It has to be one of an actor’s worst nightmares: Your Broadway show opens and closes — on the same night. Until last week, it had happened twice in the past 25 years.
“Glory Days,” a new musical about four young men reuniting one year after high school, shut down after Tuesday’s opening-night performance.
It was 2004 Denver School of the Arts alum Jesse JP Johnson’s Broadway debut, a moment the Littleton native had dreamed of since he was 3 years old performing for the Younger Generation Players.
“I can’t really tell if this just was ahead of its time, or rushed to be something, but we all are pretty blessed and thankful for the opportunity,” said Johnson, who played a romantic teen who comes out as gay.
A pair of 23-year-olds wrote “Glory Days,” and though it received encouraging reviews at its pre-Broadway run in Arlington, Va., the New York critics were even more savage than usual. Bloomberg News’ scribe scolded: “Broadway is no place for novices.”
The show’s $2.5 million capitalization is a total loss.
The last one-night shuttering was “The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All,” a one-woman show starring Ellen Burstyn, on Nov. 17, 2003.
There has been an upsurge in nontraditional and youth-oriented musicals this Broadway season, which most attribute to the success of 2007’s “Spring Awakening.” Though freshly scrubbed and testosterone- fueled, “Glory Days” was more often compared to “Altar Boyz,” even picking up the nickname “Altered Boyz.”
Johnson, just 22, will be just fine, thanks. Most critics targeted the material, not the cast, and Johnson has made a name for himself on national tours like “Grease” and, yes, “Altar Boyz.” Not bad for a kid from the Country Dinner Playhouse who five years ago was in “Rock Odyssey” at the Walden Family Playhouse.
He did get to perform in 17 previews, and his one official performance gets him his permanent place on Broadway’s roster of performers.
“Altar Boyz” promotion
Last week we ribbed the Arvada Center for not casting even one local actor for “Altar Boyz,” and boom! Matt LaFontaine takes over the role of Mexican orphan Juan from Mauricio Perez, effective May 23. It’s all good, though: Perez is leaving to join the off-Broadway cast in New York. And we promise: No kidding about LaFontaine’s non-Mexican ethnicity.
Denver Center gets Shakespeare grant
The Denver Center Theatre Company is one of 40 companies chosen to receive “Shakespeare for a New Generation Grants” from the National Endowment for the Arts. The DCTC has chosen 10 at-risk public high schools in the Denver area to receive teacher training, workshops and interactive exercises focusing on “Richard III,” which the DCTC will stage next February and the participating schools will attend.
Countdown to Brecht
Denver’s Countdown to Zero, a collective that was formed to stage 10 productions and then disappear, has announced play No. 2: “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” Bertolt Brecht’s morality tale that basically recasts Hitler as a 1930s Chicago mobster, to run Friday through June 14 at 720 22nd St., with a reprise Aug. 26-29 during the Democratic National Convention. This is the company that debuted with “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” (720-221-3821).
Briefly …
Candlelight Dinner Theatre, opening June 6 in Johnstown with “The Music Man,” made clear its intent to fill the void left by the demise of the Country Dinner Playhouse by announcing last week the rest of its first season: “Nunsensations,” “Swing!” and “Singin’ in the Rain.” “The Music Man” director Marcus Waterman is even bringing back CDP favorite David deBenedet to choreograph. It’ll be his first show here in about eight years. …
Whoopi Goldberg will host the Tony Awards on June 15.
And finally …
A heartwarming story is unfolding in Colorado Springs, where Natalie Jensen is starring as Belle in a lush “Beauty and the Beast” for the Fine Arts Center through June 1. Jensen was an emerging ingenue at the old Country Dinner Playhouse and was appearing in the chorus of “Beauty and the Beast” there in February 2006 when her Colorado Springs police-officer husband, Jared, was killed in the line of duty. She had dedicated her performance in that show’s program to her husband, “who is truly an officer and a gentleman,” she wrote before the tragedy. Now she’s back in the city where they lived, performing in the same show and now in the starring role (719-634-5583).
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
This week’s openings
Thursday-June 29: Denver Center Theatre Company’s “3 Mo’ Divas,” Stage Theatre
Thursday-May 24: Square Product Theatre’s “The House of Yes” (at University of Colorado’s Atlas Center) Boulder
Thursday-Aug. 17: Nonesuch’s “Greater Tuna” Fort Collins
Saturday-June 14: Countdown to Zero’s “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” (at the Bindery Space)
Saturday-May 31: Upstart Crow’s “John Gabriel Borkman” Boulder
Saturday-July 6: Union Colony Dinner Theatre’s “Fiddler on the Roof” Greeley
This week’s closings
Today: Aurora Fox’s “The Emperor Jones”
Today: Town Hall Arts Center’s “Swingtime Canteen” Littleton
Today: Festival Playhouse’s “Squabbles” Arvada
Friday: Boulder Ensemble Theatre’s “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)”
Saturday:National touring production of “A Chorus Line” (Buell Theatre)
Saturday:Firehouse’s “Arcadia” (John Hand Theatre)
Saturday:Denver Center Theatre Company’s “Doubt” (Ricketson Theatre)
Saturday:Longmont Theatre Company’s “Fiddler on the Roof”
Saturday: Victorian Playhouse’s “Crimes of the Heart”
May 18: Dangerous Theatre’s “A Time to Go Walking”
Through May 18: Heritage Square Music Hall’s “The Baseball Show” Golden
May 18: openstage etc.’s “Boy Gets Girl” Fort Collins
May 18: Boulder Broadway Company’s “Kiss Me Kate” Lakewood
This week’s podcast interview
Running Lines with … A.K. Klimpke. This week, theater critic John Moore speaks to the 18-year veteran of Boulder’s Dinner Theatre, who is starring in “The Will Rogers Follies” for a third time. Running time: 16 minutes. Listen by You”ll be taken to a miniplayer. Once there, click its triangular “play” button, and the podcast will begin, with no downloading necessary.
