Costs Postpone ‘Jerome Robbins’ at Shubert; Punches Pulled for ‘Virginia Woolf’ Tickets

The announcement last week was unexpected but specific: “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway” will not--repeat, not --come to the Century City Shubert next April.

Look for it now in May.

May, 1991.

After it goes to Japan.

Whaaaaaaat? . . .

Never mind that the show (still going strong on Broadway) was scheduled and advertised for April. Never mind that it was offered to (and paid for by) Ahmanson subscribers as part of their 1989-90 season. Never mind that $2.5 million in advance sales will have to be refunded if a suitable replacement show can’t be found. Never mind that Gordon Davidson, in charge of the Ahmanson season, found out about the postponement at almost the same time as the rest of us.

So what happened?

“It all has to do with money,” said Emanuel Azenberg, one of the show’s producers. “It’s a show that costs a great deal. To replicate it as Jerry (Robbins) wants to do means rehearsing 62 people for 13 to 14 weeks. That would cost about $6.3 million. The idea of spending $6.3 million when you’ve only recovered $2 million of your original investment is playing with a little fire. There are actual laws in New York about going to your investors to mount a second company without having recovered at least 50% of the first money. If you don’t go to literal jail, you certainly go to moral jail.”

Pardon me, but didn’t producers know all this when they announced and advertised the show for April at the Shubert?

“We had anticipated production costs (for a second company) would be less,” Azenberg conceded. “The assumption we made was that we could build a show that could tour, that the show would rehearse fewer weeks now that it’s in place. We had hoped to take a few (cast) people out. But Jerry does not want the show that plays out here to be anything less than the one that’s on Broadway. That kind of show, with that kind of scenery and that number of people, cannot tour.

“It can play Japan and L.A.”

It appears the producers underestimated Robbins, known as one of Broadway’s most intractable and demanding director/choreographers. Another of those producers, Roger Berlind, had earlier told The Times that the Broadway version of “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway” was planned to cost $7 million, but came in at about $8.7 million. It is also one of the most expensive shows to run and, for that reason, one of the slowest to return its investment.

By postponing the Los Angeles date to May, 1991, and sending the show first to Japan (where its run is guaranteed against costs), producers are buying time and perhaps options. A good deal more of the original Broadway investment will have been recovered by then. And the hope persists of persuading Robbins to cut down on the company’s size for touring purposes.

“If you take six or eight people out of the cast,” Azenberg said, “make it 54 instead of 62, it would then reflect in two or three fewer stagehands, fewer dressers and so on down the line. You reduce the company by 20 or 25 people. Over a year’s period, that’s a saving of $3 million. If you can’t achieve that, you’re in trouble.

“There are alternative ways to do this (show),” he added, “that would not impact on it artistically. It should cost about $4.3 million and be reasonably altered to tour the country after L.A. And,” he added, “we are actively looking for a commercial sponsor.” (Suntory International Corp. is one of the show’s Broadway producers.)

Having recovered from the initial shock of the postponement, Gordon Davidson is not as unhappy about it as he was.

“Jerry very much wants to make it a production of as high a quality as the Broadway one,” he said, “and I think the producers kept hoping they would prevail on some cutbacks. In the long run, it may be a good thing (that they didn’t).

“In fact, I don’t think I have a hole in the season because the Doolittle (lineup) is intact. The Robbins piece came along as a fifth show. I thought it would please the Ahmanson audience, since it’s hard to do musicals at the Doolittle.”

Davidson is searching for a suitable replacement, nonetheless. Right now it stands at “a couple of musicals and two possible plays,” though he won’t say which. “People (with shows) have been calling,” he said.

If nothing suitable turns up, ticket holders may get a refund or apply the money to next year’s subscription. They’ll have the same options if Davidson comes up with a replacement they don’t particularly want to see.

Meanwhile, the Shubert remains dark. Bernard Jacobs and Gerald Schoenfeld of the Shubert Organization are on vacation and no replacement show has been announced.

MORE DOOLITTLE: When sales opened Sunday at 10 a.m. for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the Doolittle Theatre, no one anticipated a run on tickets. Least of all the Doolittle personnel. “Virginia Woolf” is not Bruce Springsteen or “The Phantom of the Opera.” But by 11 a.m., ticket-buyer Michael Nagel was punched out by an unidentified person who sped off by car before anyone could catch him.

The incident was the result of a war of words between people who, like Nagel, were there to buy tickets for themselves and another group there to buy tickets for brokers. (Of the 125 people in line before the box-office opened, according to Doolittle manager Veronica Claypool, about 75 were “clearly there to purchase seats for the ticket agencies.”)

The violence (Nagel needed 23 stitches after the assault) caught Doolittle management so off-guard that security personnel, scheduled to come in at noon, was not even around.

“We try to be careful,” Gordon Davidson said when queried about the incident. “But you can’t legislate about who stands in line.”

True. California, unlike New York, still has no laws on the books that make ticket-buying for brokers (read scalping) illegal. But this sort of violent behavior may well prompt some pronto. It’s time. Until then, armed guards may have to take up the slack.

So who’s afraid of “Virginia Woolf?” Don’t ask.

EXIT LINES: Raymond J. Barry’s “Once in Doubt,” a show that played at the Cast Theatre earlier this year and was a Times critic’s choice, will be staged at the Los Angeles Theatre Center beginning Nov. 11 with two of its original three cast members: author Barry and Kim O’Kelley. The third cast member will be Howard Schechter. This is the first show LATC has picked up from a smaller Los Angeles venue to put into its regular season. . . . Also at LATC: “The Marriage of Bette and Boo” has extended to Oct. 8.