Richard Barr: The Playwright's Producer

10. Brightening Broadway’s Lights: Barr’s Legacy to the American Theatre

195 10 Brightening Broadway’s Lights Barr’s Legacy to the American Theatre R ichard Barr’s last Broadway production was Home Front by James Duff, produced in 1985, the culminating effort of a producer who had struggled mightily against the tide of mediocre Broadway theatre. Barr, who had spent years championing the work of major experimentalists like Edward Albee, LeRoi Jones, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard, Samuel Beckett, Robert Wilson, Paul Taylor, Stephen Sondheim, and others , was desperate to pay off debt and to find a way to continue to support himself. During the “strange interlude” of five years before he produced Home Front, he kept busy with his work as president of the League of New York Theatres and Producers and continued to direct. He worked with stars like Elaine Stritch and Barry Nelson at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Noël Coward in Two Keys. Alvin Klein of the New York Times called Barr’s direction “scintillating.”1 But Barr had no new plays he was in the position of promoting. It was during this time, the early 1980s, that Albee brought The Man Who Had Three Arms to Broadway.2 Richard was not involved with this, the first Albee play to hit Broadway without Barr’s involvement as a producer. The production was roundly (and brutally) dismissed as an angry, indulgent diatribe that had more to do with Albee’s drinking than it was a dramatic work with any intrinsic value. Though not involved in The Man Who Had 196 Brightening Broadway’s Lights Three Arms, Richard remained very interested in Albee’s next work, The Marriage Play, and hoped to produce it.3 However, the estrangement between Barr and Albee remained, particularly after the abrupt closing of The Lady from Dubuque in 1980.4 On the prowl for new work, Richard was at a crossroads in his career. Broadway in the 1980s was itself swiftly changing, driven by commercial concerns, and the Great White Way featured Las Vegas–style musicals appealing to tourists. The non-musical theatre crowd was dwindling, and so, listless and without a production to give him focus, Barr explored some of the bars around the Broadway theatre district. Barr and Chuck Woodward often had lunch at Mildred Pierce, on West Forty-Sixth Street, just off the beaten path for theatregoers. Managed by David Bixler, later a business partner of Barr and Woodward’s, the restaurant was also a popular lunch spot for Lee Minskoff, who was working with them at the time. On one visit, Richard became friendly with the bartender, “an attractive young man with a decided Texas accent,” and chatted with him for a while. This was James Duff, the playwright whose play, Home Front, Barr eventually produced. Duff had been born in New Orleans and, adopted by a family in Texas, had grown up in exactly the kind of suburban home that he depicts in his play. Because of his father’s job as an executive in the Sears Roebuck organization, his family moved around frequently. James had gone to five elementary schools, three junior high schools, and three high schools before his family finally moved to Arlington, Texas. Because of the sudden changes and his own need to rebel, he left Arlington to return to Lubbock, where the family had lived previously, because he “resented being jerked around.”5 After moving to New York to be a professional actor, James began writing plays, deciding that writing was his best means of attaining success.6 Home Front was Duff’s reaction to the treatment of Vietnam veterans after the war, treatment that was not particularly sympathetic. After meeting Duff for the first time, Richard was invited by Gammon Sharpley, a waiter at Mildred’s, to have dinner, and Barr accepted, as it was “an uncommon occurrence” for waiters to invite Broadway producers to dinner. The invitation was actually a ploy to convince Richard to read Duff’s play. It was not the first time that James had aggressively pursued a producer. In fact, he had once been so insistent that a producer had threatened to have Duff arrested.7 Barr “ordered an expensive dinner” but waited until “after the main course” to agree to read the script. Sharpley convinced Richard to attend a workshop performance of Duff’s play at a small theatre in the Carter Hotel. Barr rarely attended showcases, fearing that he would be “trapped” at an awful performance. Sharpley was “a very bright persuasive fellow,” [3...