Grosses for Night Music went down notably when Peters and Stritch replaced Zeta-Jones and Lansbury. Having said that, it still ran six months with them, and it paid off during their run. But grosses dropped by a lot.
Still, I do think that absent getting some huge star who is not known for doing theatre to take over, the best bet would be either Peters or LuPone, if indeed LuPone is willing to take one more lead in a musical, despite her recent statement. Grosses would go way down, but I think that the production might last a few more months without grosses going so low that the production would be failing to break even most weeks. The questions would be whether Rudin might prefer for the production to go out as a hot ticket, and whether either of those ladies would want to take it on under the circumstances. There would also be the danger that grosses might drop enough for it to not even last a few months. Would either of those ladies want to risk being the replacement who couldn't even keep it running a few months? I do tend to think that would not happen, but I might be wrong. |
