| TARZAN A LOSER ON BROADWAY
Disney's strategy of turning hit animated features into Broadway musicals has encountered its first setback. Thomas Schumacher, Disney's head of theatrical productions announced Friday that the company's ambitious stage version of its 1999 film Tarzan will shut down on July 8 -- "earlier than any of us had hoped" -- as a result of falling ticket sales. In an interview with the Associated Press, Schumacher said that after examining the show's advances, he concluded, "I am going to have a summer where I am going to be losing a substantial amount of money. ... And I don't artificially keep shows going." However, he noted that the show's Dutch production has been a big hit. "I would have loved for [the Broadway production] to have been as successful in New York as it now is in Holland," where it is playing in The Hague, Schumacher said.
'Phantom' Menace? Don't Believe Your Eyes
As aging-mass-murderer-seduces- teenage-ingenue tales go, "The Phantom of the Opera" is tough to beat. The saga of Erik and Christine has been the basis of a best-selling book, several movies and, in its Andrew Lloyd Webber stage incarnation, has grossed more than $3 billion in worldwide ticket sales and become the longest-running musical in Broadway history. (It's now ensconced at the Kennedy Center Opera House through Aug. 12.) If the story seems mythical, perhaps that is because the original French novel (Gaston Leroux, 1911) is a version of a French fairy tale ("Beauty and the Beast"). Archetypes tell us something about ourselves, and "Phantom" floats on its dark romantic gloss, an ache of unrequited love. The genius of the production is its intricate marriage of plot, score and stagecraft.
Theaters think inside the box
The artistic director of the Atlantic Theater Company is talking about playwrights. "It can be short-sighted to judge the worth of a play based on financial success, so there's a huge plus to producing plays in an intimate theater." That kind of cushion, allowing for experimentation and potential failure, is hardly the domain of Broadway, where new plays, particularly by Americans, have long been an endangered species. Of 35 Broadway openings this year, only four were new American plays, and two of those have already posted closing dates. That means major companies that want to retain an adventurous hand in the fostering of new work without financial over-exposure increasingly are relying on secondary spaces. Two major New York nonprofits with a history of producing on Broadway as well as off -- Atlantic, Manhattan Theater Club -- are operating such boutique spaces.
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