Oh, for fuck's sake. Nathan Lane is not "the greatest living Broadway Star." In caps, no less!
Broadway no longer has cultural significance, so it no longer produces any 'stars' at all. Broadway has been entirely displaced, culturally, by electronic media. For much of the 20th century, Broadway made significant contributions to American culture. When live theater was all there was, Broadway was the pinnacle of performance art. But for over a hundred years, it's supremacy has been under constant assault and has been constantly diminishing. First by silent movies, then talkies, then television, then Cable TV and VCRs and now streaming video. Broadway is unavoidably too labor intensive and fixed in time and space by the reality of live performance to ever compete with the electronic media in which a property can be sold and sold and sold again, 24 hours a day, world wide. The opportunities for financial success on Broadway are few, while in the electronic media, they are many. And always growing.
Broadway currently has the cultural importance once enjoyed by Shipstads & Johnson Ice Follies. The members of the League chose in the 1980s to expand their audience by dumbing down the offerings. Broadway now is no different than Las Vegas. Big rooms with big shows marketed to big tourists. I hate that it is this way, but it is.
Out of that environment, no "Broadway Star" can be produced. Broadway is no longer the most important venue culturally, nor the most remunerative financially. Therefore, the biggest talents do no spend their lives building careers there. Broadway gets the skilled, but unphotogenic. It gets the bland. The League doesn't even want stars. In the 80s, producers stopped giving star billing. They wanted their show to be the star. They did not want to have to hire a star to headline their show. They did not want the pressure of finding a suitable star to replace an actor with star billing. They wanted to have a revolving door for the guy playing the Phantom and all the other roles, too. NOT stars.
The League and your local high school's Thespian Society constantly paint a picture of Broadway as it was 75 years ago. That's over. And with it went the possibility that Broadway could ever again produce a star. The regulars who appear with some frequency on Broadway are very regular, indeed. If they were exceptional, other opportunities exist that would pay them much, much more. If you're not seeing the truth of this, I paraphrase, Blow out your candles, Laura. Take the clouds from your eyes and see it as it really is.
