The shows that are big on Broadway

New York is deep into a love affair with British theatre. Rave reviews followed the Broadway transfer of the Menier Chocolate Factory's La Cage aux Folles this weekend, and two West End hits, Enron and That Face, are ready to open in the next month. Tonight it's the turn of Creditors, Alan Rickman's production of August Strindberg's tragicomedy, at the Brooklyn Academy of Arts and Music. In spite of the fact that the London cast — Tom Burke, Anna Chancellor and Owen Teale — have transferred with the show, making its director the best-known name, Creditors is bound to do well: it's a Donmar Warehouse production and right now the little Covent Garden
powerhouse is best loved of all.

During the past three years, under artistic director Michael Grandage, the Donmar has extended its reach beyond its 250-seat London theatre to become a hit factory in the Big Apple. Frost/Nixon, Mary Stuart, Hamlet and Red have all been successful exports. This is no mean feat on a Broadway where fewer than a third of the shows break even.

"The Donmar, along with The National, is more important to New York theatre than any of our non-profit theatres," says the New York Post's Broadway columnist Michael Riedel. "They do better, riskier and more innovative things."

Even under Grandage's predecessor, Sam Mendes, the Donmar was sending productions across the Atlantic, most notably in David Hare's The Blue Room with Nicole Kidman. But now Grandage has taken the Donmar's stateside status to another level, making his theatre the toast of New York theatreland, with enough glamour to attract Hollywood's A-list.

This was evident a fortnight ago at the Broadway opening night of Red, which first played at the Donmar last December. Martin Scorsese, Tobey Maguire and Amanda Peet were among those who turned out for the first night at the Golden Theatre, when Alfred Molina reprised his role as Mark Rothko alongside Eddie Redmayne. At the aftershow party, Christopher Walken, Alicia Silverstone and Sam Rockwell were gathered in a corner at Gotham Hall, an ornate Manhattan venue. The Hurt Locker's Kathryn Bigelow chatted with fellow Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis while Cynthia Nixon politely evaded requests to divulge the plot of the Sex and the City film sequel.

Grandage, who directed Red, was more than a little awed. "You always hope that some of the great and the good see your work but this is a hell of a turnout," he enthused. Some stars were friends of John Logan, the play's author and screenwriter of Gladiator and The Aviator. But celebrities were not shy about lavishing praise on the theatre that staged the production.
"Absolutely I'm a fan of the Donmar," Bigelow said. When I asked Alicia Silverstone about the theatre, she turned into Cher Horowitz, her character from breakthrough movie Clueless. "Would I like to act at the Donmar? Are you kidding? When I was in London, I had a meeting at the theatre and I was like, Please hire me!'"

It's ironic that stars should be lost in admiration for the Donmar since, with the notable exception of Jude Law in Hamlet, the theatre has bucked the current trend for deploying star names to sell its productions, instead importing the original casts.

According to Grandage, what most theatre observers consider to be commercial suicide is the Donmar's trump card.

"With Red, we were never going to do it anywhere other than the Donmar so we cast it as we wanted," he says. "It got amazing reviews, it sold out. We're here on the fact that they were the ones hailed in London." Creditors also received warm critical notices when it opened at the Donmar, in a new version by David Greig, in September 2008. The play depicts a marital battle of the sexes and Strindberg's theme of emotional debts coincided with the financial crisis that was unfolding during its run.