A reminder to all to subtract roughly 8-9% from the numbers you read in the Variety or on BWW before comparing them to your understanding of what a given show's weekly breakeven may be. If a show has been doing $700K gross as shown on BWW, and their breakeven is $650K, that show is still likely losing a small bit of money.
Also, to Mr. Roxy's point further up, there is a strong argument to be made that a smart producer should close a show BEFORE its grosses make it clear to everyone that it's time for the show to close. As I believe a subsequent poster speculated, if the show has little to no advance to speak of, they're wise to close it now while it's still making or losing only a little bit of money in any given week, rather than waiting until they've taken a week or two of far more significant losses for no good reason.
Now a fair counterargument to that might be that if they can survive September and October, there is money to be made (or more likely, made back) in November and December. But 'Catch Me' has never been THAT strong, and with new shows opening (musicals, star-driven plays), it's no slam dunk that they would do well enough over the holiday months to warrant suffering through what would almost certainly be massive losses in September and October. So solely from the point of view of fiscal responsibility, their decision to close at Labor Day -- solely IMHO -- makes a great deal of sense, even if it's emotionally disappointing to someone like me who was a fan of the show.
"No matter how much you want the part, never let 'em see you sweat." -- Old Dry Idea commercial
Click below to access all the grosses from all the shows for the week ending 8/14/2011 in BroadwayWorld.com's grosses section.
