The Capeman. - New York, NY - theater reviews

Progressive, The, June, 1998 by Margaret Spillane

Once word got out that The Capeman would shut down, almost every crank who'd canned it gave it one more kick. Michael Riedel, the Daily News's Broadway gossip columnist, told CNN that Simon failed because he hadn't included "some of that old Andrew Lloyd Webber muscle" and castigated Walcott for being a "novice" in musical theater (item: Walcott, the foremost playwright in the Caribbean, produced his first musical in 1950). Plenty of others went hunting for quotes from the likes of the anonymous Broadway agent who dismissed Simon's work on the project because "he's not even Latino; he's Jewish," or impresario Rocco Landesman, who said of the closing, "It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."

But then the New York showbiz journalists long ago gave up their most accurate measure of professional integrity--being loathed by the powerful--for a shot at getting On the "A" List. Either group could as easily adopt as their hero James Reston, the New York Times Washington correspondent who, three decades ago, abandoned his responsibility to hold politicians' feet to the fire in exchange for a ride in Henry Kissinger's limo. Spoiled journalists--whether covering the Oval Office or Cats--end up promulgating weasel-speak for whoever's pouring their cocktails.

While theater critics on the shill can't yet hope to snag the rewards of such D.C. insider-trading experts as Brit Hume (tennis partner of--and ABC on-air apologist for--then-President Bush) or Sid Blumenthal (formerly Clinton's in-house ventriloquist at the New Yorker, now official White House adviser), there may be plenty of opportunities ahead on Broadway. Now that Disney has begun turning Broadway into a family-values entertainment reservation, there'll be no room there for reckoning with the troubles or the imaginations of impoverished, socially risky brown-skinned teenagers, whether on the sidewalk or on the stage.

Before long, Times Square will be as clean as Jiminy Cricket's conscience: no lap dances, no homeless teenagers, no union scale, no plays with complex visions. This will happen with considerable help from the Broadway press crews, who are weary of problems that won't just solve themselves and go away in two acts and an intermission.