Center to Invest $250,000 in ‘Anything Goes’ Tour

The Orange County Performing Arts Center will invest $250,000 in a touring production of the Tony Award-winning musical revival of “Anything Goes,” Center president Thomas R. Kendrick said Thursday.

The sum is the Center’s largest investment so far in an outside production, and it will entitle the Center to 10% of any profits the show produces during its tour, Kendrick said.

A previous attempt to restage the Cole Porter show, which won a 1988 Tony Award while playing at Lincoln Center in New York, was unsuccessful and canceled before the end of its scheduled run. But Kendrick said he is confident that the problems that plagued the production, which included a huge set that made it difficult to move the show from city to city, would not hamper this latest effort.

The show will preview in Spokane, Wash., in August and open in Costa Mesa on Sept. 12, Kendrick said. It is currently booked for 30 weeks in 32 locations.

“We are confident that we would recover (the Center’s) investment,” Kendrick noted.

But Kendrick added that profit is not the Center’s primary motive in putting the money into a touring show.

“The reason is to help make quality, worthwhile musical attractions, which are in very short supply, available to broader audiences,” he explained. But he conceded that the production would have gone on even without the Performing Arts Center’s investment.

In the Center’s previous investments in outside productions, Kendrick said, the Center made a slight profit on “Babes in Toyland” and “essentially broke even” on “Strike Up the Band.”

“We’re not here as commercial investors, taking gambles on musicals,” he said. “The intent is not so much to make money--not that we wouldn’t like to.”

The PACE Theatrical Group, which has a contract with the Center for providing musical bookings locally, and two individuals are also investing in the production, Kendrick said.