by Michael Paulson
[The following article was published in section C (“The Arts”) of the New York Times of 23 June 2016. “Anatomy of a Broadway
Flop” is presented as a sort of theatrical post mortem of four big Broadway
musicals that failed this season. I know
little about three of the shows in the article aside from the Times reviews, but I think that Michael Paulson, the acting
theatrical ME, was probably gentler than I suspect the shows deserve. If I didn’t know better, I’d
come away from the article thinking, ‘Gee, they made a couple of little
mistakes. That’s hardly worthy of a death sentence.’ But I can
attest at least in the case of Bright Star, the only one of the four plays covered here that I saw, that the
creators and producers didn’t do much right from my perspective (see my report
on 11 April—I didn’t pussyfoot!). Bright Star almost certainly wouldn’t have even made it to a Broadway stage (or,
probably, even the Kennedy Center) if the name Steve Martin hadn’t been
attached. (I doubt Edie Brickell carries that much weight.) Bright
Star shouldn’t have been in the lofty position it
finagled for itself and couldn’t sustain its unearned prominence. (It’s
sort of the theater counterpart of the Peter Principle: the show rose to its
level of artistic incompetence and failed. I’m sorry for the artists who’ve
lost their jobs—but theater, especially commercial theater, isn’t a jobs
program.)
[American Psycho, with a book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and music
and lyrics by Duncan Sheik, began previews at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre under
the direction of Rupert Goold on 24 March 2016, opened on 21 April, and closed on 5 June.
The review-survey website Show-Score gave American
Psycho an average rating of 62 based on notices that were 49%
positive and 30% negative with 21% mixed.
American Psycho won Drama Desk
Awards for Outstanding Sound Design, Outstanding Lighting Design, and Outstanding
Projection Design, plus five additional Drama Desk nominations and two Tony
Award nominations (Best Scenic Design and Best Lighting Design). The musical also received eight Outer Critics
Circle Award nominations of which it won two (lighting and projection design) and
two Drama League Award nominations.
[Bright Star has a book by Steve Martin, music by Martin
and Edie Brickell, and lyrics by Brickell and began previews under the direction
of Walter Bobbie at the Cort Theatre on 25 February and opened on 24 March; the
show closed on 26 June. Show-Score reported that Bright Star received 66% positive reviews, 18% negative,
and 16% mixed, accumulating a score of 67.
Bright Star won one Theatre
World award for Carmen Cusack’s performance and one Drama Desk Award for Outstanding
Music; the musical was nominated for six additional Drama Desks and five Tonys
(Best Musical, Best Book, Best Original Score, Best Performance by an Actress
in a Leading Role, and Best Orchestrations).
It also won two Outer Critics Circle Awards (Outstanding New Broadway
Musical and Outstanding New Score) from seven nominations, and one Drama League
Award (Cusack) from two nominations; it also received two Fred and Adele
Astaire Award nominations.
[Disaster! began previews at the Nederlander Theatre on 9 February, opened
on 8 March, and closed on 8 May. Directed
by Jack Plotnick, Disaster! has a book
by Plotnick and Seth Rudetsky based on a concept created by Seth Rudetsky and
Drew Geraci using popular songs of the 1970s. Show-Score gave Disaster! an average score of 65, with 67% of its
reviews positive, 26% negative, and 7% mixed.
The jukebox musical was nominated for one Tony for Jennifer Simard’s
featured performance and one Drama Desk Award for the featured performance of Baylee
Littrell.
[Tuck Everlasting, with a book by Claudia Shear and Tim
Federle, music by Chris Miller, and lyrics by Nathan Tysen, started previews
under Casey Nicholaw’s direction at the Broadhurst Theatre on 31 March, opening
on 26 April and closing on 29 May. Show-Score’s rating of 63 was based on
an average of 45% positive notices, 24% negative, and 31% mixed. Tuck received
one Tony nomination, for the costume designs of Gregg Barnes, and won a Theatre
World award for the performance of actress Sarah Charles Lewis. There were also three nominations for Outer
Critics Circle Awards, two Drama League Award nominations, and two Fred and
Adele Astaire Award nods.]
Roger Bart in “Disaster!” (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
The woeful wordplay writes itself. “American Psycho” met a
gruesome end. “Tuck Everlasting” was not immortal. “Bright Star” ran out of
fuel. And “Disaster!” proved to be — well, you can finish that one yourself.
Broadway is a brutal business, in which real success is
enjoyed by a handful of shows, while a vast majority crash and burn. And this
season was especially tough, because one show, “Hamilton,” gobbled up much of
the attention, enthusiasm and awards that motivate potential ticket buyers.
For musicals that opened this spring, it was an especially
unforgiving season. Broadway is increasingly saturated with long-running hits,
and four musicals that opened last fall — “School of Rock,” “On Your Feet!,”
“Fiddler on the Roof” and “The Color Purple” — reached the new year still
running strong.
“People don’t have to go to their ‘I don’t know, maybe I’ll
like it’ show when there are so many ‘You’re going to love it’ shows to see,”
said Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns five of the 40
Broadway houses.
Ultimately, shows fail because not enough people buy tickets
to see them. Maybe the title wasn’t as popular as the producers thought, the
performers not as appealing, the stories not as dramatic, the songs not as
memorable. And, in an era of high running costs, many producers can no longer
afford to wait to let an audience build.
Four shows flopped this spring at a total loss to their
investors. Here, based on interviews with a variety of Broadway figures, is an
autopsy report of sorts for “American Psycho,” “Disaster!” and “Tuck
Everlasting,” all of which closed in recent weeks, and “Bright Star,” which
wraps up on Sunday.
Benjamin Walker in “American Psycho” (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
‘American
Psycho’
The run 27 previews, then 54 performances after
opening April 21 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.
The story A hunky and status-obsessed investment
banker who is (or at least appears to be) a sex-crazed serial killer in New
York City in 1989.
Cost to produce $9.8 million
Onstage The title character, Patrick Bateman,
was played by Benjamin Walker (“Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”); the
cast also featured a reunion of the “Next to Normal” co-stars Jennifer Damiano
and Alice Ripley.
Offstage An A-list creative team: music by the
singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik (“Spring Awakening”), set design by Es
Devlin and direction by Rupert Goold (“King Charles III”). The lead
producer was Jeffrey Richards.
What were they thinking? The title is well known
and has an established fan base through the polarizing 1991 novel by
Bret Easton Ellis and the cult film adaptation in 2000. The musical seemed sexy
and fearless, with a critique of the go-go ’80s that might resonate in this era
of intense discussion about income inequality; an initial production, at the
Almeida Theater in London from 2013-14, received some encouraging reviews. The
show was scheduled then to go to Second Stage, an Off Broadway nonprofit, for
further development, but the rights holder was so confident of the prospects
that it forced the cancellation of that production and moved straight
to Broadway.
Critical response Divided, but several of the
most influential critics hated it. The show was nominated for two Tony
Awards, for scenic and lighting design, and won neither.
Why it failed It was always going to be a risk.
The blood-drenched material (at one performance, a misfiring blood pack
splattered an audience member) was unsuitable for families and unappealing to
tourists, who make up a large constituency of Broadway ticket buyers. But the
show proved divisive even for adventurous theatergoers. Some raved about its
bold look and daring content, but others suggested it underplayed the satire;
many found the explicit and misogynistic violence offensive. Also noteworthy:
British-developed shows satirizing the United States (see “Enron”) have
recently tanked on Broadway.
Carmen Cusack in “Bright Star” (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
‘Bright
Star’
The run 30 previews, then 109 performances after
opening March 24 at the Cort Theater.
The story Inspired by a news account of a baby
found in a valise, the musical, set in North Carolina in the 1920s and the
1940s, tracks the intertwining stories of a young soldier and the editor of a
Southern literary magazine.
Cost to produce $10.5 million
Onstage Instead of going with a well-known star,
the show’s creative team chose Carmen Cusack, who had been with the
project from the start; she got great reviews and was nominated for a Tony
Award for her Broadway debut performance as the editor, Alice Murphy.
Offstage The comedian and musician Steve Martin
and the singer-songwriter Edie Brickell collaborated on the score. The show was
directed by Walter Bobbie (a Tony winner for “Chicago”), and the lead producer
was Joey Parnes, who had shepherded “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder”
into an unlikely hit.
What were they thinking? The producers and
creators were encouraged with what they saw at two pre-Broadway productions, a
premiere at the Old Globe in San Diego in 2014, then a run in 2015 at the Kennedy
Center in Washington; they believed that the cultural cachet of Mr. Martin and
Ms. Brickell would attract audiences and that a combination of buzz and awards
would broaden the appeal.
Critical response Mixed. Charles Isherwood of
The New York Times praised the show as “gentle-spirited, not gaudy,” but Terry
Teachout described it in The Wall Street Journal as “a really bad
bluegrass-pop musical.” The show was nominated for five Tony Awards, including
for best new musical, but won none.
Why it failed Although some were charmed, few
were wowed, making it hard to build word of mouth. As an original musical, not
adapted from a film or novel, and with a complex plot, it was hard to explain
to ticket buyers. Some found the show’s denouement laughably predictable. The
musical was nostalgic; it was often described as quiet, or small, which has
worked for some recent musicals (“Once,” “Fun Home”), though not this year. As
“Bright Star” struggled at the box office, Mr. Martin and Ms. Brickell, among
others, lent the production more money to keep it running, and on about a dozen
occasions Mr. Martin joined the band onstage for an instrumental entr’acte, but
it was not enough to save the show.
A scene from “Disaster!” (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
‘Disaster!’
The run 32 previews, then 72 performances after
opening March 8 at the Nederlander Theater.
The story A spoof of 1970s disaster films
(particularly “The Poseidon Adventure”), the show depicted the misadventures of
the passengers and crew members on an ill-fated floating casino in New York
City in 1979.
Cost to produce $6.5 million
Onstage Seth Rudetsky, a Broadway booster and a
co-writer of the musical, starred as a disaster expert and enlisted several
stage notables to ham it up alongside him, including Roger Bart (“The
Producers”), Kerry Butler (“Xanadu”), Adam Pascal (“Rent”) and Faith Prince
(“Guys and Dolls”).
Offstage The musical featured jukebox classics
from the disco era and was directed by Jack Plotnick, who wrote the show with
Mr. Rudetsky. The lead producer was Robert Ahrens.
What were they thinking? This show was an effort
at counterprogramming — it had two successful Off Broadway runs, in 2012 and
2013-14, and the producers hoped that the enthusiasm for a campy night out
could be replicated on Broadway.
Critical response Mr. Isherwood, writing in The
Times, praised the show as a “delirious goof,” but other key critics
were less impressed; in New York magazine, Jesse Green called it “a
tiny entertainment that should probably have been left in a basement rec room.”
Jennifer Simard’s uproarious performance as a nun with a gambling problem received
the only Tony nomination; she did not hit the jackpot.
Why it failed The musical struck many as an
extended, one-gag skit, without enough star power, spectacle or drama to
justify Broadway prices (or a two-act running time), and it sank.
Andrew Keenan-Bolger and Sarah Charles Lewis in the musical
“Tuck Everlasting.” (
‘Tuck
Everlasting’
The run 28 previews, then 39 performances after
opening April 26 at the Broadhurst Theater.
The story A young girl who meets an immortal
family in the woods of rural New Hampshire and must decide whether to drink
from the water that would allow her to live forever.
Cost to produce $11 million
Onstage The Broadway veterans Terrence Mann
(“Pippin”), Carolee Carmello (“Parade”), Michael Park (“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”)
and Andrew Keenan-Bolger (“Newsies”), along with an 11-year-old
newcomer, Sarah Charles Lewis.
Offstage A beloved children’s book, published in
1975 by Natalie Babbitt, was the key ingredient. Add in the hitmaker Casey
Nicholaw as director and choreographer, changing pace from his
go-for-the-guffaw spectacles — “Aladdin,” “The Book of Mormon” and “Something
Rotten!” The musical’s initial book was by Claudia Shear, and then the
producers added Tim Federle to help revise it for Broadway; Chris Miller and
Nathan Tysen did the score. The lead producer was Beth Williams.
What were they thinking? An initial production
in Atlanta was well-received; Mr. Nicholaw has a track record of commercial
success; and family-friendly musicals often do well on Broadway.
Critical response Tepid, with a few exceptions.
The show was nominated for one Tony, for costume design; it did not win.
Why it failed Without big stars, it had low
advance sales, and some argued that its leafy logo was unhelpful. The
story is a bit of a fairy tale — often hard to execute. Adults perceived it as
a show for children, and family shows without the Disney imprimatur are hard to
sell. “Tuck” was sweet and lovely, but those are not the adjectives a musical
needed this season to be heard above the din.
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