TROUBLE? Right Here in River City?

We are back. And already in trouble, apparently. The new Broadway season is upon us and, according to a recent New York Times headline: “The Broadway Musical is in Trouble.” I mean, before we’ve even had a chance to fully ditch our sun goggles and refocus.

According to another recent Times headline, “Come from Away Will Be This Season’s Most Produced Show in the U.S.” This may help to explain why the Broadway musical appears to be in trouble. At least 23 regional theaters, the Times reports, are planning productions of Come from Away — a static, musically flaccid, syrupy manipulation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, first produced on Broadway in 2017. If this is indeed the taste of the nation for musical theater right now (as it appears), then the Broadway musical either has to emulate Come from Away taste (commercially), or it has to ignore Come from Away (please) and throw its financial fate to the winds of an increasingly tempestuous forecast.

Of course, Come from Away is not the biggest reason for the Broadway musical’s seeming “troubles.” Rocketing costs are (as ever), Broadway’s driving destructive force; though, let’s face it, no matter the bulging production price tag, today’s Broadway producers can (and do) inflate ticket prices to squeeze profit out of audience one-percenters for whom ticket sticker shock is a nonissue.

What about the rest of us, though, who love musical theater and work for a living (or may lately have been furloughed)? Sometimes I feel as if we are Broadway’s problem. Most producers don’t want to make musicals for us. There’s no money in it.

But I digress.

To cool my own jets, I ran the words: “Broadway In Trouble” through the New York Times’ search engine, as a query for comparison. The year 1984 popped up immediately, and a December headline: “Is Broadway in Trouble or in Clover?”

“Four of the current season’s shows have already closed,” the paper reported back then.

This season is the first in five years not to have generated a hit musical like Cats or La Cage aux Folles…. There are three steady sell-outs on Broadway - Cats, La Cage and Sunday in the Park With George… The real question,” the Times concluded in 1984, “is how such extremes can coexist in the same season. This season is not an isolated study in contrasts; rather, it follows a trend of fewer productions but greater grosses - of feast and famine simultaneously.”

Sound familiar?

“Broadway’s long-running juggernauts remain popular,” the Times (re)-wrote in its recent (re)-warning, “and many theatergoers seek them out over newer offerings. Wicked has benefited from the publicity generated by its film adaptation. Hamilton just welcomed back Leslie Odom, Jr., who won a Tony for originating the role of Aaron Burr, and is booming. A top ticket price of $1,200 at the start of his run is rising to $1,500 at the end, which appears to be a new high for Broadway. Disney’s The Lion King and Aladdin are still strong, and a return of the musical Mamma Mia! is packing in Abba fans.”

Same song, different titles.

“The costs of bringing song-and-dance spectacles to Broadway have skyrocketed in recent years,” concluded the Times (now, as then) but added, straight-faced, this howler: “while ticket prices for musicals have remained relatively flat.”

Excuse me? In a season with a $1,200 top ticket price…rising soon to $1,500? Uh, how do you spell “flat”?

Fact is, as the Times notes, “none of the 18 commercial musicals that opened on Broadway last season have made a profit yet.” Still, I’d like to point out that a few very good ones from that 18 are still running: Maybe Happy Ending, Hell’s Kitchen and Operation Mincemeat (along with some not so good but not so bad ones, like Death Becomes Her).

Originality, excellence, and restrained, non-skyrocketed production budgets are keeping Maybe Happy Ending and Operation Mincemeat open, while originality, excellence, and the Alicia Keys songbook are doing the same for the far more expensively produced Hell’s Kitchen.

The bottom line for producers? Do it excellently, (here’s hoping), keep it relatively, fiscally, small (we’ll soon see the forthcoming Two Strangers [Carry a Cake Across New York] and its cast of two), or rent a superstar’s songs (like the late, lamented Prince, and his looming Purple Rain musical).

As for the imminent (in previews) opus on conspicuous consumption itself: The Queen of Versailles, by Stephen Schwartz, with Kristin Chenowith? Your guess is as good as mine. For sure, it will be fun to find out.

But don’t tell me Broadway is in trouble. Not yet. Not again.

We’re just getting started.