The Pirate Queen, the most expensive show ever staged on Broadway, is the biggest gamble in the career of Riverdanceproducers Moya Doherty and John McColgan. But yesterday's scathing reviews suggest that this one may not pay off, writes Marion McKeone
How do you make a small fortune on Broadway? You start off with a big one. Like all jokes, there's a grim kernel of truth at the core of this old showbiz gag. With costs estimated at $27 million (€20 million), The Pirate Queen, Moya Doherty and John McColgan's lavish musical, has already broken one record: it's the most expensive show ever staged on Broadway.
On Thursday evening, 45 minutes before the curtain rises on the biggest gamble of their careers, The Pirate Queen's producers arrive at the Hilton Theatre on 42nd Street. As they pose alongside their two sons for photographers and greet early arrivals, Doherty appears calm, almost serene. "We've done our best. We really feel it's come together here in New York and we're very happy. It took time but we've finally got the show we dreamed of," she says.
And the critics? "I'm not even thinking about them," she replies.
When you've put a chunk of your sizeable fortune on the line to realise a dream that has been five years in the making, it's useful to have nerves of steel. And Doherty and McColgan are by no means averse to risk. Back when Riverdancewas a seven-minute glimmer in Doherty's eye, they mortgaged their home to get their groundbreaking dance show on the road. Twelve years on, it may be the punchline of many a joke about Irish culture but Doherty and McColgan are still laughing all the way to the bank.
The Riverdancesuccess statistics fairly trip off the producer's tongues: 20 million people in 30 different countries have forked out more than a billion dollars to see the Riverdancers strut their stuff.
So when Doherty and McColgan announced they were teaming up with Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, the creative duo behind such massive Broadway hits as Les Misérablesand Miss Saigon, the Broadway buzz was palpable. It was noted that the producers had quietly adopted a "money no object" approach. The Pirate Queen, it became known, was a labour of love for Doherty and McColgan. Given that they had just forked out in the region of $25 million (€18.6 million) for a holiday home in Martha's Vineyard, rolling $20 million (€15 million) on a Broadway musical that could run and run and run didn't seem like such a bad idea.
The Broadway hype arrived long before The Pirate Queen; word spread that the producers were so confident that it would join the ranks of Broadway blockbusters such as Les Misérablesand The Phantom of the Opera, they tried to buy the Hilton Theatre, where it was being staged.
Micah Hollingsworth, a spokesman for Live Nation, the Clear Channel subsidiary that manages its Broadway interests, confirmed that some interest had been expressed by Doherty and McColgan in acquiring the Hilton Theatre before Live Nation decided against selling. Had they done so, they would have paid "somewhere north of $25 million", he said.
If the show was to go on, and on, and on, it would have proven a sound investment - Broadway rents don't come cheap; upwards of $100,000 (€74,500) a week base rent, and add-on box-office percentages and other expenses can push staging costs towards the $200,000 mark.
From the outset, Riverdance's track record generated an enormous amount of goodwill towards the project. Principle Management and Denis O'Brien were among the investors who immediately signed up, and other investors who had profited handsomely from the flutter on Riverdancefollowed. Some $17 million (€12.7 million) was raised, the bulk of it reportedly by Doherty and McColgan.
But then came the Chicago try-out and a lacklustre response from critics and audiences suggested the show was in need of a major restructuring. While the costumes and set were widely praised, poor plotting and underdeveloped characters were blamed for a less than engaging show.
With four months to the scheduled Broadway opening, Doherty and McColgan went back to the investors seeking another $10 million (€7.5 million). But this time around, there was less appetite for a second bite. Most of the revamp money - sources suggest up to 80 per cent - came from Doherty and McColgan's coffers. Veteran stage doctor Richard Maltby jnr was brought in to help upgrade the book, music and lyrics, while Graciela Daniele was brought on board to work alongside director Frank Galati.
"We went back to the drawing board with a list of things that needed fixing. We went through it, inch by inch and row by row, and we made a lot of changes," McColgan says, moments before the curtain is to go up on Thursday night. "We're very proud of it now."
In between Chicago and New York, a documentary about the show had been made and broadcast on New York public television. Doherty and McColgan had also devised a "castcom", a backstage blog-cum-reality show that showed snatches of interviews with the stars and the producers as well as day-by-day glimpses of a major Broadway show in the making. An innovative idea, it helped generate buzz and sell advance tickets. But the show is the thing, and now it's time to unveil The Pirate Queen, version two.
As the 1,800-seater theatre starts to fill up, you can sense the audience holding its breath. Many of those present saw the show during its trial run in Chicago last November, and expressed concerns as to whether the spectacle could be salvaged.
By the time the interval arrives, the atmosphere has lightened to one of relief. "It's a different show," John Fitzpatrick, CEO of the Fitzpatrick Hotel Group, says.
A broadly grinning Denis O'Brien pronounces himself "not too worried" about the safety of his investment. As the curtain comes down on a standing ovation, spirits are high and first-night nerves quickly morph into post-show euphoria. Cast members and guests shout congratulations and greetings over the velvet popping sounds of champagne corks before heading to Cipriani for a lavish dinner.
But the festive mood is wiped out by a slew of scathing reviews, and by yesterday morning, questions were being raised about the show's viability. While the Chicago notices suggested it needed some major doctoring to survive, they agreed its prognosis was good. The Broadway critics have pronounced it dead on arrival.
Between them, the New York Times, New York Post, Variety, Associated Press and USA Today all but eviscerated the production. Ben Brantley, the New York Times theatre critic, suggests that "the operating theory behind The Pirate Queenwould appear to be taken from an appropriately ocean-themed bit of zoology: if, like a shark, it never stops moving, then it will stay alive. The optimism is misplaced".
USA Today's Elysa Gardner awards it one star out of four, noting that "the best thing that can be said about it is that it makes their [Alan Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg's] previous ones seem like models of grace".
The Associated Press dismisses it as "a stilted history pageant that is long on looks but woefully short on emotional engagement", while Variety's David Rooney concludes that "the sad realisation of watching The Pirate Queenis not that it's especially bad, but that despite its dense action and wealth of conflict (both of the heart and the sword), it's dull".
There is no more lethal four-letter word in the Broadway critic's lexicon. The so-called Butchers of Broadway have carved up The Pirate Queenmore brutally than any seafaring cut-throat. One of their guests says Doherty and McColgan appeared "stunned" by the reviews.
A quick glance up 42nd Street provides a heartening reminder of the rewards that can be reaped on Broadway, sniffy reviews notwithstanding; at the Majestic Theatre, The Phantom of the Operahas just celebrated its 8,000th performance on Broadway. More than 11 million people have seen the show, generating a box office gross of $654 million (€487 million). Worldwide the Phantompay-off stretches to $3.2 billion (€2.4 billion). And a few blocks away, the much panned Wickedis currently Broadway's biggest earner, with box office receipts running at around $1.6 million (€1.2 million) a week.
Figures released by the League of American Theatres and Producers show that almost 12 million people saw a Broadway show during 2006, generating gross box office receipts of $906 million (€675 million). Broadway is all about big bucks - but the 90 per cent rule applies to New York shows as much as it does to New York restaurants: nine out of 10 Broadway shows lose money.
The dismal notices may not just sound the death knell of The Pirate Queen; they may represent the obituary of the epic Broadway musical. The reviews suggest that the era of the power poperetta, the blockbuster Broadway musical, may be well and truly over. According to Brantley, "the big-sound, big-cast show pioneered by Messrs Boublil and Schönberg is now as much a throwback to the 1980s as big hair and big shoulders".
For almost a decade the Broadway musical has been in a state of flux, lurching from big-noise, big-cast productions, historical epics and Disney theme musicals to musical satires that send up Broadway's appetite for bombast and the jukebox musical.
Given the decline of the Broadway musical and the surge in visitors, the climate is just right for a musical with top-notch production values and an original book. But the formula is infuriatingly elusive.
Broadway's love affair with the jukebox musical phenomenon has had all the durability of a showbiz tryst - in the past, seemingly foolproof shows featuring some of music's greatest icons (John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley among them) have crashed and burned spectacularly, with accumulated losses in the region of $40 million (€30 million). Yet Jersey Boys, a straight-up "biomusical" about the rise and fall of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, is one of the most critically and commercially successful musicals on Broadway.
And an original book and score is no guarantee of success. Lestat, Elton John's $12 million extravaganza based on the novels of Anne Rice, closed after just 34 days following a drubbing by the so-called Butchers of Broadway.
The question for Doherty and McColgan is whether The Pirate Queencan survive, whether a musical based on an ancient Irish myth can strike a universal chord. On the plus side, a tale of two women may appeal to women, who buy more than two-thirds of Broadway tickets. Musicals tend to play by more variable rules; a mauling by Ben Brantley usually spells sudden death for a play. But, largely because of the curious demographics that rule Broadway, if word of mouth is good enough, a musical can shake off even the most eviscerating of reviews.
Research shows that only one-fifth of Broadway's 12 million visitors are New Yorkers, a third are international tourists, and the remainder are the out-of-towners: middle-income American families for whom a Broadway spectacular is an essential part of a trip to the Big Apple. New Yorkers tend to be the most discerning, and the most influenced by reviews; they also tend to opt for works by established playwrights. Out-of-towners are the Broadway musical's bread and butter.
Jordan Thaler, a director of New York Public Theatre, says that where word of mouth is positive, entertainment seekers tend to ignore the New York-based critics. "Typically, out-of-towners go to Broadway in search of a spectacle, an experience rather than a critically acclaimed production," he says. "Catching a show is an expensive business for a family of four, and they want to see their money onstage. They want dazzling pyrotechnics, they want Hollywood style special effects. But they want some emotional bang for their bucks."
Whatever the critics think, The Pirate Queenis safe for the time being. Some canny marketing ensured advance sales of $7 million (€5.2 million) for the Broadway production, enough to boast full houses for at least a month. To keep afloat, a Broadway musical needs to be pulling in at least $1 million (€750,000) a week in box office receipts. For The Pirate Queento recoup its investment, Broadway veterans estimate that it needs to play to full houses for three to four years.
It's a tall order, especially in light of this week's reviews.
The critics say:
'A plodding harlequin historical romance.' - Variety
'There's not a balland or a choral number that doesn't sound like a garbled echo of a more stirring tune from Les Mis.' - New York Times
'The cast deserves better, as do the tourists and the casual fans whom The Pirate Queenaims to seduce.' - USA Today