Pirate Queen to close June 17 — Page 5

It's always sad and disappointing to see a show close. But the truth is that the show was long, and dragged for me.

But this is a fact of life for the theatre. People forget that the threatre is a business.

Surprisingly, no one has mentioned the role that Mike Riedel played in PQ's closing. How many times did he trash this show in his gossip column? This had much more of an inpact on the shows closing than a visit to the Hiltion by Stroman (not Mel Brooks) to see the theatre.

I have to comment on the statement made that the Hilton will be hard theatre to full. A threatre site is choosen partially because of it's availbility. The rest is the needs of the production itself. Both PQ and YF need a large theatre for the staging of the shows. A show is going to go to a threatre that "fits" the size of the production.

In the case of PQ and YF, Both are exspensive productions to put on. Between the cast, props, and the sets a show of this size needs to be able to sell "X" percent to pay the bills. If a show can't sell that percentage, it has to close at a loss to everyone involved... including the producers.

Everyone seems to forget that putting on a show is very risky, and a producer can make money, break even, or lose his shirt on a production.

Mike Riedel had nothing whatsoever to do with Pirate Queen closing, nor did Mel Brooks. The fact that every single professional theater critic who reviewed the show panned it and the Tony nominating committee wouldn't even acknowledge PQ's remarkable costume work might have had some bearing on what happened.

Who is forgetting that putting on a show is risky? One way to mitigate that risk is to actually pay attention to the reviews your show receives in its out-of-town tryouts.

Of course theater is a business. Pirate Queen couldn't sell enough seats to stay open. If you want to blame someone for its closing, blame thousands of theater goers who decided not to buy tickets.

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I believe the success rate for network television series is worse than that. If you consider a Broadway show to be a medium sized business that failure rate isn't very far out of line with other similar business endeavours.

I also question the notion that any show that doesn't "recoup" is a failure. Jekyll and Hyde might not have paid its investors back in full during its Broadway run, but it ran for several years and spawned numerous tours. Plenty of people made lots of money from that show. There are many other shows that might not have paid back their investors fully but did have nice little runs and lived on as tours and regional productions.

Pirate Queen has so much potential, but unless its creators allow it to be completely overhauled and rewritten for the proposed European tour it will most likely follow Martin Guerre into obscurity.

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"Never Put Your Own Money in the Show"!!

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