Making a new Broadway show is often stressful. At “Dog Day Afternoon,” a stage adaptation of Sidney Lumet’s 1975 movie about a Brooklyn bank robbery and hostage-taking, that stress became so intense that the production’s Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright was prohibited from entering the August Wilson Theater for three days over the last week.
The show’s producing team told the playwright, Stephen Adly Guirgis, that he was no longer welcome at rehearsals after tempers flared on Friday between Guirgis and Mark Kaufman, who runs Warner Bros. Theater Ventures, an entity that is among the play’s lead producers.
The argument and the aftermath were described by three theater professionals with connections to the production and knowledge of the events, but who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were seeking to protect their relationships with those involved.
Asked for comment, the playwright and lead producers issued a joint statement saying that “the process of creating and producing a new play is always a passionate one.”
“Stephen has finalized his script after implementing all his changes, as is customary, during previews,” they said. “We are all committed to maintaining a respectful environment for everyone involved and remain very proud of what’s onstage.”
The subject of the dispute is not entirely clear, but the show was continually revised throughout the preview process, which began March 10 and involves performances for paying audiences as well as ongoing rehearsals to incorporate changes. There were tensions over the show’s running time (it is now two hours and 15 minutes long, including an intermission, which is shorter than it was at the start of previews) and its tone (early previews leaned into comedy, while the film was primarily suspenseful).
The dispute is not expected to affect the show’s ability to open. The producers have accepted Guirgis’s final script, and on Monday night they “froze” the show, meaning changes are finished. Critics have been invited to see it this week, and the opening — the night when reviews run — is scheduled for March 30.
“With the show now frozen, we look forward to sharing it with audiences on opening night,” the statement from Guirgis and the producers said.
Guirgis is an acclaimed playwright whose works often concern love, crime, addiction and the struggles of working-class New Yorkers; his settings are often gritty, his language is often coarse and his characters are often volatile. He won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for drama for “Between Riverside and Crazy.”
Guirgis’s previous plays were mostly original, giving him full control over the stories. “Dog Day Afternoon” is based on, and therefore constrained somewhat by the plot of, the movie of the same title, which in turn was based on a Life magazine article about the 1972 crime. The film starred Al Pacino and John Cazale.
The stage version of “Dog Day Afternoon” stars Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who have both won Emmy Awards for “The Bear.” The play, directed by Rupert Goold, is off to a strong start at the box office, fueled by fans of the film and the actors; its first two weeks of previews were sold out, and last week it grossed a healthy $1.2 million.
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
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