Sometimes people buy tickets, and sometimes they don't.
It all boils down to that, and if it were an exact science, the Nobel-winning physicist who invented the formula would be ensconced in a billion-dollar Park Avenue apartment, paid for by every producer on Broadway. "Okay," one would say. "I want to do a revival of No Time for Sergeants starring Kevin James and Tom Bosley. Yes or no?" Another would ring with, "I'm thinking of bringing in Ian McKellen to do Strindberg's The Father, but who'd sell more tickets as the daughter, Amanda Seyfried or Leighton Meester?" A third would text, "Just came fm reading of Buffy Vampire musical. K. Butler wowed as Buff. Bring to Old Globe for more dev?"
The physicist would then plug in her X's and Y's and come up with answers to spare all these producers the heartache and gutted investments of sudden disasters and drawn-out flops.
But that's not the way it works, of course. Every choice is an educated guess and every show a horse race. Broadway dance musical based on Billy Joel songs? Huge. Broadway dance musical based on Bob Dylan songs? Calamity. Broadway musical of The Producers? Gold mine. Broadway musical of Young Frankenstein? Sink hole. Billy Crystal showcase? Back up the Brinks truck. Martin Short showcase? Back up the U-haul.
Leaving aside the quality of the shows (Young Frank was often funny; Martin Short was often hilarious, Movin' Out had its boring stretches), predicting where audiences would spend their Broadway dollars was as fruitless as guessing the temperature next October 13th. An educated guess would surmise that a mid-autumn day would be cloudy and in the high 50s, but there's no accounting for Indian summers, cold fronts and early snows.
And so it's been on Broadway from time immemorial. You can lead an audience right up to the ticket window, but you can't make `em buy.
Which brings us to the hand-wringing and gloom surrounding the quick shuttering of Brighton Beach Memoirs earlier this month. A hit in its original 1983 incarnation, BBM appeared ripe for revival. After all, Neil Simon's comedy, which critics lauded as a major advancement in his craft from jokey sitcoms to something more Chekhovian, tells of a dysfunctional yet loving family coping with an economy that squeezes their every last nickel and with an outside world about to be plagued by war and ethnic turmoil. Not only that, Chicago wunderkind director David Cromer, fresh from his acclaimed stagings of Our Town and Adding Machine, seemed just the talent to explore the rich human interactions of the Jerome family. And since every Broadway show needs a TV or movie star now, why not Laurie Metcalf as the mom? Not only does she have name recognition from her years on "Roseanne," but she's a superb actress, to boot.
So what went wrong? Why did the revival open October 25th at the Nederlander Theater and close six days later? What did Ira Pittelman, Max Cooper, Jeffrey Sine, Scott Delman, Ruth Hendel, Roy Furman, Ben Sprecher, Wendy Federman , Scott Landis and Emanuel Azenberg miss?
Damned if I or anyone knows. Sure, newspapers and blogs are filled with finger pointing and speculation:
--> It was marketed wrong. Instead of opening BBM and then adding Broadway Bound in rep a month later, they should have done the whole "B" trilogy at once (i.e., with Biloxi Blues in the middle) and created an "event." After all, it worked with The Norman Conquests last season, didn't it? (Well, artistically in spades, but the show didn't recoup.)
--> The name Neil Simon no longer sells tickets. (And the names Keith Huff, Yasmina Reza and George S. Kaufman do?)
--> Or, Cromer was the wrong director for the material, treating it like Eugene O'Neill when he should have approached it like Paul Rudnick. (Most critics this one included agreed that Cromer's sensitivity mined both the humor and the heartbreak of the Jeromes.)
--> Or, Neil Simon-type comedy is just too old-hat and nostalgic for modern Broadway. (Explain, please, the boffo box office for Boeing-Boeing?).
--> Or, the critics killed it. (Newsday's Linda Winer, USA Today's Elysa Gardner, Variety's David Rooney and the Daily News's Howard Kissel (in a post-mortem) raved; Associated Press was strongly positive, and the all-important New York Times was mixed but lauded certain aspects of the production. Only John Simon, The New York Post's Elizabeth Vincentelli and the Daily News's Joe Dziemianowicz were unenthusiastic (and even they weren't fully dismissive).
--> Or Michael Riedel's reportage of a troubled rehearsal period killed it. (Funny, didn't seem to hurt Hair or the all-black Cat on a Hot Tin Roof).
--> Or Brighton Beach Memoirs simply isn't that special a play to begin with. (Just my opinion but I think it's Simon's masterpiece, and this superb production only proved anew how tender and beautifully crafted it is.)
So what's the upshot? As it ever was with Broadway, from the ushers to the treasurers and from the matinee idols to the spear carriers, everybody's an expert except that everybody really knows nothing. A great show has closed, prematurely, and thousands of people who could have experienced its power will never have that opportunity. Why did Brighton Beach Memoirs flop? Because, from the opening of the box office to first previews, to opening night, to reviews, to Nov. 1, people didn't buy tickets. It's as simple and as frustratingly complicated as that. Too bad, but end of story.
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