The Pirate Queen, one of the most expensive musicals to be staged on Broadway, is to close next Sunday after eviscerating reviews and poor ticket sales, at a cost of millions to Riverdance producers John McColgan and Moya Doherty.
Despite a reported budget of $16 million and a declaration by Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny that it had moved him close to tears, the show based on the life of 16th-century Irish pirate Grace O'Malley was unable to recover from the roasting it received from critics when it opened just two months ago.
McColgan and Doherty said yesterday that despite the bruising it had received on Broadway, The Pirate Queen will set sail again - this time in Europe.
"We are proud of The Pirate Queen and the talented cast and creative team that has brought this epic musical to Broadway," they said.
"We are also pleased to report that there is international interest in Pirate Queen and plans for a European English-language production are under way and will be announced in the near future."
A spokesman for the producers declined yesterday to discuss the cost of the show or to say how much of the investment came from McColgan and Doherty themselves.
According to Variety, the musical had recouped less than $7 million in ticket sales by last week and business was so slow that almost half the seats in the 1,800-seat Hilton Theatre on 42nd Street were empty.
With a company of 42 and elaborate stage effects, the show's running costs were higher than those of most of its rivals and the challenge of filling Broadway's biggest theatre was formidable.
Less than two weeks after The Pirate Queen opened, Michael Riedel, theatre columnist for the New York Post, reported that the Hilton's management were already showing other producers around the theatre.
Written by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schoenberg - the team behind 1980s musicals Les Misérables and Miss Saigon, The Pirate Queen received an expensive overhaul following an initial run in Chicago.
But no amount of tinkering could prevent an avalanche of scorn from the critics when the show opened on Broadway in April.
"The Pirate Queen," wrote the Wall Street Journal, "is a gift that keeps on giving: It starts out dumb, then gets dumber and at no time does anything other than the preposterous ever take place on stage or in the orchestra pit.
"If it were somewhat shorter, it might actually be worth seeing, but at 2½ hours, I can't recommend it in good faith to anyone who isn't (a) a full-fledged hit-me-again masochist and/or (b) deaf."
For the New York Daily News, the show proved that "bigger is not always better" on Broadway but the most damning verdict came from New York Times critic Bill Brantley, who dismissed the show as a "loud and reckless" musical bustling with aimless activity.
"The operating theory behind The Pirate Queen would appear to be taken from an appropriately ocean-themed bit of zoology," Brantley wrote. "If, like a shark, it never stops moving, then it will stay alive. The optimism is misplaced."
