Delving Into the Broadway Playbook to Stay Open
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: January 4, 2011
In the face of daunting odds — odds that led nine Broadway shows to close on Sunday — stands “Lombardi,” the play about the legendary Green Bay Packers coach that is the only brand-new drama to survive the fall season. The producers of “Lombardi” made the bullish announcement on Tuesday that they would extend ticket sales through June 19, even though the winter is traditionally a graveyard for plays like this one, which lack audience-drawing stars.
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
“Lombardi,” with Dan Lauria in the title role, has tried to reach beyond the usual theater crowd.
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Partly to reduce its costs, “Rock of Ages” will move to the smaller Helen Hayes Theater.
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Al Pacino and “The Merchant of Venice” return in February.
So what fills the producers with a fighting spirit that Vince Lombardi would admire? Confidence in a marketing strategy that is aimed at sports fans and men, not just the usual theater crowd. The producers of this biographical play have already booked visits by fans from colleges with proud sports traditions, like Fordham (Lombardi’s alma mater), Syracuse and Boston College, and they have promoted the show as a kind of leadership training to draw in CBS sales executives on a team-building retreat and members of the Miami Dolphins who were in town to play the Jets last month.
The producers are also reaching a more traditional Broadway crowd by promoting their two lead actors, Dan Lauria as Lombardi, and Judith Light as his wife, Marie, who are giving critically praised performances. (Critics were more mixed about the rest of the show.) And they have kept costs low, at slightly more than $200,000 a week, which helps weather nights with many empty seats.
“You need to have a plan — maybe a clever plan, maybe a surprising one, but some kind of plan — to survive on Broadway these days when you’re not a big, brand-name musical,” said Tony Ponturo, one of the lead producers of “Lombardi.” “For us, we have Vince Lombardi and his leadership sayings, which still intrigue people.”
Not only has the play attracted executives from law firms and corporations like CBS, he said, but it has also led some groups to build fund-raising events around attending the show. After many of these performances with large groups, Mr. Lauria and often Ms. Light and other actors will take part in special audience talkbacks to delve further into the Lombardi mythos. The show has also taped “vignettes” with Mr. Lauria as Lombardi that will run on the NFL Network during the playoff season, Mr. Ponturo said.
“Lombardi” is one of several Broadway shows whose producers have taken unusual steps to try to keep running through the 2010-11 theater season. While shows so far are bringing in 3.6 percent more in box office receipts than Broadway was earning at this point last season, and while attendance is up 3.8 percent, much of that growth is attributed to a relatively small number of musicals: war horses like “Wicked” and “The Lion King,” which set box office records last week; newer productions like “Memphis,” the 2010 Tony Award winner for best musical; and the lavish spectacle “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” which is selling out though it is still in previews.
One play, “The Merchant of Venice,” a critical and commercial hit starring Al Pacino as Shylock, had been scheduled to close for good this Sunday because Mr. Pacino had a film commitment. But its producers decided to negotiate a hiatus with its cast, crew and theater owners, closing for three weeks and then reopening Feb. 1 through 20 because, as the producer Jeffrey Richards said, “we’ve been turning away people.”
Joey Parnes, the executive producer of “Merchant,” said that the hiatus would cost “considerably less” than $500,000 in rent to the Broadhurst Theater and other expenses; the show’s box office, by comparison, had been regularly bringing in more than $1 million a week in ticket sales.
“We’re still negotiating details,” Mr. Parnes said, “but the hiatus looks like a wise strategy that will allow more people to see the show and earn more money for investors.”
Another Broadway hit, the Beatles tribute show “Rain,” worked out its own atypical extension by changing theaters. “Rain,” which earned $1.4 million last week for 11 performances, will still close at the Neil Simon Theater on Jan. 15, but then move five blocks south to the Brooks Atkinson Theater and resume performances there on Feb. 8 for at least 16 more weeks. The current tenant of the Brooks Atkinson, “Rock of Ages,” which has been running there since March 2009, will close on Sunday and move to the Helen Hayes Theater, where performances will start in March.
The “Rain” producers struck the deal with the Nederlander Organization, which owns the Neil Simon and eight other Broadway houses, including the Atkinson. While the company earns rent and a piece of the ticket sales, its producing arm, Nederlander Presentations, also has a sizable financial investment in “Rain,” though no one would say how much. So it was in the interest of the organization to keep “Rain” going.
“Rock of Ages” has had an open-ended run and sells out regularly on weekends, but has also grappled with the challenge of filling even three-quarters of the 997-seat Atkinson Theater on weeknights — the sort of struggle that some shows face the longer they run. The idea of moving to a smaller theater like the 597-seat Helen Hayes also intrigued the “Rock of Ages” producers, they said, because their weekly operating costs would be reduced. (The front-of-house staff, advertising, technical costs and other expenses would most likely be lower in a theater with fewer seats.)
Another musical, “American Idiot,” has faced an uncertain future this winter, as ticket sales have been mixed during slow tourist weeks. The show turned to its own ace in the hole, Billie Joe Armstrong, the lead singer of the band Green Day whose music is the basis of the rock opera. Mr. Armstrong, who stepped into the “American Idiot” cast briefly last fall and jolted the box office, has now returned to the role of St. Jimmy through Feb. 27 (though he will be out for some performances), helping the show ride out the two traditionally slowest-selling months of the year.
Not all inventive business strategies have paid off entirely, though. The producers of the play “La Bête” made the unusual decision last year to undertake a single production for both London and New York, meaning that investors put their money into both runs rather than wait to see if the show succeeded in its first outing, in the West End last summer, before investing in the Broadway run. In doing so, the producers said they were able to save at least $1 million by spreading out their capitalization costs and building the physical production in England, where labor tends to be less expensive.
But while “La Bête” drew sizable crowds in London, it has struggled to build an audience in New York. The producers announced that the show would close five weeks ahead of schedule, on Sunday, though in a statement this week they said that the business model remained sound.
“ ‘La Bête’ could have easily played a short engagement at, say, BAM or an Off Broadway venue for three or four weeks,” said the producers, Sonia Friedman and Scott Landis. “Instead, our model allowed us to present a challenging play like ‘La Bête’ commercially for six months, between the West End and Broadway; have it seen by over 128,000 theatergoers; and return a healthy portion of its capitalization to our investors.”
In other words, “La Bête” will end up losing money — as two-thirds of Broadway shows typically do. Mr. Ponturo, the “Lombardi” producer, said that for all his marketing plans, he could not say if the show would turn a profit.
“We’re drawing a broad audience that gives us encouragement,” he said, “but we still know it’ll be tough to fill seats through the winter.”
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