David Black's Falling Off Broadway to Shutter on January 16
In Falling Off Broadway, Black tell his life story, from surviving his parents to becoming a Broadway producer, which made him lose both his money and his mind. Along the way he works as an opera singer, spy, sock salesman and Wall Street stock broker.
Black, who is also a respected painter, produced 18 shows on Broadway, including George M!, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Ides of March, Ready When You Are, CB! and The Impossible Years. He is the author of two books: The Magic of Theater and The Actor's Audition.
Directed by Craig Belknap, Falling Off Broadway premiered at the Kings Head Theatre in London in 2002 and officially open off-Broadway on December 5. The New York staging received mostly negative reviews. In his Broadway.com Review of the show, Kevin Manganaro wrote: "Black thinks we should be impressed with him. He thinks that he's fascinating us with his exploits, and that we're going to take something away from this brief visit with a running time of 70 minutes that will change us. This lack of self-awareness is where Falling Off Broadway runs aground… Nothing stings quite so harshly as a one-man show, starring an ordinary guy who thinks he's a star, and Black and his director, Craig Belknap, continually miss the mark by trying to sell Black's story as a page-turner. It just isn't, and to try to elevate it to such a level makes it seem silly."