On Broadway : Despite Problems, Great White Way Is in a Revival

Everybody loves a good comeback story, and nowhere more than on Broadway.

From Jordan Marsh, the down-and-out director in “42nd Street,” to Cassie, the aging hoofer in “A Chorus Line,” the cherished and enduring myth of drive and talent winning out against all odds is one of Broadway’s longest-running themes.

Now there are signs that the Great White Way--down on its luck for much of the past decade, with marquees dark and critics disdainful--may be starring in its own comeback.

Consider:

* More theaters are lighting up. Twenty-two new shows are slated to open in the three months before the April 29 Tony Award nomination deadline, bringing to 38 the total number of new productions in the 1991-92 season. That’s up from last year’s bottom-scraping tally of 28, and the highest count in five years.

* Audiences are coming back. After lagging behind last year for most of the season, Broadway theaters sold 27% more tickets in the week that ended March 15 versus a year ago, according to Weekly Variety, the entertainment trade publication.

* The take at the box office is soaring. Total revenues jumped 40% from a year ago in the week ended March 15, as the average ticket price climbed past $37 a seat.

* Investors are pouring in. Paramount owns a piece of “Grand Hotel,” Polygram is an investor in “Jelly’s Last Jam” and Japan Satellite Broadcasting has stakes in “The Most Happy Fella” and “The Will Rogers Follies.”

And word on the street is that the Walt Disney Co. wants to participate in the investment spree, as more media companies recognize the possibilities of marketing Broadway-sourced entertainment through other channels.

But rather than spurring new optimism about Broadway’s economic and creative potential, the uptick in activity is being greeted as warily as an agent brandishing an 8-by-10 glossy of his latest “discovery.”

According to some of Broadway’s savviest voices, the apparent revival is not a real comeback story, but rather an accident of timing based--among other things--on the sudden availability of stars who can’t get their price from Hollywood. Many believe the spring bloom will wilt in summer’s heat as the plethora of new shows compete for a finite number of theatergoers.

“The more relevant question isn’t how many shows are opening this spring, but how many will be left in September?” said veteran producer Emanuel Azenberg.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the long-term trend is still down,” added George A. Wachtel, director of research for the League of American Theatres and Producers Inc., an industry trade association.

Indeed, conversations with theater people quickly deteriorate into finger-pointing over who’s to blame for the industry’s longstanding woes.

In many respects, the discussion parallels the debate in New York over the plight of city government, the construction industry and the tabloid press. All are institutions ruled by entrenched economic interests--labor, management, real estate, or some combination of the three--at what often seems to be the expense of the common good.

From a producer’s viewpoint, it looks like this: “The economics of our business remain treacherous: featherbedding unions, outrageous advertising costs and managements that haven’t made it into the 20th Century,” Azenberg says.

To a union leader, the producers are to blame: “It’s the trend toward ever more lavish productions with fancy costumes and sets and theater renovations that is driving up costs,” says John Glasel, head of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians.

And to the theater owner, the fault lies with city government: “What does the government do for sports? They build arenas and give them tax abatements. What does government do for us? They (designate as a) landmark every one of our facilities,” said Gerald Schoenfeld, chairman of the Shubert Organization, Broadway’s largest theater owner and one of its dominant production companies.

Who pays the price for such bickering? Above all, the consumer, who is being asked to shell out $65 a ticket for musicals. Also harmed is the city of New York, which stands on the sidelines as one of its most distinctive industries--and its biggest generator of tourism--fades.

And there is an artistic cost, critics of the system say, as Broadway’s Establishment--the alliance of theater owners, old-line producers and 18 unions--ignores fundamental problems that have stifled creativity.

“There is so much squabbling, so many entrenched positions, that we are in danger of frittering away the essential positive experience that theater has to offer,” says Jack Goldstein, a consultant to Actors Equity and the director of Save The Theatres, a nonprofit organization.

“We need to recapture the innate knowledge that theater is not a luxury, but an extremely vital part of the quality of life,” Goldstein says. “We cannot create a cold climate of disregard in New York that discourages new talent--whether it be acting, playwrighting or entrepreneurial.”

Amid the squabbling, all parties are watching the spring season with fingers crossed. The big stars are generating some excitement, but they are no guarantee of commercial--let alone artistic--success.

“Private Lives,” the Noel Coward play starring Joan Collins, closed last Sunday after ticket sales filled barely 40% of available seats. On the other hand, “Death and the Maiden,” featuring Gene Hackman, Glenn Close and Richard Dreyfuss, was packing in audiences even during previews.

And shows are being mounted that attempt to combat some of Broadway’s cost problems. The singers in “The Most Happy Fella,” the critically acclaimed revival of the Frank Loesser musical, are accompanied by two pianos. When the show opened in the 1950s, it featured a 35-piece orchestra.

But stars and revivals and glitzy spectaculars such as “Miss Saigon” should not be what Broadway is all about, industry critics say.

“This spring is all about stars--it’s not about new plays,” laments Gilbert Parker, a vice president at the William Morris Agency who represents leading American playwrights and directors.

Even audiences come in for criticism.

“This society is becoming progressively less literate,” said Rocco Landesman, president of Jujamcyn Theaters, widely considered the most artistically bold and savvy of the theater owners. “Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and that has ominous repercussions for our business.”

What’s needed, critics of Broadway’s status quo say, are fundamental changes in the theater business. Without a revolution, they say, Broadway--which already has ceded artistic leadership to Off-Broadway and the nonprofit theaters--may price itself out of the ever-more competitive entertainment market entirely.

“The trouble is that the ills are pervasive,” said Robert Buckley, managing director of Circle in the Square Theatre, the oldest nonprofit theater on Broadway. “It’s not just the theater owners. It’s not just the unions. It’s not just the lack of knowledgeable and educated producers, or the difficulty of raising capital. It’s all of it, and they feed upon each other.”

Broadway’s unions, on the one hand, are accused of enforcing archaic work rules.

“Right now, I’m in the middle of discussions with the stage hands on whether it takes one person or two to pull a curtain,” producer Roger Alan Gindi said.

Union leaders staunchly deny the charge of featherbedding, insisting that the work rules are needed to ensure worker safety and the artistic integrity of plays.

On the other hand, the Big Three theater-owning groups--the Shubert, Nederlander and Jujamcyn organizations--are accused of stifling creativity and trying to develop their real estate at the cost of Broadway’s heritage.

In December, for example, the Nederlander Organization sold the 1,600-seat Mark Hellinger Theater, once lit with “My Fair Lady,” to an evangelical church for a reported $17 million.

“Shameful, absolutely shameful,” says Goldstein of Save The Theatres. “This is not the act of theater people.”

The Nederlanders insist that selling the theater was an economic necessity, given New York City’s refusal to grant tax abatements to dark houses.

Producers protest, too, that the owners are too cozy with the unions, recklessly accepting costly contract settlements--and raising ticket prices to pay for them--to avoid strikes that would cost the theater owners more than anyone.

“We keep covering our flaws by raising prices,” Azenberg says. “We as a community have got to say, ‘This is nuts.’ The problem lies in the Establishment and the terror of real change.”

“We may have to take a strike,” added producer Roger Berlind. The last strike on Broadway was in 1975, when a musicians walkout shut down nine musicals for 25 days.

Schoenfeld, an attorney who is the chief management representative in Broadway labor negotiations, declines to shoulder the responsibility for the theater industry’s woes.

“The idea that the theater owner is in some way the villain in this scenario is absurd,” the Shubert chief says. Negotiations with Broadway unions are “tenaciously conducted,” he insists. Higher ticket prices are the theater owners’ only means “to accommodate increased costs.”

To be sure, there has been some piecemeal tinkering with Broadway’s economics. But critics say that the moves so far have been about as effective as applying a Band-Aid to a gaping wound.

The Broadway Alliance, a collaborative experiment in presenting quality theater with top ticket prices of $24, has yet to produce a hit. Some suggest that Broadway might do well to emulate the airline industry--which gives deep discounts for advance purchases--in order to build up the large advance ticket sales needed to keep plays alive.

One hopeful sign on the pricing front, say producers, is that the TKTS booth in Times Square, which used to sell unsold tickets for same-day performances at a 50% discount, recently added a 25%-off pricing tier for more popular shows.

Another hopeful sign is the increasing involvement of Hollywood and foreign investors, who are bringing with them new ways of doing business.

By selling network, cable, pay-per-view and other rights, analysts say, it will be possible for producers with properly financed shows to recoup their investments even before opening night.

Still, even Broadway’s biggest boosters say they fear for the future.

Surveying the economic future, Wachtel of the League of American Theatres and Producers adds: “We may not be here in 20 years.”

And Save The Theatres director Goldstein fears for Broadway’s creative life.

“Historically, the fuel that kept Broadway lit was the independent producer, the person who read a play and fought for it and raised the capital for it and got it on stage. There was a time when we had 30 or more such energies at work,” he says.

“As they aged and fell away, the business devolved into the control of a very few, and it was not in their interest to encourage competition. . . . We are at the crucial stage of having to face the fact that provisions have not been made for perpetuating the creative life of Broadway.”

Broadway Melody of 1992

Broadway ticket sales peaked at 11 million in the 1980-’81 season. But attendance waned in recent years as average ticket prices soared, and--as production costs rose--the number of new productions declined. More theaters will be lit up this season, however, as investment capital begins flowing back to the Great White Way.

Attendance has been mired in a slump . . .as ticket prices have skyrocketed . . .and fewer shows have been produced.

Source: League of American Theatres and Producers