The Broadway musical is in trouble

With costs skyrocketing, none of the musicals that opened in New York last season have made a profit

- MICHAEL PAULSON

Musical theatre, long the bread-and-butter of Broadway, is struggling.

None of the 18 commercial musicals that opened on Broadway last season have made a profit yet. Some still could, but several have been spectacular flame-outs. The new musicals Tammy Faye, Boop! and Smash each cost at least US$20 million (638 million baht) to bring to the stage, and each was gone less than four months after opening. All three lost their entire investments.

Lavish revivals of much-loved classics are also fizzling. Last week, a revival of Cabaret, budgeted for up to $26 million and featuring a costly conversion of a Broadway theatre into a nightclub-like setting, threw in the towel at a total loss. A $19.5 million revival of Gypsy that starred Audra McDonald and earned strong reviews closed last month without recouping its investment. Even a buzzy production of Sunset Boulevard, which won this year's Tony for best musical revival, failed to make back the $15 million it cost to mount.

New musicals are particularly endangered. Since the coronavirus pandemic, 46 new musicals have opened on Broadway, costing about $800 million to bring to the stage, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Only three have become profitable so far. Strong reviews, word-of-mouth and in some cases Tonys have not been enough. And this fall's new musical offerings are sparse: There are just two, one of which has only two people in its cast.

"Broadway is not a business anymore," Andrew Lloyd Webber, the storied composer behind The Phantom Of The Opera, Cats, Evita and Sunset Boulevard, said in an interview. "The statistics are terrible. I am very worried. I look at the economics of this, and I just don't see how it can sustain."