Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche While Listening to Showtunes…
Spamalot is bringing a new group of consumers to Broadway — the “kinds of teenagers and 20-somethings who find jokes about fish, flatulence and the French absolutely sidesplitting and who normally wouldn’t be headed to the theater unless dragged by a girlfriend, school trip, or court order.”
Mike Nichols, Spamalot’s director, is quoted as saying “They are what the movie preview experts call young males under 35…and we have them.”
The article talks about how there are finally longer lines for the men’s washroom than at the women’s washroom. It goes on to say that groups of men without wives or girlfriends are going out for night of theater at the Shubert in New York. And industry officials say they ae impressed by the show’s ability to draw men in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.
First of all, I think anything that gets anyone to go to live theater for any reason is a good thing. So way to go Spamalot!
But this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about how men generally stay away from Broadway shows, especially musicals.
Is this whole “real men don’t go to Broadway” thing a recent phenomenon? Wasn’t there a time when men went to see shows, be it play or musical? And weren’t those shows more than just people covered in blue paint banging on garbage pail lids?
Weren’t men just as in awe with Marlon Brando in Streetcar, or just as stirred at the opening of a new Arthur Miller or Eugene O’Neill play, or perhaps just as inspired by Oklahoma! (before they went off to fight), as women were?