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| re: SHENANDOAH: Thoughts and Memories? | |
| Last Edit: AlanScott 02:38 pm EDT 08/21/20 | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 02:32 pm EDT 08/21/20 | |
| In reply to: re: SHENANDOAH: Thoughts and Memories? - EvFoDr 12:37 pm EDT 08/21/20 | |
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| It was unusual (although not quite unheard of) for there to have been a summer stock tour of a musical running on Broadway when that 1976 stock tour with Raitt went out. I wondered if perhaps they made it available for stock because business was going downhill on Broadway and perhaps they thought it would close by June or July but it was doing better in the spring of 1976 than it had been in the spring of 1975. The television commercials and perhaps word of mouth helped. Still, it never did really great business on Broadway. When Variety did its 1977-1978 roundup of hits and flops, Shenandoah (months after it had closed) was listed, by itself, under "Status Still Not Clarified." In the 1978-1979 roundup, it was listed under Failures. But I guess it did eventually pay off and provide a small profit to the investors, or at least that's what Steven Suskin says in More Opening Nights on Broadway. He was an investor. I'm not sure that any other source lists it as having finally paid off. I think it was probably the first Broadway musical to run 1,000 performances without having paid off by the time it closed. Raitt went out with a bus-and-truck tour of Shenandoah in the fall of 1976 so I guess the stock tour was preparation for that, or perhaps a test of sorts. A first-class tour did not go out till the fall of 1977, with Cullum opening it but just playing the first three weeks, and then Raitt replaced him. |
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| re: SHENANDOAH: Thoughts and Memories? | |
| Posted by: EvFoDr 04:45 pm EDT 08/21/20 | |
| In reply to: re: SHENANDOAH: Thoughts and Memories? - AlanScott 02:32 pm EDT 08/21/20 | |
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| Thanks Alan. All very fascinating. I am shocked that a show that ran that long, in that time period when we know that shows cost less and it was easier to recoup, did not recoup by closing. There doesn't seem to be anything about this show that screams "expensive to run". In fact I think it was Clive Barnes who said the physical production looked cheap. Interestingly the same thing was said in Times review for the revival. Of course, who knows what was going on behind the scenes. We have no idea what the budget looked like, or how competently it was all managed. |
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| re: SHENANDOAH: Thoughts and Memories? | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 08:55 pm EDT 08/21/20 | |
| In reply to: re: SHENANDOAH: Thoughts and Memories? - EvFoDr 04:45 pm EDT 08/21/20 | |
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| I had long known that Shenandoah had closed at a loss. But I have learned over the last few years that certain shows that I would have thought recouped didn't. For instance, All the Way Home, which I discussed a couple of days ago, didn't even come close. These have been primarily plays because I generally knew about the musicals, but there have been plenty of plays, even going pretty far back, that managed to run long enough that I would have expected them to pay off, but they kind of kept going for months, either barely getting by and thereby not making much profit (and sometimes then losing again what they'd made by running at a loss for periods of time) or doing pretty well for a while but not long enough to quite pay off. I meant to reply to the fairly recent Gemini thread to mention several things, including that it took around two years for it to pay off. | |
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