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re: I still believe this will be a huge hit

Posted by: keikekaze 10:42 pm EST 11/23/14
In reply to: re: I still believe this will be a huge hit - ryhog 10:03 am EST 11/23/14

I agree, Pippin in revival did about as well as could be expected, and perhaps better than it deserved. It never has been much of a musical, but the Fosse staging dazzled in 1972 and Fosse then was at the peak of his cultural moment. The revival, without Fosse, was lucky to last as long as it did.

But I think the previous poster may have meant, by "nothing is a huge hit anymore," that apart from BOM Broadway hasn't seen anything else lately that looks like it's going to run 15 or 20 years. That, I think, has more to do with costs and prices than quality, though I generally agree that quality has been lacking, too.


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re: I still believe this will be a huge hit

Posted by: ryhog 11:50 pm EST 11/23/14
In reply to: re: I still believe this will be a huge hit - keikekaze 10:42 pm EST 11/23/14

re huge hits...

First of all, there have never been that many 15+ year running shows, nor would we want there to be. We have a few (by which I mean enough) right now.

But I don't think it is about money (either side). I think Wicked has no horizon line, and if Mormon has one, it hasn't manifested. That is basically one per decade for 4 decades. I think the real problem is quality, and for better or worse I mean branding quality rather than intrinsic quality.


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re: I still believe this will be a huge hit

Posted by: keikekaze 07:57 pm EST 11/24/14
In reply to: re: I still believe this will be a huge hit - ryhog 11:50 pm EST 11/23/14

First of all, there have never been that many 15+ year running shows, nor would we want there to be. We have a few (by which I mean enough) right now.

I agree completely. I'm no fan of endless runs on Broadway, as I've said many times. But we did get eleven Broadway shows that had 12-year runs or more (or are about to reach that point) between 1975 (A Chorus Line) and 2005 (Jersey Boys), and only one more (Book of Mormon) has joined that list since 2005. They "proliferated"--insofar as they did--during the '80s and '90s, a period when money was relatively easy and spending was relatively free. They've stopped "proliferating" since 2005. You need large audiences who can throw a lot of money around to sustain runs of that length, so I don't imagine we're going to see many more such runs in the near future--which is fine with me.


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