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| re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing | |
| Last Edit: mikem 11:04 am EST 12/24/22 | |
| Posted by: mikem 10:52 am EST 12/24/22 | |
| In reply to: Brown's seventh Broadway outing - aleck 06:35 pm EST 12/23/22 | |
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| I think Brown is extremely talented, but looking back on the 6 prior shows, the only one that ran more than 3 months after opening was Mr Saturday Night, and that run of around 4.5 months had everything to do with Billy Crystal and nothing to do with Brown. I hope Brown has a breakout commercial success someday, but that is not a great track record. Has any composer ever had 5 Broadway shows that all ran 3 months or less dating back to the start of their Broadway career? Frank Wildhorn's last 3 shows each ran for less than a month (!) but he had lengthy runs before that (although I don't think any of his 7 shows recouped). |
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| re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 06:09 pm EST 12/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing - mikem 10:52 am EST 12/24/22 | |
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| I think it's completely disingenuous and misrepresentative of reality to put Parade in this category... very few new musicals programed into a non-profit theater's Broadway schedule run more than 3 months. Yes, there were hopes Parade would have a longer life. But it's not as if Hamilton opened at the Public and has been running there ever since. New musicals at these theaters that have runs longer than 3-6 months usually transfer to a new house and commercial run. Some exceptions exist, like Piazza and Contact... but Parade was never going to be a crowd pleaser. Anyway... I think he keeps getting work because he writes great music and lyrics. His breakout score for SFANW is a showcase for why to hire him. His score to Parade is sensational and won him a Tony for his first Broadway show. The Last Five Years is produced constantly and is a standout favorite amount younger generations of musical theater lovers. It's not as if his dad is the president of Broadway and insist they keep giving him chances. I get why Bridges was done... it has a stunning score, with a playwright who would have seemed a great fit for the book. It didn't catch fire on Broadway, there are several reasons. 13 was not a very good show and a risk from the beginning as a concept. Urban Cowboy is hardly a JRB musical. And Mr. Saturday Night came in and ran on Billy Crystal, and Honeymoon in Vegas was a raved about hit at Papermill. It's just bad luck in a lot of ways. But I also consider those two shows more cash-grab attempts that sadly didn't grab much cash. He writes for his living because he needs to to pay his bills, unlike Adam Guettel, for example, or Sondheim. I don't know why he's never had a hit. But he has 2 Best Score Tony Awards, and that ain't nothing. I would consider that he's only had 4 shows that work for this description of a Broadway attempted run - Bridges, 13, Mr. S N, and Honeymoon. And the shows he's written that had the biggest impression and popularity were 2 off-broadway shows and 1 Broadway non-profit run. |
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| re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing | |
| Posted by: ryhog 07:33 pm EST 12/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing - Chazwaza 06:09 pm EST 12/24/22 | |
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| You say a lot of things. I'll react to a few. I don't think it is very productive to (a) make lists, (b) focus on whether people need to work or not, or (c) debate JRB's musicianship. So.... 1. At LCT, successful musicals generally run at the Beaumont. (The Public is not a comparable situation nor, really, is anything else.) 2. Parade's run was a respectable run of a non-profit show. It did not transfer because it had run its course. The question now is whether it can transform itself into a commercial show that will run for 32 weeks or more. I'm skeptical because I don't think it is commercial but I'm happy if they can make it work. 3. I also don't know why he has not had a hit other than the fact that none of his scores have been able to overcome whatever has prevented the shows from failing. 4. Actually, in this context, I'd say Best Score IS "nothing." 5. Your last paragraph maybe says a lot whether you realize it or not. Not everyone's work is successful commercially even though it is successful non-commercially. This is true in every art form that has a commercial component. I think you may also be speaking truth when you say he is interested in commercial because he needs to pay bills. Lots of writers are; most do not get anywhere near as close as Brown has. But maybe this is a part of the answer to my #3. |
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| re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 08:32 pm EST 12/25/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing - ryhog 07:33 pm EST 12/24/22 | |
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| Yes, I knew what i was saying. :) I think the fact that Brown became largely compelled by chasing potential financial success, rather than just what sang to him or that he felt passionately about has both impacted the work he can do for a show, and the shows he chose to do work on, and the time he has. I think being able to only take projects that you want to for the art of it is a different career than when you literally need to pay the bills, and the shows you already wrote don't bring you enough to do that consistently/forever without writing more that will. That being said, being independently wealthy or secure doesn't dictate talent or what one does with it -- some of our greatest artists and thinkers came from extraordinary privilege, and some of them came from extraordinary adversity, and the inverse too. In #1, i assume you mean that if a musical opens in the Beaumont and is a success, it will keep running rather than close at its schedule end date? Yes, that's true, and it's an incredibly unique situation to LCT and their set-up and their finances. Many good musicals have run at LCT, either in the Beaumont or the Mitzi that have not had life longer than a few months. But very few shows that opened at the Mitzi transfer to the Beaumont or to a Broadway house. And I think even insofar as they are reviewed and received has a lot to do with the way they are presented, as if to say "we decided this one wasn't for broadway", and the energy, the marketing, the reviews, the audiences, I think in many ways receive them that way more often than not. So we can never know if A New Brain or Dessa Rose or Bernarda Alba or A Man of No Importance or Sarafina or whatever would have been a hit or had a longer run/bigger response had they been put in the Beaumont and treated like a Broadway production. (this is true of plays too, but it's more common for a play to start there and move). Parade also didn't transfer, I thought, because of Garth's business issues... no? I don't think it was a clear cut "it ran its course, so no transfer". I think Parade will manage at least a 3 month run with Ben Platt. More than that I think depends on a lot of things, including the climate at the time, and if the reviews make it a "must-see" event. |
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| re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing | |
| Posted by: ryhog 10:35 pm EST 12/25/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing - Chazwaza 08:32 pm EST 12/25/22 | |
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| It could be that Brown's fatal flaw was that he was "largely compelled by chasing potential financial success" [and was a poor handicapper]. I don't buy, however, either that one cannot pursue passions without family money [because the opposite is easily demonstrated] or that he made his choices because he "literally need[ed] to pay the bills." [He possesses a strong skill set as a musician that, like many others, provides a fairly easy means of paying the bills. And he has done a lot of that work.] And nowadays he actually has a pretty decent revenue flow, driven of course by L5Y. So I can agree that these forces may well have brought him to the disappointing track record he has on Broadway but I can't agree that this result inexorably flows from the condition you identify. (And you don't suggest it does.) Offhand I cannot think of a show at the Beaumont that had commercial legs and was shut down. And Parade actually fits that category and not some Garth-related explanation. If you look at the attendance for Parade, you'll see that it (1) had only 4 frames with attendance over 90% and they were all pre-opening, (2) had only 2 frames over 80% post opening, and hobbled along in the 60's and 70's for the other frames (with a large majority of them in the 60's). That's not a foundation for an extension much less a transfer. I think you are right that a lot of the Mitzi shows (quite properly) are deemed to not be Broadway material and what has moved has been both an exception and a surprise. I also think you are right that this version will manage at least 3 months (and probably more) but I'm not suggesting it will get close to recouping. I also think it already has the thrust of the reviews it's getting. |
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| re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing | |
| Posted by: ryhog 11:10 am EST 12/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing - mikem 10:52 am EST 12/24/22 | |
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| The answer to your question is I don't know because if there is an example it is buried in ancient history from a time when it was not de rigueur to have a lengthy run (and I am too lazy to try to figure it out). Wildhorn is a different issue, holding (I am pretty sure) the record for the longest running flop. | |
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| re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing | |
| Posted by: NoPeopleLike 11:02 am EST 12/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing - mikem 10:52 am EST 12/24/22 | |
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| "To start their Broadway career"? It's been going on like this for 24 years. This is the career, if not the end of it. | |
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| re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing | |
| Posted by: mikem 11:12 am EST 12/24/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Brown's seventh Broadway outing - NoPeopleLike 11:02 am EST 12/24/22 | |
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| I was trying to say that it's not the situation where someone has an early smash hit, which justifies an investor believing that the person might have a smash hit again. That happens a lot in the movies, where someone like M Night Shyamalan had a string of financial failures in mid-career, but The Sixth Sense followed by Unbreakable and Signs gave film studios reason to believe he would have another smash hit. I clarified my original post. | |
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