Musical theater, long the bread-and-butter of Broadway, is struggling.
None of the 18 commercial musicals that opened on Broadway last season has made a profit yet. Some still could, but several have been spectacular flameouts. The new musicals “Tammy Faye,” “Boop!” and “Smash” each cost at least $20 million to bring to the stage, and each was gone less than four months after opening. All three lost their entire investments.
Lavish revivals of much-loved classics are also fizzling. On Sunday, a revival of “Cabaret,” budgeted for up to $26 million and featuring a costly conversion of a Broadway theater into a nightclub-like setting, threw in the towel at a total loss. A $19.5 million revival of “Gypsy” that starred Audra McDonald and earned strong reviews closed last month without recouping its investment. Even a buzzy production of “Sunset Boulevard,” which won this year’s Tony for best musical revival, failed to make back the $15 million it cost to mount.
New musicals are particularly endangered. Since the coronavirus pandemic, 46 new musicals have opened on Broadway, costing about $800 million to bring to the stage, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Only three have become profitable so far. Strong reviews, word of mouth and in some cases Tonys have not been enough. And this fall’s new musical offerings are sparse: There are just two, one of which has only two people in its cast.
“Broadway is not a business anymore,” Andrew Lloyd Webber, the storied composer behind “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Cats,” “Evita” and “Sunset Boulevard,” said in an interview. “The statistics are terrible. I am very worried. I look at the economics of this, and I just don’t see how it can sustain.”
Producers attribute the high failure rate to a number of factors. The costs of bringing song-and-dance spectacles to Broadway have skyrocketed in recent years, while ticket prices for musicals have remained relatively flat. Attendance still lags slightly below prepandemic levels. Jason Laks, the president of the Broadway League, estimates that only about 10 percent of musicals are now profitable, around half of the historical average.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post The Broadway Musical Is in Trouble appeared first on New York Times.
