Will Broadway Audiences Be Craving For Travel?

Travel agents on Broadway?

The thought of a play focused on travel agents was intriguing enough when I first heard about it, so I quickly agreed to interview its producer, Jim Strong, who just happens to be president of Dallas-based Strong Travel, a Virtuoso-member agency.

You can read that first column by clicking on Travel Agents Hit the Great White Way.

Strong's idea was to use a Broadway play, titled “Craving for Travel,” to promote the value of travel agents, which seemed to me to be an innovative and interesting way to approach the age-old consumer awareness challenge that the travel agency trade has had for the last two decades or more.

Strong turned to Andy Sandberg, an experienced Broadway producer most notable for his revival of “Hair,” to develop the script and the production. Sandberg and his colleague, Greg Edwards, researched and wrote the play, and Sandberg directed it.

"Craving for Travel" made its debut on Jan. 9, although we were asked not to review it during its "preview" until Jan. 23.

The New York Times, of all publications, broke that agreement in its rather smarmy review of the play, but I stuck to the embargo.

I saw the play on Jan. 10, just after the Virtuoso Eastern Regional showcase. It's being staged through Feb. 9 in the 200-seat Peter Jay Sharp Theater in Playwrights Horizon, located on West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues.

And yes, that's technically Off Broadway, so the headline on my initial column referring to the "Great White Way" is technically inaccurate … but it's close enough!

Of course, I keep getting asked: How was the play? Well, without claiming to be an experienced Broadway reviewer, here's my take on it.

PHOTO: "Craving For Travel" creator Jim Strong at the show's premiere. (courtesy Jim Strong)

"Craving for Travel," a roughly 90-minute production in one act, has a single set with two very different travel agency offices sitting side by side. One of those offices, Jetaway Travel, is a bit of a throwback with older furniture, fading travel posters, an old globe, and a old metal filing cabinet with two models of the Concorde on top.

The other office is Bolton Travel, a much more current travel agency office with modern furniture, an updated decor, a comfortable desk chair, and desk with a more modern desktop computer on it.

The two travel agency owners, Joanne (played by Michelle Ragusa) and Gary (played by Thom Sesma), enter their respective offices from opposite sides of the stage, both talking to each other on the phone.

It turns out they were once married to each other, though they have divorced because, in a Broadway twist, Thom realizes he is gay. They remain good but competitive friends and confidants.

Towards the end of their initial conversation, Gary has to hang up to take a call from one of his travel clients. That’s when the play goes into hyper-drive, with both travel agents taking calls from their respective clients to help them with their sometimes rather absurd travel requests.

The two actors take turns playing each other’s travel clients, as well as Gary’s mother (who was the founder of his agency), a third competing travel agent, the sales director of a luxury resort in Maui, and a group travel tour guide.

One of the agents also finds herself on hold with an airline for hours in her effort to change a flight (now that never happens, right!).

All of this can be amusing and somewhat confusing at times, since the two actors play 30 characters during the course of the play. One client, for example, wants to rent the aircraft carrier Intrepid, currently a museum moored on the West Side of Manhattan, on a private cruise around the city.

Another high-end and rather obnoxious client wants to book a Maui resort for her family over the Christmas holidays when there are clearly no rooms to be had. Yet another somewhat older client wants to take her husband on a “last” big trip to Morocco.

Another client, who has “strayed” by booking his travel through Travelocity, wants help to get himself out of some increasingly bad situations (though in this case the agent is not too sympathetic because he has booked online). Yet another client from an Eastern Europe wants to book a rather ambitious trip, though it’s not exactly clear if he’s on the level.

Many of the interactions between the two agents and their clients are quite amusing and a few are heartrending. The only challenge I had at times was keeping track of which client was on the phone at any one time.

At the early stage of the production I saw, the two actors playing the two travel agents and the other characters had the same problem as well at times. “Craving for Travel” is an extremely ambitious production because of the number of characters that the two actors have to play on stage

There is subplot in that Joanne and Gary are competing for the “Globel” (SIC) prize for top travel agent in the country, awarded, in this case, by Travel & Leisure magazine. So they each end up fantasizing what they will do if they win and they engage in a friendly competition.

In the end, however, each vignette between the two agents and their respective clients aims to show the kinds of challenges that agents face day to day and how they ultimately solve them. (Spoiler alert: the client who wants to book the Intrepid does somehow get his wish.)

But often I found myself thinking: Is this play just too much aimed at travel insiders?

Travel agents and other travel industry executives can appreciate many of the situations depicted in the play, however exaggerated they may be for dramatic purposes. Indeed, the play has been seen mostly so far by groups of travel agents and travel supplier executives.

Will audiences not as well versed in the travel trade truly understand the challenges faced by typical travel agents as well as the value they bring to the travel decision-making and booking process. I’m not so sure.

But I’ll give Jim Strong an “A” for effort for trying something new to depict the value of travel agents. The production itself gets a somewhat lower grade, however. It’s sometimes just too complicated and some of the “laughs,” though amusing, fall a bit short of the mark.

That said, I hope the production does have a life after Feb. 9. Or perhaps it will lead to some TV comedy pilot or reality series, something Strong has tried for in the past.

If “Craving for Travel” does nothing else, it shows how travel agents work diligently, sometimes based on some crazy requests, to fulfill their clients’ travel dreams.

Follow me on Twitter @traveljames.