BAT OUT OF HELL Will Play 8 Weeks At NY City Center In 2019- Page 2

[pmensky]

Posted: 11/1/18 at 9:44pm

It ends in Toronto.  Tour is cancelled.

Updated On: 11/1/18 at 09:44 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 11/1/18 at 9:51pm

pmensky said: "It ends"

Do you have an internet plan where you only get so many characters per month?

I swear I tried googling everything I could think of to get more info before I bothered ya'll here. But I can't find a mention of anything except the always-scheduled Toronto closing. It's supposed to play Detroit next week and the Curran and the Ahmanson are still advertising tickets on their web sites.

Everything ends. How do you know the tour will end in 48 hours (if that is indeed what you and others are saying)?

[pmensky]

Posted: 11/1/18 at 9:53pm

GavestonPS said: "pmensky said: "It ends"

Do you have an internet plan where you only get so many characters per month?

I swear I tried googling everything I could think of to get more info before I bothered ya'll here. But I can't find a mention of anything except the always-scheduled Toronto closing. It's supposed to play Detroit next week and the Curran and the Ahmanson are still advertising tickets on their web sites.

Everything ends. How do you know the tour will end in 48 hours (if that is indeed what you and others are saying)?"

Sorry, my iPad acted up while composing.  It's closing Saturday in Toronto. The tour is cancelled.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 11/1/18 at 10:02pm

I'm sorry if I sounded snappish, Mr. Mensky. I forget that many people access this site with their iPhones.

I hope they make an official announcement tomorrow. I secured my tix through a friend who is a subscriber and I can't refuse to pay her until an official announcement is made. It would be nice if she could just get a refund without having to also refund my check.

[ClumsyDude15]

Posted: 11/1/18 at 10:38pm

I saw someone who is in the show post on their Facebook alluding to this fact but nothing official. I assume something more official will come out soon.

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 11/1/18 at 10:49pm

I feel so bad for Bradley as well as everyone else involved. I hope they all rebound quickly. https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Rialto-Chatter-BAT-OUT-OF-HELL-The-Musical-Cancels-National-Tour-20181101

Updated On: 11/1/18 at 10:49 PM

[Sondheimite]

Posted: 11/1/18 at 11:05pm

Michael Cohl is literally the worst.  The THIRD TIME he's pulled this stunt. 

[LightsOut90]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 12:37am

i CAN NOT believe Michael Cohl pulled this noise AGAIN, and thisd time i know someone personally affected

[ggersten]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 12:37am

Sondheimite said: "MichaelCohl is literally the worst. The THIRD TIME he's pulled this stunt."

This.  I can't imagine why anyone will ever sign on to a Cohl promised tour in the future.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 1:23am

Poor Bradley. Dude is so damn talented, I feel so badly for him.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 1:37am

Have a friend on this and I’m shocked! It did so well in London, etc.

[IdinaBellFoster]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 1:39am

I’m shocked. This seemed to be selling well, no?

[Tag]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 1:43am

The first run in Toronto last year (which was the full UK production) did very well.  These past few week's run has been heavily discounted.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 8:09am

In fairness to Michael Cohl, I always thought this was going to be a harder sell in America.

In Europe, and possibly particularly in the UK, Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman's oeuvre is taken very seriously (I mean, ****, proof positive for me is that Tanz der Vampire is still getting produced long after the Broadway run killed its chances outside of continental Europe).

Way more seriously than here, that is, where market research once indicated only 2% of the general public had any clue Jim was involved with the Bat Out of Hell albums, probably even less (outside of his fan circle) that the songs were originally intended for a musical, and where Meat and Jim's music is generally treated as the definition of a guilty pleasure. "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" -- and maybe, maybe, "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" -- are wedding and prom staples. That's about it. A lot more people have heard Jim Steinman's music, with or without Meat Loaf, than know that he was involved with it, hence the guffaws that greeted "Total Eclipse of the Heart" at the top of Act Two of Dance of the Vampires.

And then there's the Meat Loaf tribute act featuring members of his actual band that I alluded to elsewhere in this thread. My thinking was that, given the choice between a tribute act sanctioned by (and at one point rumored to be featuring, in a purely emcee/storytelling capacity) Meat Loaf that does the material the way people have always heard it and come to expect it, and a musical that (so far as they knew) grafted Meat Loaf songs onto a story that was equal parts dark gay Peter Pan, ham-handed political commentary, and hot mess, audiences would pick the tribute act, especially if it books the same venues or venues of a similar size as it seems to have been doing.

But I'm not absolving him at all. In a Michael Riedel column announcing the North American plan of attack for presenting this show, Michael Cohl was quoted as saying, "You know me. Being a sucker for going into a burning building, I couldn't resist." Maybe he should focus on saving his own ass from that building from now on; it seems to be what he does best.

Updated On: 11/2/18 at 08:09 AM

[fashionguru_23]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 9:08am

Any moment now, there will be word. The website, has deleted US Tour as an option of where the show is playing.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 9:29am

I would wager, unless the pre-sales are really good, that Oberhausen is probably next on the chopping block. 

First of all, they booked it for the same venue Tanz played in that city. Now, on paper, it looks intelligent: Tanz has an audience of people willing to possibly buy tickets to another Steinman show, and it helps to put it in a place where they remember Steinman's music being.

But the Tanz fan network -- who, for the record, can't handle a non-replica production of the show unless it doesn't tread on their toes -- is already discovering that at least three pieces of music, if not more, was yanked from their favorite to form part of this score, and the reaction, to put it mildly, is like that of a "baby mama" discovering on Maury that the dude she was sure fathered the child ain't the daddy. bowtie7 was not at all exaggerating their obsessive love for Tanz in this semi-related thread. So basically, the main demographic they were relying on, they've already begun to alienate.

Further, given Tanz has never really gone away (and I think at minimum there would have to have been a sudden moratorium on it for at least five to ten years for Bat to have a better shot), I'm afraid the reviewers would make mincemeat by doing a compare-and-contrast to Tanz, which isn't impossible since a lot of the same themes and music are explored as Jim doesn't really have an original bone left in his body (if he did to begin with).

As it stands, unless people really take to it for some reason, I think it's a sitting duck.

Updated On: 11/2/18 at 09:29 AM

[Zenobia]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 10:04am

I am a quiet lurker/reader on this board, which I primarily use to keep up with what's happening on Broadway. But I can't just let this last comment stand. I am German and I have been a musical lover since before Tanz der Vampire first opened in Vienna (where I first saw it with the great unforgotten Steve Barton).  I didn't like the show very much then and how and why exactly it became this phenomenon in Germany is beyond me. The show could never decide whether it was fish or flesh, comedy or serious drama, and as a result it was neither. The squeaky girlie musical theatre voices of the multitudes of Sarahs could never ever match the rock voices of Steinman's female singers such a Bonnie Tyler and Ellen Foley. The muchly hyped Die unstillbare Gier is a shortened castrated version of Objects in the Rear View Mirror with clunky heavy-handed lyrics in which an overly made-up musical performer lectures the audience on how all our greed is ruining the planet, whereas the original was a bitter-sweet reminiscene of a difficult childhood/youth.

But I'm not here to diss Tanz - I don't get the love and how it's still running, but that's as it is. I don't get German musical fans in general anyway. But it makes sense for producer Stage Entertainment to bring  Bat out of Hell to Germany and cash in on the love for Steinman and Meat Loaf. When this show was first announced for Manchester last year I travelled there and loved it immediately. I saw Tanz one more time since when it came to my home town and hated it with every fibre of my body, having now seen how brilliantly Steinman can be done on stage. I saw Bat numerous times in London this year and I had already prepared to catch the US Tour next spring, so I'm very gutted this is not happening now. I booked for the German production as well, out of morbid curiosity and to take local friends to see it, as I won't get a chance to take them to London until it closes there in January.

If it will fail in Oberhausen, it won't have anything to do with the hysterical Tanz fans (of which there are fewer than the incessant hype might make it seem). Except for Lion King, which has now been running for 17 years, Stage Entertainment hasn't had a solid sell-out success in Germany for many years. Most shows fold within a year these days, Kinky Boots lasted for half a year only in Hamburg, and others are planned as tours straightaway such as Disney's Hunchback and when new shows go on sale, only half the house goes on sale because they can't even sell out that. The new generation of popular Broadway shows such as Hamilton and Book of Mormon are unsuited for the German mass market and their own creations based on German movies failed as well. They are now trying their luck either with jukebox musicals like Bat, Tina - the Musical and The Band (Take That) all opening in swift succession or flops like Amèlie and Cirque du Soleil's Paramour, where the rights are probably cheap. One of the reasons that Tanz keeps reappearing is that it's cheap to do because there are no foreign rights involved and it's about the only non-Disney-cutesy-family-show in their present portfolio to appeal to a more mature audience.

I could write whole essays on their failed marketing strategies, excessive pricing and other mistakes. If Bat fails in Oberhausen, and I am sure it will fail, it won't have anything to do with the Tanz die-hards though, it will be due to the usual mix of sky-high prices without any chance of generous discounts (that even Broadway does through TKTS, TodayTix, Rush, etc.) and questionable casting decisions and in this case: By translating the entire show into German. If you follow discussions on Facebook and similar channels, you will find plenty of comments by people saying "I love Meat Loaf and would love to see this, but not in German". It was what first made me decide against booking here too. I'm now giving it a go because of the promising cast, but I dread to hear these classic rock songs being done in a shonky clunky German translation. This is far far more alienating than upsetting a few hardcore Tanz fans.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 10:12am

Tell us how you really feel, sweetheart. 

[Zenobia]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 10:15am

g.d.e.l.g.i. said: "Tell us how you really feel, sweetheart."

Thank you for your mature and not at all patronizing response - sweetheart.

[SomethingPeculiar]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 10:21am

g.d.e.l.g.i. said: "In fairness to Michael Cohl, I always thought this was going to be a harder sell in America."

Then he shouldn't have gone ahead with the tour!!! Or do some actual research like other touring producers have done. Michael Cohl should be permanently put on Equity's DO NOT WORK list.

I wonder if they will still do the City Center engagement?

[Elfuhbuh]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 10:23am

Tanz der Vampire fans being blamed for another show’s possible failure sure is, uh...a take.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 10:25am

SomethingPeculiar, as horrible as the situation is, producers often make a calculated risk, or else we wouldn't have a theater scene. I'm sure he thought it was worth rolling the dice. One wishes he'd be more careful with his throw in the future.

As for you, Zenobia (lovely name; you share it with a wonderful performer who was in one of the first-run companies of one of my favorite shows, Hair), how else am I supposed to respond to a novel that amounts to "I never liked Tanz, I'm a Bat fan, and here's some additional info that makes it even less likely to open in Oberhausen"? The only thing you contributed is that the picture is even more skewed than previously thought, and aside from bashing the show I happen to like, really all you did was confirm my baseline assumption. You could have used sentences instead of a page that was rather snobby and condescending of another show in its own right. But I thank you nonetheless for your politesse, and I apologize if I seemed at all immature or patronizing. It was certainly not my intention to be either; we all get caught up sometimes, and I ain't immune.

Elfuhbuh, my statement is based in part on market research. Take a deep dive around the (apparently small?) fandom some time. Just the other day, I had a convo with at least one fan who was fit to be tied over the music being recycled, and who were at best on the fence about attending before that because "dystopian stories featuring youth" was kind of their thing.

Updated On: 11/2/18 at 10:25 AM

[Elfuhbuh]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 10:43am

I just don’t understand the smarmy attitude towards Tanz fans over this. If people don’t go to see the show, and it’s because they’re turned off by the fact that there are recycled songs, then I’d say it’s a valid gripe to make when the composer was too lazy to come up with some new material for his musicals and resorted to recycling the same songs. Even as a fan of Tanz, I always found it weird that around 70% of the score was stuff Steinman had already written and openly used in other work before, and I’m not surprised that he didn’t think through that he already used a few songs in Tanz when he was putting together the score for Bat. If people don’t want to see the same songs and themes thrown together with a different wrapping paper, then I can’t really fault them for that.

Updated On: 11/2/18 at 10:43 AM

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 10:47am

Oh, no, I'm not faulting them for their judgment at all, far from it. I'm not exactly glorying in this outcome, but it's also no secret I was not exactly rooting for Bat from the get-go. I'm saying, given this factor (and what Zenobia has rightly brought forward, though I don't exactly care for the tone, but then I didn't respond with the best tone, so we're even), they really shouldn't have bothered.

Updated On: 11/2/18 at 10:47 AM

[Zenobia]

Posted: 11/2/18 at 10:54am

The only thing you contributed is that the picture is even more skewed than previously thought, and aside from bashing the show I happen to like, really all you did was confirm my baseline assumption. You could have used sentences instead of a page that was rather snobby and condescending of another show in its own right. But I thank you nonetheless for your politesse, and I apologize if I seemed at all immature or patronizing. It was certainly not my intention to be either; we all get caught up sometimes, and I ain't immune.

Mostly I found the "sweetheart" condescending, but I appreciate the apology. I wrote my post mostly because yours made it sound like Tanz had a massive fan base and that fan base and its dislike for "recycled Steinman" would be enough to bring Bat down. So I wrote (at perhaps too great length) that a) not ALL German musical lovers are crazy for Tanz and certainly wouldn't diss Bat over it  and b) point out that there will be plenty other/bigger reasons why Bat can and will be a flop here. Just as I always thought, by the way, that if Bat had tried for Broadway, it would also have been a massive flop. I might love the show to pieces for what it is, but that doesn't mind I'm blind to its (many) flaws or the fact that it's absolutely not the kind of thing that would work on Broadway (much like WWRY)

I would agree on the gripe that it's recycled songs, but then Steinman shouldn't have used those songs in Tanz if he ever thought there was a chance his "Peter Pan musical" could still see the light of day. And seeing how little the music in Tanz actually ressembles proper rock music Steinman (and this is a hill I will die on) he really should have written new music for it rather than than have songs like "Total Eclipse" and "Objects" mauled beyond recognition.