Pirate Queen to close June 17- Page 5

[MrsVampyre]

Posted: 6/9/07 at 11:03am

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.

[B3TA07]

Posted: 6/9/07 at 11:36am

orangeskittles - Actually, as of June 5th it had only been open two months. Which makes the decline even more disastrous.

[TechEverlasting]

Posted: 6/9/07 at 11:54am

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.

[B3TA07]

Posted: 6/9/07 at 11:56am

When reading the book about The Color Purple musical (which is on sale on Amazon.com for 8 dollars, not sure why but get it while you can folks), I read the statistic that 9 in 10 Broadway musicals fail.


FAIL.

I would love to hear all the songs on spee that were written for The Color Purple.

[TechEverlasting]

Posted: 6/9/07 at 12:23pm

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.

[Glory]

Posted: 6/10/07 at 1:24am

Does anyone know if they will offer student rush on Sunday? I know Journeys End wasn't so I wasn't sure. It's the only way of me seeing it so.

[stonewall2]

Posted: 6/10/07 at 9:41pm

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

[bwaydoc]

Posted: 6/10/07 at 9:47pm

Glory, I think there's been some question about whether or not they'll be offering student rush. I know a few people who have asked the box office and so far no one has been able to give a definite yes or no. If you're nearby you may want to stop by the box office closer to the 17th and ask.