Riedel on Investors demanding answers from The Great Comet- Page 2

[QueenAlice]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 1:53pm

I think it would be tough to entice existing subscribers (to traditional touring theatres) to go to a tent production. Subscribers like consistency and known variables like venue, known parking options etc.  

I'm not arguing that there could be a cool way to tour the show in a tent, but I think the show would have a harder time reconciling a traditional theatre-going audience with an audience willing to go see something in a tent.  It would need the kind of genius marketing and promotion that (agreed) probably falls outside of the talents of the Broadway producers of this show.

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 1:58pm

What if they set up a tent within a theatre?

[evic]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 2:01pm

The investors should stop crying crocodile tears. The renovation must have cost a fortune, Groben didn't come cheap and lots of extra pay for the actors who doubled on instruments. The costumes were lavish the lights annoying as they were were expensive. There was no way this star driven piece would ever sustain over a million without a star. Oak? Lol

[QueenAlice]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 2:27pm

Also it was reported earlier that the budget included in "developmental costs" the monies spent on all previous incarnations of the show. That in itself is millions of dollars.

But every bit of this including the theater build out would have been included in the production budget which all investors would have seen before turning in their check.

 But when I suspect the investors are questioning is the weekly running costs. And that is where I think an audit will reveal everything being legally sound just bad producing decisions. There were a lot of new cast members and swings brought into the process, and that alone is a lot of above and beyond money right there.

Updated On: 9/22/17 at 02:27 PM

[raddersons]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 2:58pm

^^Not to mention a lot of the new cast members had to play instruments, which includes paying union fees to both the musicians union and actors equity.

[bear88]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 3:46pm

QueenAlice said: "Also it was reported earlier that the budget included in "developmental costs" the monies spent on allprevious incarnations of the show. That in itself is millions of dollars.

But every bit of this including the theater build out would have been included in the production budget which all investors would have seen before turning in their check."

This has come up before, and it raises another ignorant question from me. Obviously, it costs money to develop a show, and this one went through three different incarnations before going to Broadway.

But how far into the red was the production going during those earlier stops? Was the tent and subsequent tryout on a more coventional stage actually a large money pit that Kagan was hoping would pay off with a blockbuster Broadway run?

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 3:57pm

I remember reading the tent production did not make any money back. 

[QueenAlice]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 4:18pm

bear88 said: "QueenAlice said: "Also it was reported earlier that the budget included in "developmental costs" the monies spent on allprevious incarnations of the show. That in itself is millions of dollars.

But every bit of this including the theater build out would have been included in the production budget which all investors would have seen before turning in their check."

This has come up before, and it raises another ignorant question from me. Obviously, it costs money to develop a show, and this one went through three different incarnations before going to Broadway.

But how far into the red was the production going during those earlier stops? Was the tent and subsequent tryout on a more coventional stage actually a large money pit that Kagan was hoping would pay off with a blockbuster Broadway run?"

Essentially yes. But it was a money pit that got continual rave reviews so it's understandable that Kagan and his investors felt passionate about the project and its future.

 

[Kad]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 4:24pm

The property, despite rave reviews in every incarnation, was never a huge moneymaker, except possibly at the tiny Ars Nova space.

The show was most likely never going to turn a profit on Broadway unless they had a Groban-level draw each and every week of its run. I cannot imagine a tour being financially successful, not in today's climate.

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 4:26pm

^it might just be successful on tour if it's included in subscription packages with Dear Evan Hansen and Hamilton. Even in today's climate. 

[bear88]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 4:37pm

HogansHero said: "A few thoughts:

1. A tent tour is not that difficult: multiple circuses worked out the logistics decades ago.

2. Existing subscriptions could be the basis for the tent shows.

3. Both of the above assume that there is the wherewithal for this to tour.

4. While many here seem myopically tethered to the Imperial setup, this show reached its highest and best form in a tent, under circumstances that make a tent in most cities seem like awalk in the park.

5. There is no way this tour would succeed with the Kagans attached. The best bet is to divest and let someone else try to rehabilitate the property. They will of course get subsidiary rights income from that."

1. Agreed. I used to work in San Jose. Every year, Cirque would set up a tent in a vacant lot for a weeks-long run. But that's Cirque, not a tent for one musical that the average person knows nothing about.

2. This sounds trickier. I think I agree with QueenAlice that would be less than ideal to tell subscription buyers that they have to go to a different, perhaps inconvenient location to sit in a tent. Why a tent? I wouldn't want to be the person explaining that to annoyed callers.

3. That's still an unknown.

4. I had no complaints about my front mezzanine seats at the Imperial, but I liked the photos I saw of the intimate set-ups at Ars Nova and the tent. It seems like that helped make Great Comet the must-see event it became. And if I do see the show again, I would like to be closer. Rachel Chavkin and the designers did a wonderful job creating an immersive environment, but I suspect the musical worked even better in a small space.

5. I am skeptical about the Kagans, but I don't know if there is anyone who would want to take it on now. He's still fending off angry investors, dealing with the Onaodowan fallout, while talking bravely of national and international tours.

I have been seeing a fair number of shows in and around San Francisco. For all but a few, it's quite easy to get $40 tickets or less. Outside of Hamilton and the Temptations tryout in Berkeley at a 600-seat theater, nothing sells out. Fun Home did very well, as did The King and I and Rent. But I remember making a Saturday afternoon decision to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch with TV star Darren Criss and Tony winner Lena Hall that night. Rush tickets were still available for the 2,000-seat theater.

I have trouble imagining that Great Comet will do better at the Curran, which is only a little smaller. That's great for me as a ticket buyer, but not good for a prospective investor in the tour.

[Elfuhbuh]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 4:53pm

I think the musical itself is great enough to be a fun show on the road with a proscenium-style redesign. Don't we remember how TGC's Tony performance stole the night despite the number not being presented as "immersive" as the actual production? It could work. 

[UncleCharlie]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 4:55pm

Call_me_jorge said: "^it might just be successful on tour if it's included in subscription packages with Dear Evan Hansen and Hamilton. Even in today's climate."

Your implication is that subscribers would be forced into buying a ticket for it as part of their subscription if they want to see the big hits badly enough. What's the motivation for the local theater companies to do that and risk having their subscribers grumbling over a show that without a big star is a questionable draw when they can include a different show that would be likely be more popular?

[bear88]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 5:10pm

Subscribers are forced to buy shows that don't interest them as part of packages all the time. That's why there is a discount. 

The problem for Great Comet wasn't that no one wanted to see it. It was drawing solid audiences from beginning to end, albeit not at the premium prices it needed. The problem was that the show cost too much.

Fun Home is profitable on tour, in part because people want to see it but also because it's an inexpensive show to run. Even a scaled-down Great Comet  would cost more.

[QueenAlice]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 5:30pm

Comet would also need a name I think on the road. Not necessarily in the role of Pierre, which inexplicably became the de facto star part on Broadway, despite being almost impossible to replacement cast, but the two younger lead characters perhaps.

[bear88]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 5:48pm

Outside of New York, most theatergoers don't really expect big names. And I think one of Great Comet's problems on Broadway was that it was treated as a star vehicle and not a can't-miss theatrical experience. Besides, how many 'big names' who will actually sell tickets want to go on a national tour? It's one thing to go to Chicago, or the San Francisco/Los Angeles leg. A full-blown national tour sounds like a long slog that a name star wouldn't want to undertake.

[bowtie7]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 6:08pm

In my opinion--if the show had been a major success, a modified tour to standard touring houses would easily have happened. As many have suggested, the broadway set could be adapted with on-stage seating (sort of like the tony's). The show could also use the a framing proscenium and apron extension that (thanks to shows like Phantom and Wicked) nearly every major touring house already has the rigging points for. For theatres with sizable orchestra pits, more cabaret style seating could be on the covered pit (which nearly every theatre uses for concerts, plays and musicals with onstage (or backstage) orchestras. These theatres also have the rigging points for the Phantom chandelier which could be easily be used for a few stationary starburst chandeliers.

A tent tour is certainly doable (Cirque does it nearly everywhere in the world), but probably not financially workable for a one-off production. The tents that Cirque uses seat about 2,500 people about the same number as many touring houses, yet they play runs that are many weeks or months long. They also many times have time off between engagements. Since most tours only play one week in most cities, it is unlikely that it would make sense to move the show that often.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 8:06pm

Harold Prince moved CANDIDE from an immersive experience to a proscenium stage, and no one missed a thing. COMET doesnt *have* to be done that way: the show will work as a traditional proscenium presentation as well.

But if these investors really want to go after someone to explain the failure of the run, they might want to look at all the theatrical SJWs who failed to understand that Oak was *not* a name outside New York and that, cutting through it all, this is a business. COMET was a difficult sell all around — obscure source material, essentially unknowns in the creative aspects, and a seating plan that no doubt bewildered many of the tourists who make up Bways principal market. The show could have made a go of it, but noooooooo. A bunch of people with no dog in the fight had to go and ruin it for everyone. Good going, guys!

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 9:29pm

WAR AND PEACE is "obscure source material"? Surely, that's not what you meant to write, Sean. Even those who chap their lips reading long books have had several film versions from which to choose.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 9:50pm

GavestonPS said: "WAR AND PEACE is "obscure source material"? Surely, that's not what you meant to write, Sean. Even those who chap their lips reading long bookshave had several film versions from which to choose."

And how many peple have actually seen any of them, let alone read the book, let alone the seventy-some-odd pages used to create the play?

You're talking about people who think Dancing with the Stars actually means these people are, you know, *stars*. Yes, for them, this was obscure. And that was part of the marketing problem: there was nothing there when Groban left for the marketers to hang an ad campaign on. Tony nominations dont sell shows that long. Virtually everyone involved was a Bway neophyte. Your usual tourist with a wife and two kids would look at this and think, "Pass. Is that LION KING thing still running?"

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 10:10pm

Sean, I'm 63 and, yes, I've read the novel. I'll admit my Russian-born-and-raised son-in-law has not, but he's an engineer and more likely to read a car manual.

When I was a kid, the 1956 film starring Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn was shown regularly on TV. Millions (including I) saw it. It was followed in the 1960s by a Russian-language version (with subtitles here in the U.S.) that was one of the most epic films ever made. Again a hit, albeit at the art house.

The novel has never been out of print and is sufficiently well-known to be used as a plot device in SHE LOVES ME. (It is the book Amalia is to have with her so that "Dear Friend" will know who she is.)

So I don't think "obscure" is the word you want. "Rarely read in its entirety", perhaps, but you can say the same of the Bible. You wouldn't call the Holy Scriptures "obscure".

[QueenAlice]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 10:14pm

How many people have read Les Miserables? This source material isn't the point. I think part of the issue, and I do like the show a lot, is that dazzling as it is, for most people Comet does not grab them emotionally the way something like Les Miz does. 

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 10:21pm

"War and Peace" is like "Moby Dick" — a book everyone claims to know but hardly anyone's ever read — and I'll add that MD has never been out of print either. The 57 film is nice, but — by necessity — it's a Coles Notes version. And it's not something seen as a classic film. Even the recent miniseries was a ratings disaster.

Sorry, but for your usual Bway ticket buyer, this was a hard sell. If you're selling it as "War and Peace: the Musical", then you really might as well toss it in. It ran on the Groban name — and did so quite successfully — but it didnt get the word of mouth it needed to sustain that run when he left. The producers took a gamble on Oak, and it failed miserably because the guy just could not sell the tickets. So they tried to replace him with a Name, and the SJWs went nuts for all the most stupid reasons Personally, as much as I loved the show, it was a huge, very expensive risk taking it to Broadway. And the numbers bear that out. 

Hell, maybe they should have put Patti Labell in the role. LOL

[HogansHero]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 10:43pm

@bear88 re #2, see below re marketing. re #5, perhaps I was not clear but I am referring to completely divorcing the Kagans from it, and even perhaps marketing it against them. Now see below re marketing.

The show has been mis-marketed ever since it left downtown, in just about every way imaginable. From failing the basic job of telling people why they need to see it, and making it into a star vehicle (that could never do what a star vehicle needs to do, but that's another song) that occluded that job, to literally a thousand small things. What it would take to succeed now is a rethink from the ground up. But what I am sure of is that the show would not need or want a star, and that it could again become what it was downtown-must see theatre. And when THAT tours, the good people who made this show will get the glory the Kagans robbed them of. 

P.S. I agree the audit is highly unlikely to find anything actionable. 

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 9/22/17 at 10:50pm

Sean, you've wandered from the point we were discussing.

You claim WAR AND PEACE is "obscure". I maintain it is not.

"Obscure" means "unknown" or "hard to locate".

I have shown that WAR AND PEACE is neither. Whether it is a strong, box office draw or whether a lot of people read it cover to cover are other matters. MOBY DICK (recently successful as an opera) and LES MISERABLE are good comparisons: they aren't "obscure" even if they do go largely unread. These days, few people read GONE WITH THE WIND, because few people read anything challenging, even if only in length. But that doesn't make Mitchell "obscure".

In any event, surely BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY proved that people won't necessarily go to even a great show based on a book they HAVE read. Again, however, BRIDGES isn't "obscure".