“Watch everyone else to soon start following suit,” I wrote here (October 6) when I noted that Monty Python’s Spamalot had hiked its top price to $110; and true to form, that’s what’s indeed has now happened with two of Broadway’s other best-performing shows, Wicked and Mamma Mia! “Historically,” the New York Times notes, “price escalation on Broadway begins with the strongest shows and then spreads.”
So, of course, do the explanations, with Jed Bernstein – the soon-to-depart president of the League of American Theaters and Producers (the Broadway equivalent to SOLT) – pointing out that whereas a film, once made, costs relatively little to show again and again, Broadway’s costs continue, even after recoupment of the capitalization: “With theatre, every time you do a performance, you incur more costs.”
And if that’s not reason enough, why not blame the punters themselves for pushing the costs up? “Viewers expect a level of sophistication in their entertainment that didn’t exist 30 or 40 years ago.” And in any case, why are they complaining? It’s a bargain! The average ticket price is slightly above $60, he points out, and says, “When you compare that to other competitive activities like sports and concerts and dining out, Broadway is actually very reasonably priced.”
But in fact a large chunk of the loose change that’s involved in putting on a show is spent in merely attracting customers to spend their money there in the first place. In a New York Times feature on the marketing push to draw Hispanic-American audiences – 12.5% of the US population, but only 4.4% of Broadway’s theatregoing public – to a new show called Latinologues noted that “the total capitalization for the show is $1.2million, and the marketing budget is about $500,000” – in other words, almost half!
Perhaps it’s time for Broadway to stop trying quite so hard to inflate the profits of media groups, lower the ticket prices and let the shows speak for themselves. One of the savviest of all British theatre producers, Michael Codron, famously eschews advertising, believing that a good show will find an audience. And conversely, no matter how much you promote a bad show, audiences aren’t so easily fooled. Right now, Joseph Brooks – whose self-penned, produced and directed show In My Life opened to disastrous reviews last week – is throwing good money after bad by committing some $2m more to promote it, trumpeting quotes like “One of the weirdest productions to reach Broadway in years” from the New York Times to do so in what must surely be one of the weirdest of all quotes campaigns! But he says, “Every single night, I’ve seen audiences loving the show. We are going to continue, and we’re going to have lots of ads that hopefully will reach the same crowds which have been cheering for us every night.”
When was Michael Codron's last hit musical?
If Broadway is "reasonably priced", then the pope isn't catholic!