Was the 1974 revival of Candide a flop?- Page 2

[Charley Kringas Inc]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 2:24am

Of all the Candides I've acquainted myself with over the years this is still the best. Candide is kind of a bear of a show to put on and make work because it suffers from what I heard someone once call "diminishing comic returns" - as the evening wears on the cluttered nature of the show starts to suck the life out of the scenes. But the '74 version skipped that issue by being really short and really fast (the whole show was put on vinyl) so there was no dead space, which is killer for something as scattered as Candide. Wheeler's book is sometimes a little silly but it sure beats the massively bloated operahouse version, which includes basically every song ever written for the show and runs a dreary three hours. A lot of the music is really good (the King's Barcarolle is my favorite, even if the lyrics are kind of iffy) but there's just so much of it that it kills the joy of the show.

The Lonny Price version is pretty fun but I could do without "We Are Women" and "Dear Boy".

[madlibrarian]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 8:31pm

ghostlight2: Happy to have amused you by citing Hal Prince; you may not be convinced, but I have seen figures that support Prince's contention that the musicians' demands cost Candide its recoupment.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 9:30pm

^^^^

I don't think anyone's doubting your word, madlibrarian. I for one have no doubt that Prince blamed the loss on a union.

But critical thinking, as I'm sure you know, requires that we look at the motivation of the sources we cite. In this case, the conflict between the League of NY Producers and the musician's union (unions in general, actually) was a longstanding one. Of course, a producer doesn't like to pay a musician who isn't playing--even if in the long run he needs that same musician to survive to play in a future show.

So when Hal Prince claims the only reason his Candide lost money is because of salaries paid to walkers, I have to raise an eyebrow. NOT because I think Prince is a liar, but because he isn't an unbiased source; he had a vested interest in (a) arguing that unions are killing the theater; and (b) explaining his own failure to recoup his investors' money.

Prince's show ran almost two years, long enough for other shows to recoup at the time, and he knew he had to include walkers in his budget. If he didn't recoup in two years, he didn't budget properly. Pointing out one expense as opposed to the many others is just a convenient way to continue the attack on unions. You say you have seen figures and I believe you, but those figures were chosen to make a point; you could have been shown other figures instead.

__________

1. Although I'm not accusing Prince of lying in this case, he was rather famously caught inflating his reported grosses of Fiddler and actually running it for a year or so at a loss in order to break Hello, Dolly!'s then record as the longest-running musical.

2. I actually admire Prince AND his investors' willingness to support worthwhile projects even though they were unlikely to turn a profit. Part of their generosity was a sort of "giving back" of the enormous profits they had made on shows like Pajama Game and Fiddler; nonetheless, they elevated the art form in the process and we all benefited. So I am not calling Prince a "bad" producer here.


Updated On: 12/13/11 at 09:30 PM

[madlibrarian]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 10:05pm

Okay, but Prince has written that he felt misled, that he undertook the show in the belief that he would be allowed to drop musicians based on the decrease in capacity at the renovated Broadway, and then learned otherwise. It does seem like he should have settled these little details! I'm sure I don't know the truth behind the story, but, given the production costs and salaries of 1974, it is NOT impossible that the "walkers" were a big factor in the loss, and that previous poster offered only bluster and no facts. If memory serves, the finances of Candide were covered in the press (and certainly in Variety) back in '75; a little research might provide enlightenment.

Updated On: 12/13/11 at 10:05 PM

[ghostlight2]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 10:40pm

Just as a point of clarification, Gaveston 2 is correct, madlibrarian. I was speaking of Hal Prince's statement, not yours. Apologies for not making that clearer. As Gaveston pointed out, Prince has been known to rearrange facts in his favor, and I believe that he did so in this case. It wouldn't be the first time a producer laid the blame of a show's failure at the feet of a union. It surely will not be the last.

See also WOSQ's post regarding the loss of seats (and as a result, loss of potential income) due to the unorthodox staging. It may have been brilliant artistically, but he was cutting his own throat in the process. Again, if - IF - the figure that the show failed by was equal to the walker's salary, the show was operating on too slim a margin.

And all due respect, you're not offering facts, either - you're taking Hal Prince's word as the truth, which was my original point. I agree a little research would be interesting.

[madlibrarian]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 11:15pm

Thanx, ghostlight2; did not mean to impugn your veracity either. Indeed I don't have the facts (or appropriate reference works at hand), but would like to suggest that Prince's contention is at least plausible. If memory serves again, it cost half a mill to move Candide from a ballroom to Broadway. (How times have changed!) Do the math: six (or more?) musician paychecks multiplied by a run of a year and a half... that's gotta be well into five figures of unneeded expense for the show... (I remember seeing that Candide; tickets were something like six dollars.) Compared to today when an eight-figure show can run three years and not recoup, costs and breakeven were so different... could Prince be correct?

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 12/14/11 at 1:06am

Prince has admitted too to sometimes losing interest in a show during its run because of a new project, when he should have paid more attention. While, despite my love for it, I doubt it would have been a massive hit, he and others have said, for example, that Zorba opened with a large advance sale, decent reviews, and then in the Summer he just lost any desire to properly recast the leads, closing it with the intention of bringing it back after an initial tour but then just dropping it (something that seems to often happen when producers talk about touring a show and closing the Broadway production and then bringing it back later--it rarely seems to happen).

I guess part of the issue is being both the director and the producer of your show and getting wrapped up in new projects.

[afecu]

Posted: 2/12/17 at 4:39pm

I know this is an old thread, but I want to mention that the Martha Swope photos of the 1974 production, as well as other photos showing details of the theater reconstruction of the Broadway theater, are now online at NYPL Digital Collections - search for Candide.

I saw the 1974 production both at BAM and on Broadway, and having recently seen the NYCO revival I was missing the intimacy and enthusiasm of that production.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 2/12/17 at 8:54pm

ETA I am deleting my original response here because I find I said the exact same thing six years ago. I am pleased with my own consistency.

On another subject, there are numerous references above to "the opera house version". I assume people mean the New York City Opera production, a production I enjoyed for the most part. (Full disclosure, my husband worked on the show.)

But I also have another opera recording (Scottish National Opera) with a somewhat different playlist and song order.

So it appears there is more than one "opera version" out there.

Updated On: 2/12/17 at 08:54 PM

[Jarethan]

Posted: 2/12/17 at 9:04pm

I saw the 1973 production three times.  Didn't like it the first time -- I was in the 'Dangling section' which provided great views along with major discomfort, and was unfamiliar with the score; then I became familiar with the score, saw it again in a more comfortable seat, loved it, and went a third time.  It was a once in a lifetime production, which was undoubtedly its biggest problem.  I think this was another show that never had a chance of breaking even.  All the work to the theatre had to cost a fortune, while cutting the gross potential, which would have benefitted early in the run, based on the rapturous reviews.  I have often wondered if anyone ever did the analysis to figure out how long it would need to play to sellout audiences to be able to return its investment...and this was 40 years ago, when hits ran a fraction of the time they run today.

When the rubber hits the road, Candide is one of those shows that you are going to lose money on unless you can figure out how to do it on the cheap. and still get great reviews. IMO, the show is too sophisticated -- despite all the low humor of the 1973 production -- to appeal to a broad audience, sorta like most Sondheim shows.  It is always going to be a hard sell.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 2/12/17 at 9:14pm

madlib, I know it's been six years, but the point you were missing
is that we never saw the full CANDIDE revival budget. Okay, sure,
maybe the total loss was close to the cost of walkers; but PRINCE
himself chose the comparison.

He might just as well have written: the loss was about what we paid
Sondheim to write "Auto Da Fe", or what we paid for stools, or what
we paid to raise the orchestra floor. Or any number of other
comparisons.

It's not that he was lying. It's that HE selected the expenses to be
compared--and he had a vested interest in choosing as he did.

[Jarethan]

Posted: 2/12/17 at 9:17pm

Excellent observation.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 2/12/17 at 10:42pm

There are maybe three or four opera versions of CANDIDE out there these days: New York City, Scottish, the 90s concert revival, probably more I cant think of off hand. Bernstein never stopped toying with this thing, and — for my money — it got worse every new time he put his fingers on it.

Like many others, I dont think you can beat the 74. Quickly moving book, great selections from the piles of songs written for the show. Even on a prosc stage, it works really, really well.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 2/13/17 at 2:55am

Thanks for the update, Sean.

[JBC2]

Posted: 2/13/17 at 10:10am

Thanks to all who either posted photos or posted links to photos...I hadn't seen many of those pics of my ex-brother-in-law, Mark Baker. Wish I had seen the show!

[Kad]

Posted: 2/13/17 at 10:21am

I agree that '74 version is probably closest to what the ideal musical adaptation of Candide should be, and I would love to see it revived under the direction of someone like Rachel Chavkin or Alex Timbers. However, it seems like when Candide is produced, it is some grander, larger version.

Has there ever been a show with a score that is so wonderful but also so completely inappropriate for what the show is trying to be?

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 2/13/17 at 10:41am

Everything's relative when we consider the 1974 revival of Candide.
The most extraordinary thing about it was that in comparison to the original production, a legendary flop, it was a resounding success.  The original lasted 73 performances.  The '74 revival, 740!

[Jarethan]

Posted: 2/13/17 at 1:52pm

But did lose much of its investment (I think Prince understated the losses -- I remember reading at the time that it lost a huge portion of its investment because the breakeven was too close to the gross potential.

So, it was a financial flop of a brilliant, production of a problematic show with a magnificent score.