More shows should do like Les Mis.

I think...
Enough with this bull****! Let's bring a new show to town!

You think so why?

I really want to know.

They could do like Peter Pan and go to Madison Square Gardens.

---

Bring back Urinetown.

Yeah, there are so many shows that I just love. And would love to see or see again.

But what makes them special is the production. Take CARRIE. It won't BE Carrie if it is done "better."

But Les Mis is one show I could watch night after night after night and NEVER get bored!

---

As of now, Little Women is going to (or has already - not sure), recoup its initial investment.

I thought it would be a better tour show. But I know that the proucers are happy with the way it is selling now.

---

No, they shouldn't. When a show has closed, it means that while it may have been sucessful, it ran its course and it's time is up. I'd rather see something new than have six-month engagements of shows that (a) nobody went to see or (b) everyone went to see and I'm sick of.

---

While I think that brining back Lez Mis is great, I think two things;
1. They should at least bring back shows that people haven't seen in a while i.e. Pippin
2. Instead of reviving shows that just closed, they should use their energies to create the Lez Mis's of this generation.

BRING BACK CRAZY FOR YOU!!!!

---

Could we PLEASE stop all of this revival crap and encourage NEW SHOWS for a change? There is a theatre crunch as we speak which is preventing several new shows from coming into town or transferring from off-Broadway. So, a show that JUST closed after 6000 or whatever performances is going to take up prime real estate while the new hits of tomorrow can't find a theatre to play. It's bad for the future of Broadway and "the musical" to continually recycle the same shows over and over again. It makes it look like the artform is dead and there are no new ideas anymore. Keep this up and within a decade or two the Broadway musical is going to go the way of opera, where the same 25 works get done year after year after year for an elite audience willing to pay exorbitant prices for the same "safe" shows that reliably "sell" and the audience knows like the backs of their hands, while riskier new works are often greeted with indifference at the box office.

Leave Cats and Les Miz to the tours and regional theatres and community theatres and let Broadway be the place where the new hits are born (or at least exhibited after being developed elsewhere). I mean isn't there a video of this exact production available for purchase? What's the point of bringing it back now? Sorry, if I'm spoiling anyone's Les Miz party, but I'm frustrated that we FINALLY got the Imperial back after a generation and now Les Miz back once again taking over the Broadhurst which could be the new home of some show that hasn't been seen already by 50 million people. Enjoy it folks -- they won't be getting my $110.

But whatever. It's all about economics and the popularity of a brand name -- and also about the utter lack of support in today's Broadway for new and interesting work. If a show isn't based on a pop/rock song catalogue or a popular film comedy (or hasn't already run for decades), what chance does it have to find a place on Broadway? And if it's original it better not cost more than $3.5 million to mount (eg Spelling Bee and Avenue Q). And just about every smaller show -- musical and non-musical -- that's played commercial off-Broadway in the past few years has lost most of its investment. Will we ever have big new original intelligent exciting musicals in New York City again? It's a very sad state of affairs and bringing back Les Miz again so soon just further proves how completely moribund and pathetic the American musical has become.

---

I disagree that theatre has become pathetic. I see such a flip side in off-broadway and avant-guarde theatre. This is just a commercial moment. And when it's gone we will move on. Maybe it will even flop. We can pray.

And I don't see the commercial moment ever ending. The audience for serious theatre has been shrinking and dying off for several years now. There's a reason that it's rare for there to be more than one hit non-musical play per season -- those hardcore theatregoers just aren't there in the same numbers anymore. While they're on the membership rolls of LCT, MTC, The Public, Playwrights etc.... they no longer are there in significant enough numbers to support multiple new plays on Broadway as they always did in years past.

Up until the 80s 70+ % of NYC theatregoers were from the tri-state area (with a large concentration coming from NYC itself) and the rest were out of town tourists. That number has flipped in the past decade so that now nearly 75% of broadway tickets are bought by tourists -- who statistically prefer light unchallenging splashy musicals to serious plays .... and that's what producers are giving them.

Producers are becoming less and less willing to take a chance on new and risky and potentially groundbreaking work because frankly, this audience has shown them with their pocketbooks that they have NO interest in being challenged or shaken up when they pay their $110. They want to be entertained and they prefer to be entertained by music and stories they already know from the radio or the movies. That's the reality of Broadway and commercial off-Broadway now and will be even more so in the future. We're rapidly becoming Vegas East and there's nothing on the horizon that's going to shift the tide.

If you want to see nonderivative interesting new work, see and support what's going on at The Public, Playwrights, The Vineyard, The Atlantic, MTC, BAM, St. Ann's and the rest of not-for-profit Off- and Off-Off-Broadway. With occasional exceptions -- there are some promising plays coming soon like History Boys, Well, Festen, and Shining City -- you're not going to see it in the commercial theatres of New York.

---

I do think that some of the commercial success of shows like les miz and wicked are good for other shows. The commercial shows get them there, then they go to tkts and pick some random other show to see. And when they like that they get more into it. Some people bitch about all the wicked queens on this board who think they're avant-guarde for owning the last 5 years, but you have to start somewhere. We have to build the next generation somehow.
ok. Enough optimism. i hate lesmiz.