Foxwoods Flops — Page 2

The Marquis is cursed. Just go in and look at the "Wall of Flops" in the lobby. I am very happy they put it back up after Come fly away closed.

there's no curse. it's all math. really, you can't fill a theatre as big as the Foxwood, Broadway or Marquis (I'm gonna throw the Palace into this discussion too) without a show that has big production values, or at least, you typically don't, because more technically advanced shows require theatres that can house them. If said shows are not massive hits, it takes a lot to break even on that kind of stuff.

also, I believe that if a house is smaller and has a hot ticket show, the fact that ticket buyers have trouble securing seats for specific performances actually increases positive word of mouth. If someone overhears their friend saying "I can't get a seat to (insert show name)", something in that person's brain says, "wow that must be a good show to sell out all the time".

Those big theatres rarely have that fortunate problem. I think only "Wicked" during busy times of year and occasionally "Mamma Mia", "Billy Elliot", or "The Lion King" could say that of any show in a biiiig theatre.

What surprises me is that producers continue to put money behind these enormus shows, when clearly the money is in plays, like this upcoming revival of "House of Blue Leaves", which will make BANK, and recently, sleeper hits, like "Million Dollar Quartet" and "Memphis". Perhaps producers put money into these big shows because since so many people want to invest in something "safer", there's less of an investment to put up for each individual producer.

Out of interest London has a few theatres that have over 2000 seats, such as;

Victoria Palace, which has Wicked, must of played for about 5 years now.
Lyceum, Which has The Lion King, has played over 10 years.
Dominion, We Will Rock You, must of played over 10 years.
Theatre Royal, Shrek is going to open in June, Oliver has just closed after 2 years.
The Palladium, The Wizard of Oz is opening later this month, Sister Act played the venue for 18 months.

London has a similar population to New York.

The Apollo Victoria is home to Wicked, not The Victoria Palace that is home to Billy Elliot.

The London Palladium's longest running show was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which ran for three years, it doesn't seem to have long runners, The Theatre Royal Drury Lane hasn't had a long runner since Miss Saigon but both 42nd Street and My Fair Lady ran for five years.

I wonder how long it would take to make back the COST of a move for Wicked at 122 more seats per show. They would probably have to go dark for a short period of time to move, also. I just don't see it happening, but who knows.

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I don't believe that WICKED will ever leave the Gershwin. It wouldn't make sense for them to just up and leave when the show is doing SO well, and they probably have some agreement with Nederlander. I think it's safe to say that the Gerswhin will be tied up for the next 25-30 years or so.

I do think that the Foxwoods Theatre is one of the most gorgeous theatres on Broadway and would love to see a great musical call it home. It will be interesting to see how long SPIDER-MAN runs because if ALW's THE WIZARD OF OZ transfers to Broadway then I could definitely see them wanting to book the Foxwoods!

The thing is, though, even the largest Broadway theatres are pretty dwarfed by many of the road houses out there. I still find it somewhat amusing when people talk about how far away they are in some of the theatres here in NY. Clearly they have never had a cheap ticket in any of the Fox Theatres (St. Louis, Detroit, Atlanta, maybe elsewhere?). Growing up seeing shows in the Palace and State in Cleveland (around 2800 and 3300 seats respectively) the Broadway houses still feel tiny to me comparatively after all these years.

While the capacity was being pushed in terms of the Foxwoods I would be willing to bet that Drabinsky wished he could have made it even bigger.

I'm also curious if any of the actual financials from the original production of Ragtime ever surfaced. While it most likely still did close at a loss (the show was indeed huge and expensive to run) I would imagine that its loss wasn't as great as was originally reported and the show probably could have run a bit longer if Livent hadn't been taken down.

The Wang is enormous!

Tell me I'm not the only one snickering right now.

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Hmmm now that you guys said it, it would be a burdened to move WICKED, especially since they did design it for the Gershwin.

I heard the Foxwoods was originally going to be like over 2,000 seats or something, but they cut out a few rows

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I must agree with the previous posters. You people in New York are spoiled. You don't know what removed from the action is until you've been in the back of the balcony of the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. :) Pantages seats 2,691