's always kind of a send-up." He should know. Mr. Harelik, who has won favorable notices as the grandiose Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, has a long résumé of death scenes. He has died of old age in "The Immigrant," of alcoholism and a drug overdose in "Hank Williams: Lonesome Highway," and of the plague in "The Beard of Avon," at the New York Theater Workshop. In a recent "Tartuffe," in which he played the title character, the director asked him to die at the end even though it's not in the text. "No actor has died more," Ms. Freed said. Dying onstage gives Mr. Harelik an opportunity to chew scenery, which, he said, isn't to every audience's taste. For example, there was that time when he was dying of syphilis in Howard Korder's "Hollow Lands." As the spotlight hit him, covered in bleeding scars, he began to speak his final words grandly; a woman in the front row interrupted, "Give me a break!"

Awaiting The King

It's one for the money, two for the show.

"All Shook Up," the inevitable Elvis Presley musical, is heading for Broadway in spring 2005 with all the elements of a blockbuster: a crowd-pleasing (if critically dismissed) book writer, Joe DiPietro; heavy-hitter producers, including Clear Channel Entertainment and Miramax; and 20 beloved hits. With the John Lennon musical currently called "The Lennon Project" scheduled for the same season, the stage is set for a Broadway showdown between two of the most influential pop stars of the 20th century.

Commissioned by the Presley estate, the show, which is to play at Goodspeed Musicals' Norma Terris Theater in Chester, Conn., in May, is part of an emerging Broadway art form typified by shows like "Movin' Out" and "Taboo" that draws on the nostalgic appeal of old pop songs. Unlike many of these musicals, "All Shook Up" is neither a revue nor a bio-play. "Elvis is not a character," said Jonathan Pollard, one of the producers. "It's an original musical comedy about how a magical jukebox and a leather-jacketed stranger transform a loveless town."

Slump Beaters

With rave reviews for Donna Murphy in "Wonderful Town," new shows ("Wicked," "The Boy From Oz," "Golda's Balcony") maintaining strong sales and a bona fide critics' darling ("Henry IV"), Broadway is showing signs of shaking its fall slump. "Henry" has extended its run one week, to Jan. 18, and sold $740,000 worth of tickets last weekend. "It was Shakespeare's biggest weekend ever," said Bernard Gersten, executive producer of Lincoln Center Theater, where it is playing.

While Broadway may be returning to health, Off Broadway is day to day. "The Beard of Avon" and "The Long Christmas Ride Home" are still selling out in small theaters, inspiring chatter about transfers, especially since so many Broadway theaters are suddenly empty. But the most talked-about show these days may be "Caroline, or Change," which opens on Sunday but has already generated deafening buzz.

The situation is gloomier in the commercial sphere, where a growing list of Off Broadway theaters — the Variety Arts, the Union Square, the John Houseman — are looking for tenants. The Century Center for the Performing Arts will go dark after "Beckett/Albee" closes on Jan. 4, but it at least has announced a replacement: "Johnny Guitar," a musical send-up of the 1954 Joan Crawford film, scheduled to start previews on March 4.

"There's just no product," said Ben Sprecher, who owns and manages the Variety Arts and the Promenade and manages the Little Shubert. Sluggish sales are one problem, but Mr. Sprecher also blames the trend toward opening shows on Broadway when they belong in more intimate houses, where stakes are lower and sightlines better.

"Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks," which closed after four weeks, would have fared better Off Broadway, he said. "You can make more money on Broadway," he said, "but what's the trade-off? `Oldest Confederate Widow' closed after one day."

And after "Bobbi Boland" closed on Broadway before it even opened, its producer, Joyce Johnson, said, "The play simply does not work in a Broadway house."

So why did these plays go to Broadway? As with much in the commercial theater today, it's all about stars. "Many stars want to win a Tony," said the agent Peter Franklin. "They also want a decent paycheck, and they'll get those on Broadway."

`Town' Without Contract

By the time "Wonderful Town" opened last Sunday, lines had been memorized, sets built and money lined up. Everything was ready except one small detail: the producers hadn't signed a contract for the rights to the show. A week later the deal is still not final.

In most businesses, this situation might be cause for alarm. But on Broadway, where handshake deals are still typical business practice, it hardly raised an eyebrow. "I've worked on shows which have run for two years and closed and still don't have a contract," said the veteran producer Emmanuel Azenberg.

Jeffrey Seller, a producer of "Rent," said, "I've never worked on a show that didn't have the rights, but we opened `Rent' without signing the lease and ran for over a year without doing it."

On "Wonderful Town,' an unsigned written agreement was reached in early October, but the terms of royalties for road tours remain a sticking point, said Barry Weissler, one of the producers. He has been negotiating with representatives of Betty Comden, who wrote the lyrics with Adolph Green, as well as the estates of Green, the composer Leonard Bernstein and the book writers Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields.

"It's a little annoying to everybody," said Peter Franklin, the agent for Ms. Comden and the Green estate. "But it's just the vagaries of doing business in the theater."