#1
Posted: 6/20/12 at 9:56pm
Article frm Toronto Star- Kinda funny as he'd been a chief cheerleader.
Jesus Christ Superstar: Five reasons it flopped on Broadway
Jun 20, 2012
They don’t know how to love him.
The sad news from New York City Tuesday was that the Stratford Shakespeare Festival production of Jesus Christ Superstar would end its run there on July 1, far shorter than anyone had expected.
It means that a show that played to record-breaking houses in Canada is going to close on Broadway after only 116 performances, many of which had attendance close to only 50 per cent.
How could the belle of the Canadian ball become a wallflower once they started playing that Broadway melody?
It’s unfortunately very easy. Let’s look at these five fatal factors.
1) No buzz: Despite an energetic marketing campaign that concentrated on the fresh, hip quality of the company and even featured a deluxe layout in Vanity Fair, nobody in New York was really that thrilled about the show coming to Broadway. “There was just no excitement over Superstar opening,” said Michael Riedel, theatre columnist for the New York Post. “Everybody’s seen it on tour or at their kids’ high school, or in the last Broadway revival. If it had knocked it out of the park, people might have sat up and taken notice. But it didn’t.”
2) No star: Although the whole point of bringing the show from Stratford was to highlight the ensemble nature of the quality company, that doesn’t matter in Gotham these days. Except for shows that have rave reviews or tremendous word-of-mouth, you need stars. Take Evita, that other Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice show being revived on Broadway. Its reviews were about the same as those for JCS, but it’s been playing to between 25 and 40 per cent bigger houses. Why? Part of it is that it’s never been revived in New York since its original 1979 production and the second is the presence of Ricky Martin in the role of Che. He sells tickets. Lots of them.
3) No Brent: It’s hard to blame the failure of a production on the defection of a single actor, but when Brent Carver (Pontius Pilate) decided not to go to Broadway and director Des McAnuff replaced him with Tom Hewitt, something vital changed in the equation. Not only was Carver brilliant in the role, he brought Tony Award-winning cachet to the cast, but McAnuff replaced him with a non-Stratford actor whose last original Broadway credit was as the lead in McAnuff’s disastrous 2004 musical of Dracula. That sent out the wrong signals on a variety of levels.
4) No reviews: Reviews are vital in New York these days, especially if you don’t have an exciting-sounding production or a box-office ready star. And once Charles Isherwood in the New York Times announced that, “I have to confess to finding the show alternately hilarious and preposterous. . . . If a musical were to be judged by the amount of time its characters spent gazing meaningfully into the audience, this production would be trumps,” you knew its days would be numbered, despite some more favourable notices. When shortly after, Hilton Als in The New Yorker ended his review with the description “God-awful,” there was surely trouble in paradise.
5) No bling: It’s ironic, in the end, that what probably most clearly caused the early demise of Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway was what made it such a success in Canada. At Stratford, the creative tension between the flamboyance of McAnuff’s physical production and the sincerity of performance he demanded from the cast made for a fascinating mix. In New York, they always prefer it if every performer brings the house down. That’s why Josh Young’s Judas (performing as directed) was the one to find the most favour with Tony nominators and New York critics alike. Also, while Canadian audiences had likely seen Paul Nolan and Chilina Kennedy turn in moving work in The Grapes of Wrath the same season, increasing admiration for their versatility, all that the Americans saw was what was on the stage of the Neil Simon Theatre. And when Ben Vereen introduced the segment of JCS on the Tonys as coming from the “Stanford” Festival, well that was really the last straw, wasn’t it?
rouzounian@sympatico.ca
Jesus Christ Superstar: Five reasons it flopped on Broadway
Jun 20, 2012
They don’t know how to love him.
The sad news from New York City Tuesday was that the Stratford Shakespeare Festival production of Jesus Christ Superstar would end its run there on July 1, far shorter than anyone had expected.
It means that a show that played to record-breaking houses in Canada is going to close on Broadway after only 116 performances, many of which had attendance close to only 50 per cent.
How could the belle of the Canadian ball become a wallflower once they started playing that Broadway melody?
It’s unfortunately very easy. Let’s look at these five fatal factors.
1) No buzz: Despite an energetic marketing campaign that concentrated on the fresh, hip quality of the company and even featured a deluxe layout in Vanity Fair, nobody in New York was really that thrilled about the show coming to Broadway. “There was just no excitement over Superstar opening,” said Michael Riedel, theatre columnist for the New York Post. “Everybody’s seen it on tour or at their kids’ high school, or in the last Broadway revival. If it had knocked it out of the park, people might have sat up and taken notice. But it didn’t.”
2) No star: Although the whole point of bringing the show from Stratford was to highlight the ensemble nature of the quality company, that doesn’t matter in Gotham these days. Except for shows that have rave reviews or tremendous word-of-mouth, you need stars. Take Evita, that other Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice show being revived on Broadway. Its reviews were about the same as those for JCS, but it’s been playing to between 25 and 40 per cent bigger houses. Why? Part of it is that it’s never been revived in New York since its original 1979 production and the second is the presence of Ricky Martin in the role of Che. He sells tickets. Lots of them.
3) No Brent: It’s hard to blame the failure of a production on the defection of a single actor, but when Brent Carver (Pontius Pilate) decided not to go to Broadway and director Des McAnuff replaced him with Tom Hewitt, something vital changed in the equation. Not only was Carver brilliant in the role, he brought Tony Award-winning cachet to the cast, but McAnuff replaced him with a non-Stratford actor whose last original Broadway credit was as the lead in McAnuff’s disastrous 2004 musical of Dracula. That sent out the wrong signals on a variety of levels.
4) No reviews: Reviews are vital in New York these days, especially if you don’t have an exciting-sounding production or a box-office ready star. And once Charles Isherwood in the New York Times announced that, “I have to confess to finding the show alternately hilarious and preposterous. . . . If a musical were to be judged by the amount of time its characters spent gazing meaningfully into the audience, this production would be trumps,” you knew its days would be numbered, despite some more favourable notices. When shortly after, Hilton Als in The New Yorker ended his review with the description “God-awful,” there was surely trouble in paradise.
5) No bling: It’s ironic, in the end, that what probably most clearly caused the early demise of Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway was what made it such a success in Canada. At Stratford, the creative tension between the flamboyance of McAnuff’s physical production and the sincerity of performance he demanded from the cast made for a fascinating mix. In New York, they always prefer it if every performer brings the house down. That’s why Josh Young’s Judas (performing as directed) was the one to find the most favour with Tony nominators and New York critics alike. Also, while Canadian audiences had likely seen Paul Nolan and Chilina Kennedy turn in moving work in The Grapes of Wrath the same season, increasing admiration for their versatility, all that the Americans saw was what was on the stage of the Neil Simon Theatre. And when Ben Vereen introduced the segment of JCS on the Tonys as coming from the “Stanford” Festival, well that was really the last straw, wasn’t it?
rouzounian@sympatico.ca
An actress playing Mary was only slightly more interesting then drying latex paint. 
