The “real-life Max Bialystock” overpaid for talent
Garth Drabinsky was a bully and a con man with a maniacal ego but the “impresario of the old school” certainly knew how to treat talent, writes New York Post theatre critic Michael Riedl, explaining the outpouring of support from people like E.L. Doctorow, Hal Prince and Christopher Plummer at the former Livent co-founder’s sentencing hearing yesterday. “It’s appalling but not surprising that all these artistic types are still under Drabinsky’s spell,” Riedl writes, noting that Drabinsky paid them top dollar, wined and dined them in the best restaurants, and flew them around the world in his private jet. “Ragtime lost pots of money everywhere it went, but Doctorow, who wrote the novel on which it’s based and who wrote a glowing letter of support of Drabinsky, surely cashed some nice royalty checks,” he writes. The “real-life Max Bialystock’s” willingness to overpay actors, infuriated rival Broadway producers, he writes, who used to complain bitterly that he was inflating salaries for even B-listers.