IlanaKeller said: "Is there more than one form of success, would one consider a show that flopped at the box office but was groundbreaking in one way or another a success?"
Not really. It means box office and the ability to provide a return to investors. This gets back to the old saying: It's not called show art, it's show business.
The only time this argument comes up, again and again, is when people want to call a financial failure a triumph on some other grounds.
Two of my favorite recent shows were Bridges Of Madison County and Great Comet, and no matter how they affected me, what I thought of them, or theories on why they closed and how they could have been saved, both were dismal failures on Broadway.
But since I didn't invest in either show, who cares? The financial metric is the only worthwhile metric of commercial success, but it is also the only inarguable one. It is something that invites no conspiracy theories or speculation, or differing opinions.
A lot of people on here hate Dear Evan Hansen, and many more (by my count) love it. However, both sides will completely agree that it sold 7,993 tickets last week, at an average ticket price of $217.83, bringing in $1,741,090. So, it is the only way to judge a show that no one can dispute. People who loathe DEH and those who think it is the best show playing right now both agree on those numbers, and so do its investors.
Once you move beyond that, and start personally interpreting things to support an agenda, or reframing things, you're really not introducing new forms of success, but ways to favorably (or negatively) spin a fable.
