Producer to Pull Plug on ‘Les Miz’ July 2; ‘Accomplice’ Run Extended to March 26

The biz at “Les Miz” is the sort of biz that would make most producers happy. So why has producer Cameron Mackintosh already determined he’s closing the show July 2 at the Century City Shubert?

“I said before the show opened,” Mackintosh explained from New York, “that I wouldn’t play the show to empty seats. I’d rather fill them for the next six months.”

Understandable if the numbers were dropping. But the box-office grosses are good. Last week’s take was $458,212 against a possible maximum of $550,000. Much of the time, Mackintosh acknowledged, the grosses have been around $500,000 a week. So what’s the problem? A couple of things.

“ ‘Cats’ ran for two years in Los Angeles and didn’t make any profit,” he pointed out (despite the news Wednesday that “Cats’ ” overall North American profits topped a whopping $44 million).

When a show’s expensive to run, as with “Cats” or “Les Miz” (which has a weekly net of just over $350,000), it’s easy to lose profits quickly once audiences start to dwindle. This is not a concern with “Les Miz,” about which he says quickly, “We’ll go out with a very sensible profit.” But fueling his desire to go out with a bang, not a whimper, is another factor: what he perceives as the fickleness of the Los Angeles public.

“After the first few months, it’s on to the next thing, the next sensation,” he says of the local audience. “I don’t know if it’s because of the movies, which build up (excitement) from one opening to the next, but I’d rather have a year of ‘Les Miz’ with good houses than give people the impression it’ll run forever.”

There have been other problems too. The physical one that has most troubled Mackintosh is the hard-to-sell mezzanine at the Shubert. A plan to build a wall that would have closed off the mezzanine’s last six rows proved too daunting after the fire department got into the act (“They kept finding reasons why we couldn’t do it”).

So Mackintosh gave it up.

His other disappointment has been the lack of interest from students in attending the show in those mezzanine seats at a special student ticket price of only $16.

“It’s had a very poor reception,” he said of the program, in spite of the fact that blocks of 200 seats, bookable in advance, have been set aside for that purpose nightly (except Fridays and Saturdays). “It’s a program that has been well-received everywhere else we’ve done it. We even had a special student critics’ night to try to promote it in the college papers and we’re going to give it another final advertising push, but, yes, I’m disappointed.”

So the July 2 closing date stands firm for now, even though the show won’t reopen in San Francisco, where it’s headed, much before early fall. This means the company will be on hold for several weeks, during which time, in a matter of ongoing controversy, the performers may or may not be paid.

The Southland, however, may not have seen the last of “Les Miz.” Mackintosh is considering bringing it to Orange County for 8 to 10 weeks after San Francisco. Where, when or even if remains unsettled, but “the audiences are (fragmenting),” said Mackintosh, who feels there may be a life for the show out there. “My other thinking on it is, I’ve begun work on the movie which will be out in 1992. I’ll want to have played all the major cities (with the stage version) by then.”

The Shuberts, meanwhile, are taking a grin-and-bear-it attitude at Mackintosh’s early pullout.

“He doesn’t want to play the show at less than very high grosses,” said the Shubert’s Bernard Jacobs from New York. “I thought he closed ‘Cats’ (in Century City) much earlier than he should have, but we must credit him with knowing what he’s doing. There’s not much more we can do.”

As for future shows that might come to the Shubert, “there are several,” Jacobs said, “but you know I don’t like to talk about them until they’re set. If ‘Jerome Robbins’ Broadway’ is a hit, and we expect it will be, it would be a candidate. But we don’t define these things. The public does.”

That could be a while. “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway” doesn’t even open on Broadway until Feb. 26.

“ACCOMPLICE”-MENT: A letter to subscribers is already in the mail and it carries good news: The highly praised “Accomplice,” the new Rupert Holmes mystery-thriller at the Pasadena Playhouse, has been extended four weeks, to March 26, and could be extended for another four.

“We’re basically sold out for the original run (through Feb. 26),” said artistic director Susan Dietz. “We have a huge demand for tickets we’re trying to meet. It’s a new piece and we want to give the author a chance to work on it.

“The subscribers have been very instrumental in the development process. They were also helpful in the shaping of ‘Mail.’ All the playwrights who work here comment on our audiences--how terrific they are, how literate and intelligent and willing to participate.”

To accommodate the extension, Dietz has moved Richard Harris’ “Stepping Out” to the summer (June 16-July 16, with the chance of extending through Labor Day).

“It should work very well in the summer,” she said “It’s a summer show and it gives it a breather.”

Tom Griffin’s “The Boys Next Door,” a co-production with the Cleveland Playhouse, remains in place, May 5 through June 4.

GETTING INTO THE ACT: The Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers is establishing its first official representation outside New York City right here in Los Angeles and the new local representatives will be Dorothy Lyman and Stephen Zuckerman.

They will be introduced by David Rosenak, the union’s executive secretary, at a meeting slated for Feb. 28, 7:30 p.m. at the Zephyr Theatre in Hollywood.

Other items on the agenda include unveiling the terms of a new low-cost associate membership in the union and a newly drafted letter of agreement for small professional theaters--read the 99-seat theaters. “It consists primarily of a set of guidelines” said spokesman Michael Koppy. “We’re not trying to upset the apple cart, but there are professional standards that should be attained. It’s a fill-in-the-blanks contract.”

“At the moment it is, but it hasn’t yet received its final approval from the society’s executive board,” cautioned Rosenak from New York. “However, we have always been flexible in our special agreements with other small professional theaters around the country, and taken into consideration what other artists and technicians are paid. You want to make your members available to work in that arena. But you want to be sure that your members are treated fairly.”