It’s only summer, but we can already crown this season’s box- office champ.
Cue the gun barrel and the surf-rock guitar riff: 007’s the man with the golden box office.
Tickets for the upcoming Broadway revival of “Betrayal,” starring Daniel Craig and his wife, Rachel Weisz, have been on sale for just two weeks, and the take is reaching $5 million.
No other new show is even close. Sources say the Harold Pinter play will likely be sold out by the time it plays its first performance Oct. 1.
Directed by Mike Nichols, “Betrayal” opens Nov. 3 at Nichols’ favorite Broadway theater, the Barrymore, and will run just 14 weeks.
This is Craig’s second go-around as a box-office dynamo. When he teamed with Hugh Jackman in “A Steady Rain,” they grossed more than $1 million every week. The cop drama was pretty dreary, but that didn’t dent the profits: It recouped its $2.5 million costs in a little over a month and went on to make another $2 million or so in profits.
“Betrayal” appears to be on track to make even more.
One of Pinter’s best-known — and most accessible — plays, it’s about a couple whose marriage comes apart when she has an affair with her husband’s best friend. The brilliant gimmick is that story is told in reverse chronological order, a sort of “Merrily We Roll Along” for the brainy set.
In this production, the best friend will be played by Rafe Spall, an up-and-coming British actor making his Broadway debut.
“Betrayal” is almost always a hit. The first production, in 1978, opened at the National Theatre and was a sellout for months. It starred Michael Gambon, Daniel Massey and Penelope Wilton.
On Broadway, the play ran nearly 200 performances in 1980 and helped launch Raul Julia’s career. His co-stars were Blythe Danner and Roy Scheider.
There was a fine revival at the Roundabout in 2000 starring Juliette Binoche (gorgeous), Liev Schreiber (intense) and John Slattery (silver-haired and “Mad Man”-ish).
“Betrayal” is autobiographical. As Pinter admitted to critic Michael Billington, he based it on his seven-year affair with Joan Bakewell, a popular TV personality in England. She was married, at the time, to Pinter’s friend, producer Michael Bakewell.
Pinter was married to actress Vivien Merchant. She, too, was having an affair. What a randy set of Brits!
Nichols, who won a Tony last year for his revival of “Death of a Salesman,” led the actors in a workshop earlier this summer. He likes to go through the play and analyze the scenes with the actors, so that everybody’s on the same page when actual rehearsals begin.
I heard the workshop went extremely well, and Nichols may be on track to pick up yet another Tony — his 10th.
“Betrayal,” by the way, will go head-to-head with another Pinter play this fall — “No Man’s Land,” starring Patrick Stewart and Ian McKel len. It’s a lot murkier than “Betrayal,” but it casts a creepy spell.
A Pinter feast in the fall: Serious-minded theatergoers have a lot to look forward to.
My show-queen credentials have been revoked.
As several readers pointed out in e-mails, I misplaced the song “I Will Never Leave You” in last week’s column about a revival of “Side Show.”
It does not end the first act. It is, in fact, the 11 o’clock number at the end of the show.
Now that I’ve cleared that up, I’m going to try and reclaim my credentials by listening to the original recording of “Gypsy” over and over again.
I love the way Jack Klugman sings “Rose’s Turn.”
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