how much longer can menagerie last?

I give it a month at the most. My question is (and it can stay as long as is permitted as I thought it was a wonderful revival) how long can Steel Magnolias last?

We could pretty much go down the list of play revivals not doing great. Even Wolf is only at 50% and has been there most of its run. Glenngarry is an exception that is more secure in the 70's.

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or on golden pond, which i thought was very good in its own right.

People, plays don't fill the theaters. Even Denzel's Julius Caesar still had Orchestra center seats available on the final day. The producers expect this, and it costs a heck of a lot less to keep a play running than a musical.

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But Denzel DID fill the audience and the show was a major financial hit. Check the numbers.

Reviews had NOTHING to do with how well Julius Caesar did. It was completely and totally critic proof because of Washington's name above the title. It recouped its investment in less than two months and typically posted attendance figures in the mid-to-upper 90s.

Last week (the final one of the run), attendance was at 101.1% (and at 99% the week before). That's with bad reviews and no discounts. Talk about star power.

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I don't know why some plays are revived. There was no cry for a new Broadway production of Steel Magnolias. It is entertaining, but a 80-90 bucks a pop, entertaining might not be enough. (The same was true of La Cage. No one was writing, "Gee, it would be great to see that again.")

On paper the production of The Glass Menagerie looked promising without remembering that the star's previous NY outing was not the splendid smash they had hoped for. Forget the artistic decisions that did not do the play justice. I have recommended this production to acting students to see as a group and then to discuss what went wrong.

Glengarry is what happens when the stars come together in near perfect alignment (Never mind that I don't like the play.) Here was a play that name actors were willing to commit to for 6 months, one of them a major tv star, plus a star director. This production is more of a hit than the original.

The writing about Caesar was right on the money. A big star who people wanted to see and the show was a major financial success and critic-proof. Smart producing if artistically lacking.

12 Angry Men is the anomaly. It is the first genuine sleeper to come in under the radar in years and be the hit that it was. Part of it was that in spite of the large cast, it was cheap to run. Word of mouth was good from the first preview and kept it running.

Virginia Woolf has always been a tough sell. Even the ground breaking original while a hit and ran for 18 months, was never really a smash. Now that it is summer, it will even be a tougher sell since this is not the sort of play that average tourists are going to lap up. I wish it had come in earlier in the season to build a bigger word-of-mouth.

Golden Pond has a big star, a fairly big co-star, a recognizable title and the production is done not expensively. But again there was no cry to see this play. Still because of the low break even the show runs.

Revivals need to be done somewhat on the cheap because unless there is a radical rethinking of the show that works, maybe the audience just isn't that interested.

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