Little Voice Little Appreciated
Broadway’s $1.4 million production of Steppenwolf Theatre’s The Rise and Fall of Little Voice opened May 1 to a resounding cacophony of critical pans. One week later it closed with a thud, having lost all but $150,000 of its original capital. The swift failure stunned its New York producers and many within Steppenwolf; the company wasn’t involved financially, but in the past four years it’s sent three productions to Broadway and seen all of them lose money. More important than money, though, is the fact that Little Voice’s ugly demise could signal the end of an era in which even New York viewed the Windy City as an important theater town.
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Between the lines of some of the key reviews of Little Voice was little lingering regard for the acting style that first put Chicago on the map. Howard Kissel, writing in the New York Daily News, referred to Steppenwolf as “pioneers in Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Theater,” while New York magazine’s John Simon called the acting in Little Voice “fairly ordinary.” But surely the most scathing indictment of all came from New York Times chief drama critic David Richards, who last winter took over Frank Rich’s powerful post. The production, Richards said, “accentuate[d] everything that is vociferous and crude about [Jim Cartwright’s play].” He went on to say: “It represents a curious throwback to the early days of Steppenwolf when the brawling, furniture-breaking, over-the-top vigor of its company members had people talking for a while of a Chicago school of acting.”
Soloway says he and his coproducers had no choice about closing the show so quickly given its severe financial hemorrhaging. It lost more than $250,000 during two weeks of previews, when box-office grosses were only around $50,000 a week out of a potential $400,000 at capacity. According to Soloway, the day after the show opened ticket sales plummeted from around $10,000 a day to about $800; that final week the show wound up losing another $100,000. Some observers believe the New York producers, who also included the powerful Nederlander Organization, had too many of their hopes riding on the play’s British pedigree coupled with the power of the Steppenwolf “magic.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Carol Rosegg–Martha Swope Associates.
