This is a documentary that may not know it but it's a relatively decent and sometimes (inherently for me) interesting overview cum history cum haigography of Broadway over more or less the last 50 years where it went into a downturn because of (waving hands around) New York in the 1960s and 70s, and for about altogether and cumulatively ten minutes it's also a look at how a not-high-profile play that's about to go into production with a Transgender woman lead, Alexandra Billings, and these two sides are at cross purposes.
The bulk of the documentary is fine, but leaves out a lot of details (how do they show quick clips of Hendrix and the Who and Otis Redding to represent how rock concerts became more popular for I guess a time than Broadway and yet not cut to HAIR for a minute or two) that even a practical novice like myself would want to see shown (well, I read Wasson's Bio of Fosse but that has a whole lot that this could get into since it is concerned with business as well as culture), and once it gets into the headlong Commercialization/British invasion of the 1980s it has this general take in the interviews of "yeah I mean these musicals were shallow, but... money, right?"
I have to wonder if the doc filmmakers should've seen more of an opportunity with the BTS of the production of The Nap, and it's not that they couldn't have been aware of how process and everything that goes with it in every step is compelling; they feature as one of the first major landmark moments for theatee and Broadway in the early 70s the Sondheim show of Company and Pennebaker's own film about recording the cast album, so it's there baked into how audiences in other mediums got exposed to the innovations at hand.
Maybe there wasn't enough of the footage or the production of The Nap didn't want *everything* open to the filmmakers, or (as another Letterboxd reviewer pointed out, the show didn't really stay around for long and was itself a London export), but if that was the case they didn't have to use this show as some thin skeleton to hang the rest of the story on to, even if apparently it was (somewhat) a critical success and Billings is a terrific interview when she's on camera (the director and writer are... okay, but what about the other actors).
Despite this issue of the story of this show being frustratingly small scale in the midst of a story of Broadway that feels so very cliff-notes (maybe even like a truncated school report?) I still enjoyed the footage that's here to give context about the Schuberts and Jacobs and the literal real estate maneuvers and the destruction of the theaters in the early 80s, I'm endlessly fascinated about how Cats became.... friggin' Cats, and I like the section on August Wilson. There's material here where you can sense the subjects are mixed and complicated about how so intensely commodified Broadway has become starting with Disney and movie stars coming in and riding off the coattails of the Lloyd Wbeer and British wave and how homegrown stories suffer a loss amid the unfathomable NYC rental prices.
If you need the most basic primer on the most contemporary history of the world this is a decent place to start, but it seems like there's more opportunity for Ken Burns or someone along those lines for a more comprehensive series on Broadway (sort of like his Jazz yknow).
One last thing... what was up with Jonathan Pryce humping that car in that clip from Miss Saigon? Is that what the rest of that show was like?
