| Poor Side Show | |
| Posted by: | broadwaybacker 03:48 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Well, last week's grosses are out (link below) and rather than a post an opening bump in sales following all of the raves, their sales declined by $30,000 to about $420,000, 41% of gross potential and an average ticket price of about $56.00. I truly feel badly for all involved. I really liked the show when I saw it in DC and was planning to see it again in NY this spring, but I might well not be able to wait that long. At this rate, I'd think it would be hard to stay afloat until Tony season, but I hope i'm wrong. | |
| Link | Broadway Grosses |
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| re: Poor Side Show | |
| Posted by: | sloughie 05:17 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Poor Side Show - broadwaybacker 03:48 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| A lot of their sales must be getting eaten up by comps, as others have speculated below. Otherwise, it's interested that they aren't giving tickets to TDF or some of the well known papering services (at least that I've seen) to keep the house looking full and generating more word of mouth... | |
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| re: Poor Side Show | |
| Posted by: | PlayWiz 12:29 am EST 11/25/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Poor Side Show - sloughie 05:17 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Why not have the advertising or word of mouth be something like, "I just saw this great musical about two sisters who never do anything without the other one being there". Or at least they could now be referred to as Thai Twins, since Siam is now known as Thailand. Folks probably don't know what Thai Twins are so maybe they won't be "icked out". | |
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| re:Keep in mind ,,. | |
| Posted by: | NewtonUK 05:02 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Poor Side Show - broadwaybacker 03:48 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| ... that they opened last week, and this skews the numbers a bit, as much of opening night is paper, and a lot of press paper was in last week on Tues-Wed-Thurs. That said - the next five weeks are the highest grossing weeks of the year ... if Side Show doesn't climb up to the $750-900,000 a week range soon, January & February will be tough. I love SIDE SHOW, the original more than the revisal, but still --- And it carries still the word of mouth problem ' I saw this great musical - its about these Siamese twins ...." about that point you've lost your sale. | |
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| Could we discuss that, "...about these Siamese twins..."? | |
| Posted by: | Delvino 06:12 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re:Keep in mind ,,. - NewtonUK 05:02 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| "And it carries still the word of mouth problem ' I saw this great musical - its about these Siamese twins ...." about that point you've lost your sale..." This was on everyone's lips the first time around, the supposed (or de facto) "ick factor" about the subject. That conjoined twins make people uncomfortable. I'm not disagreeing her, just opening a discussion. What do we believe to be the source of the discomfort? May we be specific and graphic? Is it the thought of their (shared) sexuality? Of their biological functions in sync or lack thereof? Of the absence of privacy? It intrigues me, because I notice how readily we line up to see the deformed Phantom woo a girl. Or watch a woman expose her breasts to The Elephant Man. But two women with a mere piece of flesh between their hips puts people off their intermission cocktails? I will remind us: in the original production, the concept was entirely stylized. The two women appeared separately at the top of the show and "formed" in front of us. It was Longbottom's stark and stunning conceit to make the show somewhat meta, that this group of performers assembled on bleachers were going to take us into this world and tell the story with a marked degree of stylization. And they did, with the audience imagination supplying a great deal of the specifics. In this revisal, the suspension of disbelief is sought and maintained. Remarkably. And though I had already seen the production the Saturday before, I was startled watching the footage of the now infamous "opening night act ending." Unlike the original staging, the conjoined nature maintained solely by the actors and thus more controlled, Violet is almost dragged across the stage by Daisy in the tense, searing recitative material before the song proper. I was almost shocked at how vivid it seemed. And maybe for the first time -- the image of this woman pulling her sister with her, without negotiation, maybe inducing physical pain with the resistance -- I felt if not uncomfortable, fully aware of what the plight must've been like in moments when they disagreed. It is brilliantly theatrical, because it is done so simply, but harrowing emotionally. Blown up on the screen in Times Square, if not off-putting, certainly startling. That's the only word I can land on safely. Maybe for the first time I got -- if not the ick factor -- the true physical challenge, the sense of how sad and even tragic these lives had to have been. Maybe that is terrifying, a subtle reminder of the price paid for birth defects, deformity of any kind, who knows what issues come up? The show is gorgeous, heartbreaking, everything everyone has written. But in that one moment -- when Daisy started downstage right without Violet's tacit agreement, I was shaken for the first time. Great theater, but maybe still unnerving on Broadway. | |
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| re: Could we discuss that, "...about these Siamese twins..."? | |
| Posted by: | MikeR 09:03 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Could we discuss that, "...about these Siamese twins..."? - Delvino 06:12 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I would love to get some actual data on this, assuming something like that exists. Because as you point out, this is something people talked about a lot with the original production, and they're doing it again now. But I can't recall ever hearing a single person say "well, I was interested in seeing that show until I found out it was about conjoined twins." It's always--always--presented as a hypothetical. Is this an actual thing, or is just a theory that people made up to explain why the show hasn't caught on? | |
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| re: Could we discuss that, "...about these Siamese twins..."? | |
| Posted by: | BruceinIthaca 12:45 am EST 11/25/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Could we discuss that, "...about these Siamese twins..."? - MikeR 09:03 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Despite what I say below (or maybe in support of it--it's been a long, been a long, been a long, been a long day), I actually assume the conjoined twins aspect would attract more interest than deter it. Perhaps in a post-Lady Gaga "love your freaks" (or "little monsters") era/ | |
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| re: Could we discuss that, "...about these Siamese twins..."? | |
| Posted by: | Michael_Portantiere 07:48 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Could we discuss that, "...about these Siamese twins..."? - Delvino 06:12 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Count me as someone else who does not understand why the conjoined twins subject matter would be off-putting in itself, especially not to a public that eats up lots of entertainments that have a very high "ick factor" -- AMERICAN HORROR STORY being only one example. The only thing I can think of is that maybe, in their minds, some people draw the line between seeing icky stuff in a movie or on TV and seeing it in a Broadway musical. Do you think that's the difference? | |
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| The "ick" factor isn't the real problem. | |
| Posted by: | keikekaze 07:36 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Could we discuss that, "...about these Siamese twins..."? - Delvino 06:12 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| The book trouble with Side Show isn't so much that many people will find it icky (though many people will), as that many people will find it static. Being a pair of conjoined twins isn't a drama, it's a situation. And in Side Show, at least, it's a situation that doesn't go anywhere much. By contrast, a musical about the original so-called "Siamese twins," Chang and Eng Bunker, could get into their respective marriages and the fact that, between the two of them, with their wives, they produced 21 children. It could also get into the fact that they settled in the American antebellum South, bought a plantation, and became slaveholders. Now, there's a story, and a drama, or the beginnings of one. Side Show, however, is just another backstage soap opera that's going to end in the usual tears, only with an extra-unpleasant twist. | |
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| re: The "ick" factor isn't the real problem. | |
| Posted by: | BruceinIthaca 08:12 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | The "ick" factor isn't the real problem. - keikekaze 07:36 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| There are a few novels about Chang and Eng--interesting ones (I have a friend who wrote her dissertation about their representation in American popular culture across time). In addition, Alice Dreger's "One of Us" (the reference to the movie "Freaks" is quite intentional) is a thoughtful piece of medical humanities/philosophical writing (and not filled with typical academic jargon, to which I plead guilty in some of my own writing--it's the price of admission, I fear). Katherine Dunn's novel, Geek Love, while not centrally about conjoined twins (it's about a family of "intentional freaks"--their parents do various things while their children are in utero to try to produce anomalously-bodied children who can be part of the "family business," i.e. a traveling freak show), features a really fascinating set of conjoined twins--Electra and Iphigenia. I do think there's still both a kind of fascinating with conjoined twins in our culture--remember, in as recent a period as the 19th century, in many cultures, conjoined twins were killed at birth, either because they were viewed as evil omens for the community or as manifestations of the sins of their parents (I don't think we are there anymore, but who knows?). I do think the issues of sexuality and privacy are there still--as Dreger argues, of the American ideal of "individuality" as the "right" of every citizen--until, of course, that individuality threatens the social order. I've only seen a college production of Side Show. It was well-performed and well-staged, but I found the plot rendered in somewhat soapy fashion and the music unmemorable. But that's case of individual taste. It may be that a revival has to latch into something in the zeitgeist (as I think Chicago did when it started its revival--we were in a more cynical place then than when it opened) or to have a performer people know they want to say (as in the succession of Hedwigs currently moving through the role--even Andrew Rannells, arguably the least well of them to the average non-Broadway baby, is known from Girls and The New Normal and perhaps from The Book of Mormon). Or it may be a perennial made fresh again by staging, concept, or casting. Side Show has some of this, but not names to carry it (with all due respect to the leading ladies, whom I gather are quite excellent). | |
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| re: Poor Side Show | |
| Posted by: | ryhog 04:51 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Poor Side Show - broadwaybacker 03:48 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| not that I disagree with your ultimate diagnosis, but last week's grosses are not "sales following all of the raves." Sales in the days following the reviews are reflected mostly in the advance and not in the immediate grosses. As someone else noted, there are still a lot of press comps sucking up the best seats in that frame, folks don't drop everything and go see a show and tourists don't read reviews anyway. | |
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| re: Poor Side Show | |
| Posted by: | broadwaybacker 06:33 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Poor Side Show - ryhog 04:51 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Ryhog, of course that's right, and two seconds after I posted my comment I wished I could have deleted it. It's the wraps that matter, and we have no idea how they were affected by the reviews. I hope that they were up big, and time will tell. Having said that, the numbers sure don't look good right now. | |
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| re: Poor Side Show | |
| Posted by: | ryhog 06:45 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Poor Side Show - broadwaybacker 06:33 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I expect there will be some bump but there is a lot of climbing that needs to happen. As I said somewhere else, this is not a show with producers who are experienced either at producing or at being patient, so one of the things to watch is whether they have the wherewithal to weather the storm they are sailing into. (Sorry for mentioning sailing; I know that's another thread.) | |
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| Side show producers aren't experienced? | |
| Posted by: | dramedy 06:57 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Poor Side Show - ryhog 06:45 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I assume Jordan Roth is running the investment side of the house and he is president of jujamcyn theaters. I was under the impression when he was wanting to bring the show from Kennedy center that he was getting the investors. There are a lot of them listed, but I really wonder how Much involvement they have besides writing the check. | |
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| re: Side show producers aren't experienced? | |
| Posted by: | ryhog 08:39 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Side show producers aren't experienced? - dramedy 06:57 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I did not see anything about Jordan being involved in raising money but if you did, then obviously he was. Jujamcyn itself is listed last, which is normally a place you put a landlord who has gotten something in exchange for special considerations re the rent rather than substantial investors. From what I gather, this is Darren Bagert's show. He has been around but falls in the same category as the OTT lead producers. I don't think he has any lead credits. A majority of the laundry list of producers are either relative newbies or first timers. | |
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| Doesn't look good | |
| Posted by: | dramedy 04:04 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Poor Side Show - broadwaybacker 03:48 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| They probably will have a good numbers this week for thanksgiving, but slip again in dec. None of the musicals are doing well. On the town should be grossing over a million instead of probably breaking even at $700k range. Last ship is losing $100k plus a week since it started. Honeymoons first week $366k for 7 performances about 37% of potential isn't good with 65% capacity. In a smallish musical house. I thought with good buzz from papermill and tony danza, it would start much stronger. And we should include hollar if you hear me that flopped big time over the summer. A lot of investments being lost. | |
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| Dosen't the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade boost ticket sales? | |
| Posted by: | Greg_M 04:37 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Doesn't look good - dramedy 04:04 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I would think if you saw a musical number on the parade and you liked it you might buy tickets | |
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| re: Dosen't the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade boost ticket sales? | |
| Posted by: | Singapore/Fling 06:38 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Dosen't the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade boost ticket sales? - Greg_M 04:37 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Although appearing on the Macy's Parade didn't help the original production at the box office. | |
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| re: Dosen't the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade boost ticket sales? | |
| Posted by: | John_Patti 04:54 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Dosen't the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade boost ticket sales? - Greg_M 04:37 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Don't forget Side Show opened last Monday so that was one full house of comps followed by more press thru the week. The temperatures plummeted to the low 30's most of the week and there is always a slump this week year after year. Gentleman's Guide was putting up the same numbers a year ago. I do find it interesting that a year ago Kinky Boots was putting up $1.5M numbers the November after winning the Tony and Gentleman's Guide is not even making 100% of its potential in a much smaller house the November after its Tony win. | |
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| i forgot that side show includes opening night | |
| Posted by: | dramedy 05:33 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Dosen't the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade boost ticket sales? - John_Patti 04:54 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| It was odd to open on a Monday night . That would explain the drop in grosses | |
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| Weekly grosses out | |
| Posted by: | dramedy 03:50 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Poor Side Show - broadwaybacker 03:48 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Since Jesse isn't around, I'll post. Last ship lost another $150k last week since the nut was reported at $625k and the gross of $497k has to have 8% fees knocked off. Stings last date is jan 10, I have a feeling the closing notice will be the same date. Side show slipping again to $419k minus fees. I was hoping this show would catch on, but it doesn't look like it will. I really hope a national tour is launched. Booking Mormon still King of ticket price at $180. But for plays, the river and elephant man are ducking it out in the low $150 , but losing to its only a play at $159. Mamma Mia at $490k, really begs the question if it should have moved. It seemed to do better at winter garden which basically has been dark for almost a year with rocky playing less than 6 months (time between mm closing and wolf hall staring is around 18 months). Maybe the shuberts would have done better leaving mm at winter garden and getting that lease percentage for the full18 months. | |
| Link | http://www.broadwayworld.com/grosses.cfm#.VHOXYEc76K3 |
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| re: Weekly grosses out | |
| Posted by: | BroadwayTonyJ 05:19 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Weekly grosses out - dramedy 03:50 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| Back in August the Motown producers said that their show would recoup shortly. Has there ever been an announcement? Gemtlemen's Guide has steadily slipped about $175K in weekly gross over the last 6 weeks -- not a good sign. It's hard to figure Mamma Mia's slide. Theoretically the Broadhurst is a better fit with a better location than the Winter Garden, but apparently the move has thrown off the foreign tourist crowd that eats this show up. | |
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| Not that I know of | |
| Posted by: | dramedy 05:37 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Weekly grosses out - BroadwayTonyJ 05:19 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| I'm still surprised the show costs so much to run and it probably hasn't been recouping much as breaking even lately. Mamma Mia surprises me. It seemed like a really good idea to go smaller. And who knew rocky would bomb. I can't imagine fiddler being a huge sell out hit, so it might be a while until winter garden is booked solid. | |
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| re: Weekly grosses out | |
| Posted by: | Delvino 04:06 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: | Weekly grosses out - dramedy 03:50 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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| SIDE SHOW's post opening week, still papered, right? For critics? 71% of seats filled, but many given away for second tier of press? Not entirely representative. The next week will be more telling. Ditto, early weeks of December. | |
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