No Star....No Broadway Show

Millie didn't really do that. It what made Sutton a star. I'd be willing to disagree. Although to an extent I see what you mean.

Brooklyn opened without a name.

---

muscinmath,

you are missing the point of mr. tuttle's thread. he didn't say christina and her *star power* would have made the show better.
his point was that in today's day and age producers rely too much on recognizable household names to *sell* their shows. whether they make a show *better* or if the show actually lasts is another matter entirely.

Updated On: 3/26/05 at 09:39 PM

Brooklyn opened without a name.

Technically, yes, but it had all the Wicked fangirls backing it up because of Eden.

When WICKED arrived very few people knew who Menzel and Cheno were

Yes, but people know the name Joel Grey.

Again, that fanbase for Espinosa did NOT bleed in to the rest of the real world. No one knew who she was and I venture to safely say, people still don't.

Let's also not forget Avenue Q...it had no big names in it when it opened...and look how sucessful it is...when push comes to shove...big named stars are only a novelty. They draw really well at first...but a lot of times you take away the name and it doesn't draw as well.

---

Thank you and Bravo Michael Bennett. I have been trying to get that same message across since I joined this board and you did it in a paragraph. My hats off to you.

Matt, your arguement about attendance is a valid one: when your show is selling out pretty exclusively because of the involvement of HUGH JACKMAN or ANTONIO BANDARES, even one absense a week is perhaps enough to generate enough ticket cancelations to put the show's weekly running cost into the red.

But I must say, that in Applegate's case, her injury was just a freak accident. You could argue that she didn't have enough training or stamina to carry a long run of the show if she had broken her foot during a dance number, but she broke it swinging off a lamp post. That could have happened just as easily to an otherwise resiliant star like Ethel, Mary or Chita.

And I only partially agree that the star driven show has to be of a HELLO DOLLY calibre in order to run. True Mary and Ethel had their ill guided "star flops," but shows like THE BOY FROM OZ and WILDCAT received pretty horrible reviews and managed to sell out anyway, as long as Hugh and Lucy showed up to the theatre.

Sometimes, in dealing with star power, the wattage of the star seems to make a difference.

My guess is that if Nicole Kidman somehow decided that she wanted to star in a revival of SARAVA or VIA GALACTICA, the show would run regardless...

Updated On: 3/26/05 at 10:27 PM

Well, let's be clear here.

Charity was and is a STAR VEHICLE and came to Broadway the first time in 1966 starring Gwen Verdon -- one of the biggest stars on Broadway at the time (and EVER).

Brooklyn has been struggling along at barely break-even grosses since it opened and has likely not repaid more than 10-20% of its initial capitaliztion. If it closed tomorrow (not saying that it will), it would have lost the vast majority of its initial investment and thus be a flop.

Good Vibrations has lost money most weeks since previews began and will likely never get close to recouping its producers' initial investment.

Applegate, even prior to her injury, had not been proving to be a major box office draw in New York (or on the road) thus far and even prior to her injury, Charity's advance in New York was fairly mediocre (which is one of many reasons that the Weisslers decided to pull the plug on the revival).

MILLIE was a flop on Broadway -- it only recouped 80% of its initial investment, despite running two years and winning the Best Musical Tony (Urinetown, incidentally, recouped).. Sutton Foster, talented as she is, is NOT a star that sell tickets to the masses, as anyone paying attention to Little Women's weekly grosses knows.

Some shows don't need stars to sell tickets and recoup-- Wicked, Avenue Q, Urinetown -- but others do. A Sweet Charity revival without a star was going to be a tough sell -- that's why it closed.

---

Updated On: 3/26/05 at 10:36 PM

hehe. It's "the merman factor".

---

I thank Michael Bennett and Al Dente for their insightful posts and agree wholeheartedly.
I can't help but think about the times we live in. There has been much debate on here about whether message boards like this one can make or break a show. While I don't have a firm opinion on that, you can't argue that with the media today (including TV and the internet), a show might have a totally different life that it may have had without the speed of light technology allowing us to know more about backstage drama, reviews, opinions, gossip, etc. Prior to the 90's, a show as mediocre (my opinion only) as Sweet Charity did good because Gwen Verdon was starring in it. It probably would have happened the same way (closing out of town) should Gwen Verdon be doing it today. Producers need to protect their pockets more than EVER before and as a result, we will never have the kind of broadway that the generation before us had.
Additionally, it hit me that the type of Music, Movies, and Entertainment in general that was "mainstream" prior to 20 years ago was much more narrow a field than it is today. There is so much more to choose from in each of those genres, and as a result, people's tastes are more diverse. A-list celebrities of yesteryear were so big that people really didn't focus on the B, C, and D List Celebs. Now, with reality TV, and the internet, those B, C, and D listers are psuedo A-Listers. My point is... Broadway stars back in the day were considered A-List because they were great at their craft. And they drew crowds, and shows did well. To someone outside of the theatre world, the Sutton Fosters, Idina Menzels, Sam Harris's, Lillias Whites, Michael Cerveris', etc. are nobody. And while I don't have more light to shed as to why, I still think it's a shame.

Updated On: 3/26/05 at 11:06 PM

now there's no reason to talk about Merman's blood vessel throat incident. it may be true, and just for the record, I do like Melissa Errico. I like those Q stars too, whose names escape me, but don't forget an immutable truth about both melissa and john t: MERMAN would win in a fight

---