What went wrong?
From eleven new musicals, three remain open. How did all those shows become so short-lived? Was it lousy producing, or bad writing? What went wrong?
Here is a list of the musicals from last Season, in order of their opening date, indicating the number of performances they played (unless still running):
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (94)
The Scottsboro Boys (49)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (69*)
Elf (57*)
Priscilla Queen of the Desert
The Book of Mormon
Catch Me If You Can (170)
Wonderland (33)
Sister Act
Baby It’s You! (151)
The People in the Picture (60*)
* - Limited engagement
I want to first discuss Off-Broadway’s Lucky Guy−The grandiose musical comedy that played the Little Shubert Theatre for a mere 14 performances. It was such an enjoyable show, full of laughs and frilly entertainment! Rob Bissinger’s set topped itself each scene, William Ivey Long’s costumes outshined even those of Priscilla’s. Star Varla Jean Merman, drag queen extraordinaire, is the eighth wonder of the World! Okay, so why did this enjoyable show close so quickly? One word: $6,000,000. From what I understand, that was their enormous budget (which is unheard of in today’s economy). They spent money in all the wrong places, like hiring a psychic to rid the Little Shubert of it’s “curse.” In addition, their expensive but cute Ads on the Subway. And add Mr. Long and Mr. Bissinger’s budget, it’s no wonder the show “flopped.” It wasn’t a perfect show, allowing the show’s writer Willard Beckham to direct was problematic. (It’s a shame the show wasn’t produced when it was originally written, in the 70s, because freakin’ Michael Bennett was the original director!) This is a perfect example of bad producing. How something so great can crumble without intelligent producers behind it. But it’s not always the producers’ fault.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown was produced on Broadway by Lincoln Center Theatre, this past fall. As the show’s star Patti LuPone has vented in post-Women interviews, “it was risk-taking art.” That’s very kind. I admit it was a piece of art, but abstract art that didn’t work. The show had an elaborate and confusing scenic/projection design, very poor sound quality and an overall confusing plot (not to mention a horrid smell of burning “bed”). The reviews were extremely negative and the show ended-up closing sooner than the scheduled subscriber run. In this case, I would say the downfall of the production was mainly creative. This next show had a plethora of problems and it became the shortest-lived musical of last Season.
Frank Wildhorn is notorious for two things: similar-sounding ballads and flop musicals. When the New York Times announced that his latest show Wonderland was heading to the great white way, they published the amount of money his past productions lost on Broadway. And let me tell you, it was not pretty! Wonderland had an unintelligent book, a weak pop score and essentially no audience. Moreover, the inexperienced producers brought the show to New York prematurely. They wanted to open before Wildhorn’s other show Bonnie & Clyde came to Broadway. Ultimately the show concluded due to poor ticket sale. (For the Wednesday matinee immediately following the closing, they had only sold eight tickets. Yikes!)
Producers aren’t learning any lessons. In 2010 Matthew Lombardo’s Looped shuttered after thirty-three performances. In the very next Season, his new play High played only seven. I cannot understand why a producer would bring in a show so quickly after a failure. In two months New Yorkers will get to see Wildhorn’s Bonnie & Clyde. I hear it’s a much better show, but the timing is not ideal.
Baby It’s You! was the worst show I have ever seen. That’s a mean thing to say but it didn’t have a redeeming quality. In my mind the show was produced for one reason. Look at the producers, American Pop Anthology, Universal Music Group, essentially people who own the rights to the jukebox music that made up the score. It seems to me that they wanted to cheaply produce a show to showcase their music, and girl-group The Shirelles was their poor-random target. The heroine in this story Florence Greenberg, played by the wonderful Beth Leavel, was a character that the writers didn’t seem to realize was actually a horrible woman. In the course of the show she abandons her children, cheats on her husband and screws over The Shirelles, multiple times. At the show I saw, a guy from the audience literally called out, “She’s a bitch!” And I couldn’t agree more. It wasn’t a story that needed to be told, or a show that needed to be produced. Now the story of Frank Abagnale, Jr. on the other hand, is an excellent story!
Catch Me If You Can was the first big musical for songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, since their mega-hit Hairspray. Sadly, however, the show was misguided. Star Norbert Leo Butz called it, “A great new American musical,” as he accepted his second Tony Award for playing Agent Carl Hanratty. It wasn’t a bad musical theatre piece, the concept just didn’t make much sense. In this version Abagnale, played by the stunning Aaron Tveit, dreamed of having a TV Special, in which the show unraveled. There’s nothing about the character, or the real-life con artists, that even indicates “showbiz.” Personally, I think it would have worked fine as a straight-show. Nonetheless, after receiving very few Tony Nominations, and I assume little advance, the “great new American musical,” shuttered after only one hundred sixty-six performances.
I will leave you with this quote: ”When you look at the current crop of Broadway musicals, you wanna tell producers that they don’t have to invest in everything!,” Ryan J. Davis.
