Cats is an English musical, not a traditional Broadway musical, and this Cats is a very, very specialized production that was, never targeted to a mass audience as the original Cats was, so it was bound to have a limited appeal compared to the original Cats run.
That said, Broadway is having a very difficult time at the box office right now because too many of the shows appeal to specialized subset markets. The problem is what is being produced is just not appealing to a large enough audience to pay the production costs. Death of a Salesman appeals to all theatergoers, so does Giant, so does Hamilton, so does Just in Time, so does Wicked, so does Lion King.
Death Becomes Her appealed to a camp audience just as the film did - it was going to run out of an audience well before paying its production costs.. Jellicle Ball appeals to a very, very specialized niche audience. Queen of Versailles also had limited appeal -- a celebration of narcissism without a strong satirical comment on materialism. Too many shows have generic characters, or unpleasant characters, or superficial characters - not people we want to spend an evening with. The shows are production driven - sets, costumes, choreography - not character driven. Nothing wrong with that, but not lasting which means the box. office cannot pay off that initial investment unless it runs for 2 or 3 years.
Ironic that Salesman was written in 1948 and sells out in a larger theatre now than it ever did -- the characters, the story, the themes speak to a mainstream audience.
Oh Mary is such a clever style piece -- it plays like the old comedies of Broadway where great actors can sell a show -- ike an old Bert Lahr , or Rox Russell, or Beatrice Lillie show where an outrageous oversized star can create a wonderful evening of mayhem and merriment. We don't see many of those anymore.
Go ahead, shoot. But over the last there years how many 15-25 million dollar shows can go under before Broadway no longer becomes a good investment for producers or audiences?
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