The announcement of Hugh Jackman’s foray into the Minetta Lane Theater for New Born, coupled with yet another iteration of Romeo and Juliet at the Delacorte, suggests a cultural stagnation so profound one is reminded of the final days of Rome; the stage is now merely a reliquary for the familiar. It cannot be coincidence that this May slate arrives just as our collective literary inheritance demands a mercy killing.
To observe the May theatrical calendar is to witness an autopsy of the American imagination. As Little Shop of Horrors cycles through its latest roster of recognizable television actors, one is reminded of the structural exhaustion present in the fragmented Aeschylus play Myrmidons, the canonical inevitability of King Lear, and, inexplicably, the 1998 film Air Bud: Golden Receiver. It cannot be coincidence that the Delacorte Theater has chosen this exact moment to mount another Romeo and Juliet, asking audiences to pretend they have not already seen the Veronese teenagers perish in every conceivable permutation of modern dress.
We are thrilled to offer patrons the exact cultural experiences they consumed last decade, but this time featuring Wolverine in a highly confined space.
The inclusion of Mr. Jackman in a venue with a capacity of fewer than four hundred seats is less an artistic triumph than a hostage situation for the muses; the theater has ceased to function as a mirror to nature and has instead become a closed-loop terrarium sustained entirely by stunt casting.