but why would you ever insult paying customers with such a broad stroke?
Because I think productions like this
are insulting to paying customers. These shows don't just blur the lines between art and marketing, they erase them altogether. If we, as an industry, are only capable of generating new content which has been designed from the very beginning to appeal to succulent demographics, to be as unchallenging as possible, to resist anything in any respect political or "difficult", and to otherwise avoid anything which might upset the Red Hat Ladies, then we might as well drop this pretension to be creating "art" in the first place and admit that we're really just a sub-unit of the advertising and publicity industries. (Yes, yes, I know that theatre has never been "pure" and that commercial concerns have always been prominent, but if we now inhabit a world where these concerns routinely
trump everything else--where shows are not drafted by playwrights and composers and subsequently commercialized, but rather drafted by committees of publicists and market researchers and, subsequently, playwrights are
permitted to fill in the few blanks remaining--surely this is something weird if we want to keep thinking of ourselves as a fundamentally artistic endeavour?)
It's not even that this type of theatre is
bland, it's that it literally amounts to sucking up to its own audience. Far from challenging them to explore new ideas or engage in theatrical traditions, we're tucking them into bed with a warm glass of ovaltine, a kiss on the forehead, and a reminder of how special they are.
I certainly don't expect a commercial producer to pack a mainstage season full of Ibsen and mystery plays, but if all you have to say to your audience is "Hooray for you! For (s)he's a jolly good fellow, for (s)he's a jolly food fellow...", then yes: I think that speaks to a degree of cynicism about the intellectual capabilities of your audience, as if they couldn't even handle something
really really hardball like "Salad Days" or "The Boyfriend". (Nope, gotta give them a toothless jukebox instead. It's all they can
possibly handle...)
Never mind that these shows have the effect of hollowing out audiences. (Sure, you're getting tour buses full of baby boomers
now, but if half the performances in your season don't sell a ticket to anyone below the age of 35, what are you going to do in ten years? [And let's not even pretend you'll exist in twenty...])