Celebrity producers on Broadway: if that’s what brings in audiences, so be it

Mariah Carey is making her Broadway debut, yet she’s not appearing on Broadway.

This is not some theatrical ‘riddle of the Sphinx’, but rather an accurate statement, since Carey has signed on as a producer of the new musical Some Like It Hot, giving her a Broadway credit without standing on a Broadway stage, let alone performing. She is the latest in a line of celebrities lending their dollars, connections, reputations and fame to Broadway shows.

RuPaul Charles currently appears among the producing credits of two Broadway shows: Ain’t No Mo’ and A Strange Loop. The roster on the latter show also includes Don Cheadle, Jennifer Hudson, Mindy Kaling, Billy Porter and Alan Cumming. Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Nick Jonas stood out on the producing team of last year’s Chicken and Biscuits.

The presence of famous folks in the credits for Broadway productions isn’t exactly new, but it does seem to be proliferating. Beyond whatever they may bring financially, their presence is an explicit endorsement of the project, in some cases these are shows that may need some extra oomph to break through to audiences, especially when there aren’t stars on stage.

To be clear, these stars aren’t often the lead producers and are unlikely to be making the essential creative and business decisions. In some cases, they may be among one or two dozen individuals and entities above the title on the Playbill page. Carey’s participation in Some Like It Hot came after the show was in previews and only a couple of weeks before its official opening, when the show was pretty much set.

There are a couple of name producers who, if not necessarily at the same level of household fame, are more likely to be integrally involved, with film and TV producer and director Lee Daniels leading the effort that brought Ain’t No Mo’ to Broadway several years after it was seen at the Public Theater. Meanwhile, Lorne Michaels, who first produced on Broadway in the late 1970s when he brought Gilda Radner to the Winter Garden, is somewhat incongruously one of the top producing names on Leopoldstadt.

For the cynically minded, this interest in producing among stars offers a chance of scoring the quadruple crown known as the EGOT, an aggregation of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony coined on the TV show 30 Rock (produced by the aforementioned Michaels). But even if that’s the case, there’s nothing wrong with this kind of endorsement if it draws more people to the theatre. The stars don’t even need to be from the arts, with former pro basketball player Dwyane Wade among the producing team assembled by Daniels.

While Broadway title pages don’t exactly resemble gossip columns – there are certainly other instances of this cross-pollination. Gwyneth Paltrow was fifth on the producing roster of Head Over Heels in 2018, John Legend was credited as “in association with” for the 2016 Jitney revival, and Bryan Cranston was near the top of the list on Finding Neverland in 2015. It’s worth noting that Jake Gyllenhaal has been producing on Broadway as well, with both runs of Slave Play as well as his own appearance in Sea Wall/A Life, but somewhat more under the radar, with credit going to his producing entity Nine Stories.

While there have been actors and society figures producing shows for many years (a tabloid fixture-to-be named Donald Trump even tried it once, in 1970), the modern wave was likely set in motion when Oprah Winfrey came aboard the musical of The Color Purple in 2005. She had starred in the Steven Spielberg movie version 20 years earlier, and at that time was at the height of success with her TV show, so could anoint any cultural object into fame through the power and breadth of her audience. Her seal of approval was much sought after on everything from recipes to politics.

It’s very rare that stars instigate these projects and often they overshadow the core producers in the public eye. But since the general public doesn’t really know what producers do, or who most of them are, the trade-off of personal recognition for show promotion seems a worthwhile exchange. If that’s what brings in audiences these days, so be it. The days when New York theatregoers recognised the names of producers such as David Merrick or Harold Prince, let alone Billy Rose or Florenz Ziegfeld, are long gone.

Circling back to Carey, the announcement of her participation gave the show a pop among Broadway news sites and her presence at its opening next weekend will surely get camera flashes popping on the red carpet. While I doubt it will happen, there’s one more thing she could do to really boost the show if necessary, and that’s to step briefly into a role, or even just show up at a curtain call to belt out a tune. I suspect interest would be high.