COMPANY To Close On July 31, 2022 — Page 3

Call_me_jorge said: "How likely is it that this was Pattis last time doing a musical, if not theatre altogether?"

Considering she has said many times that this will be her last Broadway musical, I'd say very likely.

BCfitasafiddle said: "if this truly is LuPone's final musical, how lucky are we all to have witnessed the performance she's giving right now. I was stunned at her book scene work post TLWL. It felt like watching history in the making."

Completely agree. I was so thrilled she won because it's easy to take her brilliance for granted, but that doesn't mean we should. She turned this down 3 times, saying she was done with musicals. I'd believe her. Plays, perhaps, and maybe even likely. But this may be her last musical. And I, for one, am going to go back a few more times.

I for one am shocked. I knew the numbers looked shaky but I thought it had enough behind it to power through at least until the holidays.

Was hoping to maybe see it one more time, but I don't think I'll be able to get to NY in time. I saw COMPANY the day Stephen Sondheim died and I was so blown away. To me, this was a perfect show and I knew nothing about COMPANY before this. Never thought I would ever see Patti LuPone in my lifetime.

BCfitasafiddle said: "if this truly is LuPone's final musical, how lucky are we all to have witnessed the performance she's giving right now. I was stunned at her book scene work post TLWL. It felt like watching history in the making."

TLWL?

Their advance must be pretty bad, worse than this week indicates. In recent threads I was speculating that Company MIGHT hold on through the fall if it got a $75-$100k/week boost from the Tonys. Some doubted that it would be able to get that boost at all, but it did, at least for this week. But maybe they can tell that the spike of sales was too isolated.


AND/OR…

the running cost is higher than I estimated. Because I had speculated that they were making their nut, or just under it. Now I’m more inclined to suspect that they were running at more of a loss while waiting for the Tonys.

As for some of the other points mentioned in this thread:

—As I’ve said in other threads, there’s no point speculating about Paradise Square’s closing date at this point. And by extension, there’s no point comparing it to other shows. The reason Paradise Square is closing after Company is very simple: there are people who are willing to sink an enormous amount of money into Paradise Square to keep it running for reasons that aren’t even remotely rooted in business sense. That’s not true of most Broadway productions, including Company.

—This is likely LuPone’s last musical, but I can definitely see her doing more plays, especially for limited runs.

—This makes me concerned for the future of Sondheim on Broadway.

Pretty devastating news. I thought with the (apparently not) low nut this would be the kind of thing that would hum along for a while with fun replacements for Bobbi, Joanne, maybe others. I wonder if the cast knew this was coming and for how long.

GlindatheGood22 said: "Wow. What?! What are the changes this'll be like Night Music, which announced closing and then rescinded it and brought in Stritch and Bernadette?"

Bernadette Peters as Joanne could be rather interesting!

BCfitasafiddle said: "if this truly is LuPone's final musical, how lucky are we all to have witnessed the performance she's giving right now. I was stunned at her book scene work post TLWL. It felt like watching history in the making."

I completely agree. I saw it three times in a week span and Patti never played that scene the same way twice. Always fresh, always different, always in the moment. I can’t wait to go back before the end of July.

It's really hard to star-cast replacements. CHICAGO is the anomaly, not the norm. Major names just do not want to follow in the footsteps of someone who has won a Tony or had major acclaim –– or if they do, sometimes there's diminishing returns at the box office. We know they were trying to star-cast replacements (mainly for LuPone)...but as you get down the list after some "no"s, the names mean less and less and they probably felt it wasn't worth replacing her, the numbers continuing to drop, and then the show closing like 6 weeks later at a greater loss to the investors.

It is not good for the financial viability of future Sondheim productions without megastars. We'll see how WOODS does, and I'll be curious to see if any other rumored shows come in (Sweeney, Merrily etc). This was a hugely accessible production, and it had an amazing night at the Tonys.

Damn. Was not expecting this. I was more expecting an end of year closing.

I'll have to buy a ticket for a return trip.

I wonder if the weekly nut was very high. I'd imagine that Patti doesn't work for free, it's a fairly large cast, and the set is expensive to operate?

I can't say I am surprised by the closing announcement. My daughter was in NYC during the week before the Tonys and this was her easiest ticket (she got really good center orchestra seats for $79, with empty seats in front of her). It was also her favorite musical on a trip in which she liked the shows she saw. We were talking about it last night. I was happy for her but thought the ease with which she picked up an inexpensive seat didn't bode well for the show, on top of box numbers that weren't especially good at this point.

I never thought the Tony wins would make much of a difference. I can't blame the producers for cutting their financial losses on an acclaimed production that probably would have limped along through the dog days of August and into the fall.

But finances be damned, it's really too bad there probably won't be a pro shot or a Broadway cast album. As someone who won't see this particular production, it feels very sad to have the last Broadway revival in which Sondheim was directly involved just vanish into the ether.