For Ask BK Day...
Since you "commented" on Xanadu's closing last night...
Would you be "a David Merrick" if one on your shows - a show that you had written - opened on Broadway to some decent to positive reviews, and close it after a week? Basing your decision on the amount of the advance sales, the "buzz", etc.?
*Producing - and the Broadway Theatre - is a totally different business and "game" from David Merrick's days. Yes, Xanadu may be closing at "a total loss", but that should not discount the weeks and months of employment that the show provided to a talented company of actors, musicians, technicians and house staff. I mean, it's not like off-Broadway shows - or even off-off-off-Broadway shows - can recoup their initial investment - even if the show got great reviews and had sold out houses. Yes, that's sort of apples and oranges, but I think that's getting my point across.
I know that you are trying to make me seem like a heartless old poop for commenting, but be that as it may...
I wouldn't be a David Merrick because I wouldn't be the producer of something I wrote. So, if the producer of a show I wrote decided to close it because it really was taking a bath, I would completely understand - I'd have to. Again, you're personalizing this to make it seem like I personally am discounting the employment of actors and crew and the enjoyment of audiences. By your reasoning, every box-office flop musical that brought enjoyment and kept actors employed should run for over a year, but you know and I know that's not how it works. Side Show had its screaming, drooling fans who thought that show was the second coming - nobody came was the problem, but some of the people who showed up loved it. But reality is reality. And believe me, I know producing today isn't like producing in the time of David Merrick - Merrick was a real producer - these other guys have so much ego and there are so many of them and they'd rather die than have it look like they had a show that wasn't drawing, despite good reviews. The best example of this, and why they are no longer producing shows is the Dodgers - keeping Once Upon A Mattress open for over four months, despite TERRIBLE reviews, no business and no hope of an afterlife on tour. THAT'S producing. Not.
Whatever one thought of Xanadu (and I liked it fine), for almost half its run it lost money, and the times when it met its weekly nut or made above it, it did not make much, certainly not enough to pay back its investors. Will the tour bring in more money? Maybe - it really depends how a campy very inside show will play across the country, which may not be loaded with people who are smart enough to know that the show is making fun of a bad film they didn't see. The capitalization of Xanadu may have been reasonable for Broadway (I've heard five mil), but I guarantee you in those first four months where they were really struggling the investors had to have been called on to put more money in to keep it going.
I have no stake in the show at all - but to turn a blind eye to the reality of it, well, why? I'm sure Whoop-Up brought enjoyment to some of the people who saw it - every flop does. Carrie has its rabid fans. And we can name a gazillion others.
