Badly reviewed long running shows — Page 2

You meant to say "keep in mind A reason" not "the" reason.

Some, myself included, would simply say AVENUE Q is a better musical than WICKED.

There's a whole lot of speculation about a whole lot of voter strategizing in this thread. In my experience, it is never as cohesive an explanation as it seems. Some voters indeed behaved precisely as speculated here, some voters didn't. This is why you'll find exceptions to each pattern. Some years the critical darling wins, some years it loses. I wouldn't have agreed with each choice, but I haven't been surprised by any.

Tobacco Road, Abie's Irish Rose. Both from long ago, still numbers two and three on the list of longest-running Broadway plays.

wow

my brain is still processing the discussion that the tonys are awarded by road producers to make more money...

would love to think theres more to it than that, although not really suprised..this is show BUSINESS

gypsy, they did eventually send out a tour, but it was several years later. Almost immediately after winning the Tony, after a pretty heavy campaign aimed at the road presenters (who are not the only voters, at that time those on the First Night Press list were still voters) the producers announced that they had signed an exclusive deal with Steve Wynn to present the show at one of his casinos (in a theatre he built new for them, as I recall). Part of their deal with Wynn was that as long as the show was running in Vegas there would be no other productions in North America, excepting of course the Broadway production.

I can see how the road presenters would feel a bit betrayed by that. The Tony is indeed just as much a marketing tool as it is an award for artistic merit (just like any other award out there) and to have the show win the award and then not hit the road for four years can be a bit frustrating. It was also revealed that the entire time the producers were urging everyone to "vote their hearts" they were already in negotiations with Steve Wynn, which just felt like a bit of a double-cross.

Though if you look at the numbers Avenue Q didn't really "need" it either. They had a couple of weeks right at the beginning that were a bit low, but after that they were above 70% of their gross potential for all but a handful of weeks that dipped into the 60% range and even in the middle of February of that first year were doing the type of business that a lot of shows would have killed for. So in the sense of the size of the shows they were the little guy competing against the juggernaut, but they were hardly struggling to find an audience.

my brain is still processing the discussion that the tonys are awarded by road producers to make more money...

It's a popular theory for those unhappy with that season's Tony results. It gets trotted out every time a highly commercial musical wins. The Avenue Q theory is the anomaly to that theory. People like to think they have insider industry knowledge, but unless they somehow got hold of the results of how each voter voted and interviewed them for their rationales, it's still just rumors and speculation in order for people to rationalize what doesn't make sense to them based on their opinions. Same thing with the Oscars and any other award.