Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman Are Not Alone: Stars On Broadway This Season

“A Steady Rain” starring Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman hasn’t even opened yet and it is already being proclaimed not just a hit but a phenomenon. “James Bond and Wolverine have hit Broadway,” announced an Associated Press story the morning after the first preview performance, which was sold out. “Star-driven productions have become commonplace on Broadway in recent years, with notable visits from Katie Holmes and Julia Roberts. But Jackman and Craig bring a Hollywood masculinity to the stage.”

Variety reported that the first five performances took in $767,663; others have reported that advance sales have racked up $10 million for a show that runs only through Sunday, December 6th. This is of course a pittance compared to a movie like, say, “X-Men” ($296,339,527), which made Hugh Jackman a movie star, or one of its sequels (“X-Men: The Last Stand”, $459,359,555 ) or the latest Bond flick with the latest James Bond, Daniel Craig (“Quantum of Solace”, $586,090,727), but then again the highest movie ticket hovers somewhere around $13, while the average ticket price for “A Steady Rain,” a two-character, 90-minute play, has been $140 – more than most Broadway musicals. The two stars, who are getting a percentage of box office sales, will reportedly earn about $100,000 a week.

(Update: The play had a higher weekly gross than any other non-musical in Broadway history. It also got mostly negative reviews.)

The idea of using stars for Broadway is nothing new, and it’s not unique in the 2009-2010 Broadway season There are still performers who became stars on Broadway – Nathan Lane, who is scheduled to appear in The Addams Family musical in April – but for decades now most have come from movies or television.

A sample this season:

Carrie Fisher (a star from birth, as the daughter of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, but a star in her own right starting in “Star Wars”) in Wishful Drinking , her one-woman autobiographical show, scheduled to open October 4th.

Jude Law (who became a star after “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and especially “Cold Mountain”) is appearing in Hamlet, scheduled to open October 6th.

John Stamos (“Full House” ABC sitcom; “ER” NBC drama) is one of the stars in a revival of the musical “Bye, Bye Birdie,” opening October 15th. He co-stars with Gina Gershon who was probably best-known until last year for her starring role in the campy classic (i.e. bad movie) “Showgirls” but became celebrated on Broadway for her role in the revival of “Boeing Boeing.”

Julia Stiles (who first got star attention when she starred opposite Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You) will star in Oleanna, David Mamet’s play about a possible case of on-campus sexual harassment, opening October 11th. She plays opposite Bill Pullman, who has had an extensive movie career (“Independence Day” etc.) but established himself as primarily a stage actor (at least to me) for his attention-getting roles in two Edward Albee plays — “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?” on Broadway and “Peter and Jerry” (“Zoo Story” with a first act added) at Second Stage.

Laurie Metcalf (“Roseanne”) leads the cast of two revivals of Neil Simon comedies, running in repertory, “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Broadway Bound”

James Spader (Pretty in Pink Sex, Lies, and Videotape) and Richard Thomas (“The Waltons”) will appear in David Mamet’s “Race,” a new play scheduled to open December 6th.

Evan Rachel Wood (“Thirteen”) and Alan Cumming in “Spider-man, Turn Off The Dark,” the first preview of which is scheduled for February 25th.

Linda Lavin (“Alice” TV series) in “Collected Stories,” a new play by Donald Margulies, scheduled for April.

Is there cause to regret the absence of more home-grown theater stars? The truth is, many of these actors had established stage careers before, after or even during their screen stardom.

There is some mutual benefit to this cross-pollination. Neil Patrick Harris recently explained how he made the transition from child TV star to adult TV star — through the theater. After “Doogie Howser, M.D.” was cancelled, Harris had trouble getting screen work. So he went on the stage, beginning with a national tour of “Rent” in 1997, but then on Broadway in “Proof,” “Cabaret” and Stephen Sondheim’s “Assassins.”

“Theater is a forced discipline where every night you have to represent well, and if you’re not, you can tell,” Harris told Entertainment Weekly. “For someone who grew up on TV, where everything is from the chest up, to go on the stage, where this means nothing to people in the first row of the balcony — that was a thrust into the full-body world of acting.”