Never mind its recent box-office bump: “Beetlejuice” was never going to be the next “Phantom of the Opera.”
As The Post reported months ago, the show’s being evicted from the Winter Garden in June to make way for Hugh Jackman in “The Music Man” in the fall.
That shouldn’t have surprised anyone last spring, when “Beetlejuice” opened to negative reviews. Its weekly grosses were so low, the Shuberts exercised the stop clause.
The stop clause has been part of theater deals forever. If shows fall below a certain weekly gross, theater owners can evict them. It’s not something they do often, since it can cause bad blood. They prefer to let producers decide when it’s time to close a show. As I recall, the last time the Shuberts invoked a stop clause was in 2000, when they sent a failing revival of Arthur Miller’s “The Price” packing.
“Beetlejuice” fell below the stop clause in the spring and got its notice. But tourists who flooded New York in the summer and fall who couldn’t get “Hamilton” tickets made a beeline for “Beetlejuice,” a title they knew at a price they could afford. The grosses hit over $1 million a week.
“Beetlejuice” backers thought, “Why do we have to leave? We’re a hit!” They discussed their predicament in the press last week. The publicity has done them some good. The box office has since taken in nearly $2.5 million in the last week.
But the truth is, “Beetlejuice” was unlikely to recoup. It cost around $20 million and would have to run for several years at capacity to return that kind of money.
“The Music Man,” on the other hand, will open like gangbusters. Jackman’s in the show for a year, and tickets are already selling far above anything for “Beetlejuice.” The Shuberts stand to make more money in one year with Jackman and his premium-priced tickets than they would if “Beetlejuice” ran another two or three years.
I’m as impressed with the show’s resiliency as everyone else on Broadway. But let’s not pretend it was on its way to being a smash.
“Music Man” producer Scott Rudin did “Beetlejuice” a favor. He could have taken the Winter Garden for the critically acclaimed “The Lehman Trilogy” in the spring. Instead, he took it to the Nederlander so “Beetlejuice” could continue to make some money. The Nederlander has 300 fewer seats than the Winter Garden, so he’s leaving a nice chunk of change on the table.
All is not lost for “Beetlejuice.” I hear the Shuberts are trying to find another theater for it, though an available Broadway theater is as rare as an open table at Rao’s.
“The best-case scenario is they move to a smaller theater and cut $100,000 from the weekly running cost to make it more sustainable,” says a producer not affiliated with the show. “They could make it work.”
The best show of the fall was Monday’s memorial to Harold Prince, who died in July at 91. Directed by Susan Stroman, it was as classy as the man himself.
Stephen Sondheim said Prince cared about two things — his family and putting on a show. Sondheim was Prince’s best man. Just before the wedding, in his bride’s parents’ apartment, Prince got stage fright. He asked Sondheim to meet him in the lobby. He was excited and nervous — and carried a script for a new show. “I gently slipped it out of his hand and said, ‘Let me take care of this,’ ” Sondheim recalled. Prince was married 57 years, which Sondheim called “his longest run.”
Andrew Lloyd Webber said the best advice Prince gave him was, “You can’t listen to a musical if you can’t look at it,” meaning an ugly production stands in the way of everything else. Ann Morrison, Jim Walton and Lonny Price — the original leads in “Merrily We Roll Along” — performed “Old Friends.” And Jason Robert Brown led a chorus of performers who appeared in Prince shows in a stirring rendition of “Our Time.”
I looked at my friend Imogen Lloyd Webber, who knew Prince all her life. She kept it together until “Our Time” and then lost it. I wiped away a few tears myself.
“Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning” airs weekdays on WOR Radio 710.