'One Singular Sensation': Backstage Broadway drama

Michael Riedel, the New York Post's mischief-making Broadway columnist for more than two decades, has chronicled with incendiary flamboyance the backstage dramas of megalomaniacal producers, peremptory divas and the cowering artists caught in the crossfire.

He's been on furlough during the pandemic, so it's a pleasure to encounter his impish voice in "Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway." Riedel's latest book of Broadway history, as rich in conflict as a Shakespeare history play, is enlivened by his piercing eye for showbiz detail. But it's also limited by a perspective more attuned to box office grosses than creative value.

Riedel picks up the story where he left off in "Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway," his earlier chronicle tracing the resurrection of Broadway from the recessionary 1970s through the British mega-musical invasion of the 1980s and early '90s. Riedel tells the story of how Broadway became a global brand in the 1990s, attracting high rollers with deep pockets and occasionally dubious ethics.

The downside of turning New York's famed Theater District into a theme park for tourist dollars is drowned out in the "triumph" of Riedel's subtitle. "Singular Sensation" is written from the standpoint of producers and publicists, Broadway's money-changers. Artistic merit matters less than commercial success. These two value systems become confused — not just by the book's cast of characters but also by the author himself. A lucrative run is seen as vindication from carping critics; a canny Tony campaign bears out a producer's faith in his artistic acumen.

An equal opportunity offender, Riedel is in no one's pocket. Chapters are devoted to the creative accounting of Garth Drabinsky, the Canadian impresario who brought "Ragtime" to Broadway before serving time in Canada for defrauding the shareholders of his production company, Livent. Disney's incursion into Times Square naturally receives its due, with "Beauty and the Beast" ushering in a battalion of storybook creatures.

Riedel recounts the way Broadway initially snubbed the obscenely expensive "Beauty and the Beast," dismissing it "as a theme park show" and "giving the 1994 Tony for best musical to Stephen Sondheim's short-lived 'Passion.' " But — tellingly — he lets Michael Eisner, chief executive officer and chairman of The Walt Disney Co., have the last word: "But we won the Bank of America award, so it was OK."

Riedel is at this best with backstabbing and betrayal. The opening chapter on "Sunset Boulevard" has all the drama of a Ryan Murphy limited series as the feud between composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and Northport's Patti LuPone unfolds.

Riedel tacks on an epilogue in which he argues that the last two decades have sprung from the commercial leaps and bounds the industry made in the '90s. "Broadway," he concludes, "is in the midst of its new Golden Age."

It's an optimistic thought, but Broadway at the moment is closed. The economic reality is more dire than it was after 9/11. No one knows what will be possible when we reopen. Many are dreaming not of a restart of the Disneyfied Broadway Riedel celebrates, but rather a reset — toward a more diverse, equitable and artistically emboldened Broadway culture.