It's a shame that the first paragraph was written, as it shows "bad faith" towards an open exchange of ideas. Nevertheless, there are two schools of thought, and it ultimately comes down to a business decision.
Option A - The theater was empty, the theater couldn't get anything better to come in, and let's let this guy come in and ramble on for 2.5 hours each night. We don't need an expensive set, it's cheap to run, and more of the money we get we can keep as profit (due to lower expenses).
Option B - Let's not settle for mediocrity (in terms of profit). Now the theater is full with a "mediocre" show in terms of profit and we can't get something better to come in. Maybe if the theater wasn't full, a surprise hit could have started there and still been a success. I didn't see anything currently running at the Belasco in this week's past grosses. So perhaps they made the wrong choice by going with Option A. If the show was such a "success", why aren't they begging the "star" to come back for an open-ended run?
I'll say based on the average paid admission for Terms of My Surrender, I'd be willing to guess it was the highest-papered Broadway show of 2017. A theater has a business decision to make: Do you want to run a cheap show that appeals to a limited highly partisan crowd (so you can keep more of your money as profit, but not make much profit at all) or do you want to hold out for something better that's going to be long running (that's more expensive to run, but you'll sell tons of premium seats and you'll end up making a much larger profit)? I think many people will argue that the theater made a poor business decision by going with Option A. |
