Why did Ragtime fail the first time around?

I just saw a production in downtown manhattan yesterday afternoon and thought that the show itself was great (book,music)
Looking at the original broadway run with the wonderful Brian and Audra... why didnt it succeed the first time around?

It closed in the red partly because of high running costs, but mostly because of Garth Drabinsky's shady business practices.

---

I don't think you can blame a financial failure of a show that ran for two years on the critics. Clearly there was a significant audience. The show was just too big, huge cast, huge orchestra, and huge physical production. Top it all off with a company that was practicing some shady business and creative accounting and you have a recipe for a financial flop.

If Brantley was truly to blame the show would not have lasted two years.

Livent.

I think they should do the first act of Spiderman at The Hilton and the second act at the Marquis and see how that pans out.

IF the show had had a more reasonable break-even of $450K (at the time that was the nut for most big shows) it would have run much longer and turned a profit.

RAGTIME was said cost $10 to $12 million to open. With a nut of $600k per week it needed $31 million a year to meet costs.

In 1998 (1st year on B'way) it grossed $44 million - net profit about $13 million.

In 1999 (2nd full year on B'way) it grossed $33 million) - net profit about $2 million.

All things considered the show should have been a hit. But Garth was playing games with the funds and we'll probably never know for sure. Ovitz pulled the plug - I suspect - to cut of the flow of any further funds to Drabinsky.

Even so, with a $15 million profit RAGTIME should have been considered a success even if those dollars never reached the investors. It was obviously not a FOLLIES type flop which ran a year and half and closed without recovering a penny of its capitalization.

---

"I think they should do the first act of Spiderman at The Hilton and the second act at the Marquis and see how that pans out."

You win at life!

Updated On: 8/10/09 at 03:15 AM

The only failure RAGTIME had was financial, and it was due to, as always in these cases (see SUNSET BOULEVARD), bad producing.

The score is absolutely brilliant and the show, as proved by the soon-to-be-NYC-bound revival is moving and emotionally riveting.

The show was brilliant in L.A. before it got to Broadway. I saw it four times. Then they put it in that massive warehouse of a theatre in NY, and all the intimacy was swallowed up.

It wasn't the physical size of that production that overwhelmed the story so much as the physical size of the venue. It was the same production and staging in L.A., but they spread out to fill the bigger place and tried to fill a ten million seat house with their performances. But the Shubert Theatre (now gone) was a much better space for it.

They never should have built that steroidal atrocity in NY. It's killed many a show in its short existence.

I also maintain that the L.A. company had better chemistry and synergy. The Broadway company members may have been more distinguished individually, but they didn't gel together as a cast nearly as well. The performances were too isolated. Not sure whether that isolation was due to the bigger space, or the cast's lack of chemistry. But they were definitely isolated performances.

Such a shame.

Now they have a chance to get it right and honor one of the best written shows in the past 30 years. I hope they rise to the occasion.

---

Wait, what was the shady business the producers were doing?

As George S. Kaufman AND George Abbott said: "Actually, the audience IS always right".

There was a a sizable audience for the show. Look at the grosses. First year 96% sold. 2nd year 87% sold. In an 1800 seat theatre.

A for the theatre, while I have never been in the rear mezz for a performance I was given a private tour of teh space just shortly after it opened, and it seemed to me that even from the very last row you had an excellent view. I find that I feel removed from the action when in the rear mezz for most any show.
The Gershwin is bad that way.

However, if you want removed, try the last row of the balcony in the 3200 seat O'Keefe (now Sony) centre in Toronto where CAMELOT premiered (and opened the theatre) in October 1960. You might as well be watching a chamber concert in Yankee stadium!

As for RAGTIME, having seen the show in a number or smaller community theatre and semi-staged concert settings over the past few years.

RAGTIME - original production

---

There was a lot of creative bookkeeping going on in the Livent offices. I'm not quite sure exactly how it was done (not being an accountant) but the gist of it was profits from the hit shows were being moved around to fund the other shows that were not doing as well, but from what I understand, that money was never accounted for in terms of where it came from. So though Ragtime may have been making well over its weekly nut, the grosses would not reflect that because profits would be slid over to something like Fosse or Seussical to cover their deficits, thus investors were never seeing a return on what they had put into Ragtime. At least that is my understanding of the situation, in its simplest form. Somebody with a better business sense may be able to explain it better, or tell me that I'm completely wrong in my understanding of what was going on. If that person is reading this, please do correct me.

Blaxx, The Hilton having had several flops, did house a success at one point after its reopening, "42nd Street"...

You mean, the 2001 FLOP revival of 42nd Street?

---