Broadway Journal

FOUNDERING ‘PARADISE SQUARE’ GHOSTED GROUP SALES CHIEF, LAWSUIT SAYS

May 15, 2022 by Philip Boroff

EXCLUSIVE: Paradise Square has had a bumpy road to Eden.

Nominated for 10 Tony Awards, the second-highest total of the season, it was Broadway’s worst-selling musical in the week ending on May 8, posting just $194,000 in ticket sales. Since its first preview on March 15 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, it hasn’t come close to its weekly breakeven — $599,000, per an estimate in its 2019 operating agreement. (Comparably sized musicals usually cost more to run.)

A new lawsuit against Paradise Square Broadway LP filed in New York Supreme Court, not far from where the Civil War-era musical is set, provides a window into the Garth Drabinsky production. It’s the Canadian producer’s first show on Broadway since he was convicted in 2009 in Ottawa, Ontario, of defrauding Livent Inc. shareholders of nearly half a billion dollars. Publicly-traded Livent, which Drabinsky co-founded, filed for bankruptcy protection in 1998.Continue Reading

TONY NOMINATIONS: WILL ‘SIX’ OR ‘MJ’ RAIN ON ‘STRANGE LOOP’S PARADE?

May 9, 2022 by Philip Boroff

Two musicals in the past half-century have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama before they were up for Tony Awards:  Rent in 1996 and Hamilton in 2016. Both went on to win the Tony for best musical.

While statistically insignificant, that’s encouraging for A Strange Loop, Michael R. Jackson’s idiosyncratic meditation about a young black gay man writing a musical, which won a Pulitzer in 2020.Continue Reading

LETTS OFFERS SAVAGE TAKE ON POLITICS IN ‘THE MINUTES’ : REVIEW

April 17, 2022 by Richard Dana

In The Minutes, Tracy Letts’ timely and unnerving dark comedy, Noah Reid (Schitt’s Creek) plays Mr. Peel, a wide-eyed, newly elected city councilman in the fictional small town of Big Cherry. Early in this week’s meeting, performed in real time at Studio 54, Peel’s eccentric colleagues mispronounce ‘piqued’ and ‘jejune’ and squabble over the difference between “semantics” and “nomenclature,” and what constitutes new vs. old business. Continue Reading

‘MUSIC MAN,’ ‘PLAZA SUITE’ SHINE IN BROADWAY GROSSES REVIVAL

March 22, 2022 by Philip Boroff

For the first time in two years, the Broadway League publicly reported grosses for each show. Although the industry and the world have changed in the interim, one thing hasn’t: stars sell tickets.Continue Reading

BROADWAY NONPROFIT COFFERS SWELLED DURING SHUTDOWN (EXCLUSIVE)

March 16, 2022 by Philip Boroff

What started as an existential crisis for Broadway’s nonprofit producers turned into a windfall.

Thanks to a resurgent but fickle stock market, insurance payouts, cost-cutting and emergency grants from the federal government and foundations in response to Covid-19, Lincoln Center Theater and Roundabout Theatre Co. emerged from the 18-month industry shutdown wealthier than when they entered it.Continue Reading

JACKSON ESTATE WILL BE THERE FOR OUTSIZED ‘MJ’ PROFITS (EXCLUSIVE)

February 16, 2022 by Philip Boroff

If MJ  The Musical becomes a box office sensation, Paris Jackson, Bigi Jackson, Prince Jackson and the executors of their father’s estate stand to enjoy a bonanza.

Typically, half of a Broadway show’s adjusted net profit is shared among the lead producers. The other half goes to investors, who also qualify for some lead producer profits by raising or investing large sums. On MJ,  however, “the entire 50% share of Adjusted Net Profits [due the lead producers] will be paid to the Estate,” according to an investor operating agreement obtained by Broadway Journal.Continue Reading

PANDEMIC PUMMELS AMBASSADOR THEATRE GROUP (EXCLUSIVE)

January 28, 2022 by Philip Boroff

The self-described “world’s No. 1 live theater company” has taken a drubbing.

The parent company of U.K.-based Ambassador Theatre Group reported a pretax loss of $202 million for the 12 months ended in March 2021. The holding company attributed the results to Covid-19, which decimated rental income when its theaters shuttered in March 2020.Continue Reading

WITH SONDHEIM’S DEATH, ‘COMPANY’ HAS LINK TO ‘RENT’

November 27, 2021 by Philip Boroff

Stephen Sondheim’s death on Friday morning — an unexpected loss to the people in his life and to musical theater — attaches a new significance to the third Broadway revival of 1970’s Company. The musical, which marked the beginning of Sondheim’s decade-long collaboration with director Hal Prince, is now the last production that Broadway’s most revered composer-lyricist of the past 50 years directly worked on.Continue Reading

UZO ADUBA & SANDWICHES STAR IN LYNN NOTTAGE KITCHEN COMEDY: REVIEW

November 23, 2021 by Richard Dana

Uzo Aduba, of In Treatment and Orange Is the New Black, plays the hilariously tyrannical proprietor of her self-named truck-stop diner in Clyde’s. She lords it over her crew of short-order cooks trying to reclaim their lives — and create the perfect sandwich — in Lynn Nottage’s hopeful comedy at the Helen Hayes Theater. Continue Reading

‘HAMILTON’ PRODUCER RETURNS TO ROOTS WITH ‘BLACK NO MORE’ AT THE NEW GROUP

November 19, 2021 by Philip Boroff

EXCLUSIVE: Seven years after Hamilton began previews at the Public Theater and gave the business of Broadway and touring a shot in the arm, its lead producer, Jeffrey Seller, is following a similar playbook. He’s underwriting The New Group‘s world premiere of Black No More.Continue Reading

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