Was the 1974 revival of Candide a flop?

[Steel Pier Fan]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 5:07pm

Was it? Because it seems like it was the hottest ticket in town for a while but I read somewhere it was a flop.

[egghumor]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 5:16pm

The arena seating in the Broadway theatre and the style of staging the musical were rather revolutionary for Broadway at the time. Critics lauded it, most audiences enjoyed it, and so in that way it was definitely a hit. As to whether or not it recouped its investment, turned a profit, etc., I can't say.


Updated On: 6/5/11 at 05:16 PM

[madlibrarian]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 7:53pm

It did not recoup. Harold Prince, in his book, noted why: the production was required to hire more musicians than it used. At the end of the run, the deficit was roughly equal to the salaries that had been paid the "walkers"!

[South Fl Marc]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 9:32am

I saw this production when I was in my early teens. It still is one of my favorite productions I have ever seen. The entire show was just fun. I wish , when they revived the show in the the 90's, they had done this version and not the rethought Hal Prince show that was done for NYC Opera. The recent revival was dull, the one in the 70s was magical.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 9:34am

Are there any pictures of the theater during this production?

[morosco]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 10:54am

[egghumor]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 11:00am

Thanks, morosco! Those photos trigger lots of positive memories!

One of those productions that one had to SEE, not well represented on the cast recording, methinks.

[CockeyedOptimist2]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 11:41am

What lovely pictures! I love to see how the house is so 70s!

[SNAFU]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 4:50pm

Wasn't that set Eugene Lee's design?

[RippedMan]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 5:18pm

Seems like a weird theatre for that concept. The mezz is so HUGE, and the orchestra is rather small and the overhang is pretty severe. Doesn't seem like it would have the best sight lines.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 5:23pm

We were all sitting on stools and could swing around to see action that was taking place behind us. There were also free roasted peanuts served, if I recall correctly.

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 5:32pm

I was happy to see the rapturous reception it received from the crtics and certainly enjoyed it thorougly. BUT, Candide is a vocally demanding show and most of the cast wasn't up to the vocal challenges -- particularly the Cunegonde. I loved seeing it and loved the production, per se. But, from a purely vocal point of view, it didn't cut it, ergo the inadequate recording. It would be nice if someone had captured it on video -- I think that would be a much better representation and you could overlook the vocal shortcomings.

[sondhead]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 6:01pm

1. It was videotaped. It is in the Lincoln Center Archive.
2. The singing is certainly subpar, especially compared to the opera houses at which the piece has seemed to find more of a home these days, BUT I think the argument could be made that this was a choice made on purpose, for much the same reason the orchestra was dramatically reduced--by giving the material to people incapable of performing it, shall we say, operatically legit, you make the operatic nature of the score much more farcical. Much of the score was intended to be satire on opera anyways, so I don't think it's necessarily a wrong choice to make. That being said, it's certainly not for all people.

[Jon]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 7:47pm

Harold Prince originally envisioned SWEENEY TODD being presented in the same way - if Candide had run long enough, he would have just moved Sweeney into the same environmental set-up. But Candide didn't run long enough, and Sweeney took longer than expected to write.

Posted: 6/7/11 at 8:05pm

I thought Hal didn't see Sweeney at all working until he cameup with its massive concept... And it was Sondheim who saw it more as a production like this?

I do wish I could have seen it--I feel lucky to have seen the Caird/RNT revision in London which I think book wise is the best version of Candide, but...

[davelsn]

Posted: 12/4/11 at 9:55pm

You wouldn't recognize the place, except for maybe the ceiling. The decor was extremely rough and as I remember, there was no overhanging mezzanine. The stage was a circular runway with multiple trap doors and several main playing areas with audience in the middle and no proscenium. If you were sitting in the multiple front rows the actors were practically in your lap. It was definitely the most fun show I have ever seen but it had much too short a run. As a teenager, I didn't even realize the score and music were so difficult -though I do remember not being able to hum any of the tunes afterwards. No production I've seen since has come even close to being as entertaining.

[temms]

Posted: 12/5/11 at 2:14am

I wasn't there to see it, but from what I understand, they basically built a new stage floor on top of the orchestra, and the Mezz/Balcony became the new orchestra section with additional seats added around the side and basically over where the stage is. So the orchestra section wasn't used at all.

The theatre was setup that way for "Dude", which quickly closed, but "Candide" kept the basic configuration. This is a description from a review of "Dude":

"We walked around to the front entrance and were allowed into the theater, which was not the Broadway theater we had known. A new floor had been constructed, beginning where the balcony ended and stretching above the orchestra all the way to backstage. The upper balcony seats are now known as the "mountains", and the lower ones as the "foothills". At the center of the new floor, approximately where "two good seats down front" used to be, is an octagonal stage, about thirty feet across...

"There are seven rows of new seats ringing the stage; they are called the "valleys". There are also new seats on the part of the new floor that is above the old stage; they face back into the theater and are raked like bleachers; the lower rows are "trees" and the upper ones the "treetops"."

[ghostlight2]

Posted: 12/5/11 at 6:38am

"It did not recoup. Harold Prince, in his book, noted why: the production was required to hire more musicians than it used. At the end of the run, the deficit was roughly equal to the salaries that had been paid the "walkers"!"

It always amuses me when someone makes a statement like that and it's taken as gospel. EVEN if that were true (and I don't think it was), if the deficit was merely that of the walkers' pay, they were operating on a pretty slim margin to begin with. No question, the idea of walkers was a bad idea that has long since been discarded, but musicians don't get paid so much that a few of them one way or the other is going to make or break a show - and if it does, your problems are FAR bigger than that.

Thanks, as always, for the photos, morosco.

[South Fl Marc]

Posted: 12/5/11 at 8:08am

I saw this production when I was in my teens and it still ranks as one of the top theatrical performances I have ever seen.

It was just fun, from the first to the last note.
I remember it was performed without an intermission and the time just flew by.

The cast was amazing, especially Lewis J Stadlen as Voltaire/Pangloss and others. I have yet to see anyone do the roles as well.

Years later when it was revived by Harold Prince I went hoping that it was going to use this staging. Unfortunately he went with the version he did for City Opera. What a Huge mistake that was.

[WOSQ]

Posted: 12/5/11 at 4:12pm

Candide had a high breakeven compared to its potential gross. They had to make 70%+ of their total potential to break even for the week. The potential was greatly reduced because the seating capacity of the Broadway was also greatly reduced--to under 1000 seats. Forget discounts, we're talking full priced seats.

This Candide ran 1:45 without intermission and moved so quickly that you forgot about needing to stretch. I saw it 3 times including once at the initial production at BAM. Subsequent productions that I saw either at City Opera or the Gershwin felt bloated in comparison.

There was a coffee table book published of the Tony winning new book by Hugh Wheeler along with the lyrics by a whole team of writers with many fine photos of the production. It is worth at least looking at this book to get an idea of the production.

Check Abebooks.com to see if anyone is selling a copy. It probably won't be cheap.

[gvendo2005]

Posted: 12/5/11 at 5:49pm

My dream Candide takes the '74 environmental staging and gives it the RNT book and score, with full orchestrations.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 12/5/11 at 6:15pm

Actually I think that would be my ideal Candide as well.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/5/11 at 11:42pm

Wow. Memory Lane.

I saw this on a date; we sat in what was called the "mountains", right over the spot where Cunegonde sings "Glitter and Be Gay".

The mezz was open — the lines for the ship went all the way to the top of the balcony. I think the biggest problem was that by taking all the seats out and replacing them with the stools, they effectively cut the capacity in the orchestra down by half, easily.

But what a wonderfully demented show. I remember that the Bernstein purists of the day *hated* the smaller orchestrations, but I found them wonderful myself. Hey, what did I know?

[Copperfield2]

Posted: 12/5/11 at 11:58pm

This Candide was much more fun than the more recent Broadway revival.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/6/11 at 12:00am

If you can find a copy, the published vocal score of this version has eight pages of colour photos in the centre.