Broadway Grosses: Week Ending 2/21/16 — Page 3

a whole slew of new shows are coming in during that tourist heavy season you are anticipating.

no, new shows are not constantly opening. As usual, the openings are heavily weighted to the spring. And people come to New York anticipating seeing the next big thing. They can't get tickets to Hamilton, and SR is last year's also ran. Whatever you may think of SR, it doesn't have mojo.

I cannot see the new incoming musicals having any interest for tourists except maybe Shuffle Along....and that isn't a given-unless it gets superlative reviews. They will always want to see the blockbusters which include the usual sell outs and Chicago, Phantom, Matilda and Les Miz. The musicals of last year are dying a slow death Even Fiddler and King And I aren't doing well but may during the high season. All to be seen. April will be the month where grosses pick up - but for many, it may not be enough if their advances are not good.

With the tepid performance of King and I and Fiddler, two highly praised revivals of "classic" musicals, I wonder if the staying power of the "Golden Era" musicals are starting to wane as audiences continue to distance themselves from the original versions. TK&I isn't going to have the legs of the South Pacific revival which preceded it by about seven years and had a solid two year run. From the reports of the people here, including the younger who knew nothing at all about King & I, all seem to praise it.

Some feel that both shows have been revived so frequently, from the Broadway to the high school level, that they have grown a little stale. That's possible. But the last major Broadway revival with Tony-winning Donna Murphy was twenty years ago. I saw it and bought the CD, but it was never on my mind when watching the current production. That 1996 version ran for 780 performances and Marie Osmond eventually ended up in as Anna. I have trouble imagining that.

Fiddler maybe can make a better case since the last major revival was back in only 2004 and ran for around two years. Harvey Fierstein very popular as Tevya (although Alfred Molina was the first in the role) and Golde running the gamut from Randy Graff to Andrea Martin to Rosie O'Donnell. There is also the film, which was highly and deservedly praised although not necessarily viewed so much.

As RippedMan states, Fiddler is pretty bleak in the second act, which does not contain any of the well known songs. I admired this Fiddler for being honest and not ending on an inspirational and hopeful note as did Carousel by closing with "You'll Never Walk Alone." But after all, this is show biz and ticket buyers like to leave the theater on an elevated note.

Maybe the problem just comes down to the classics starting to lose to the competition for those high-priced Broadway tickets. Family shows suitable for children like Lion King, Matilda and School of Rock (and before them Cats) have been hugely popular. The so-called "jukebox" musicals such as Mama Mia, Jersey Boys and Beautiful, which I don't consider to be true Broadway musicals since they lack an original score, are nonetheless very entertaining and popular. With ticket prices (and everything else in Manhattan) so high, these musicals are a safe choice. The audience knows in advance that they will love hearing the well-known songs and will maybe sing along to many of them and leave the theater on a high. If these musicals have some substance to them, so much the better.

I will hate the day when those "Golden Era" musicals are reduced to limited runs and new book and score musicals become rare. Maybe I'm drawing too many conclusions from just two revivals.