The Show That Didn't Have A Prayer (Or A Hope In Hell)

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 5/10/12 at 2:12am

Why ‘Faith’ Never Had a Prayer
By Patrick Healey

Broadway has always been a gambler’s business, and the biggest crapshoot of the season was the new musical “Leap of Faith,” whose producers hurried it into New York this spring rather than lose a prized theater that had suddenly become available. This week the bet soured, as the producers announced a closing date of Sunday, with losses exceeding $14 million, making “Leap of Faith” the biggest flop of the season as well as the latest case study in how shows fail.

The musical, about a phony evangelist who experiences a spiritual conversion during his latest con, struggled from its first preview performance, on April 3, with the creative team meeting daily to concoct changes to overcome some toxic word of mouth. “Leap of Faith” officially opened on April 26 to reviews so bad that many thought it would swiftly close. But the next week something extraordinary and unexpected happened: it was one of four shows nominated for the Tony Award for best musical, theater’s highest award.

Rarely does a production close before the Tony Awards (June 10 this year) when it has been nominated for best musical. But “Leap” was bleeding money because of horrid ticket sales, losing about $275,000 last week. Bookings of large groups of theatergoers, a backbone during the early weeks of a show, were modest, and the marketing team’s overtures to religious people, urging them to embrace the subject matter, did not take hold. The producers made the call: “Leap” would shutter well before all 851 Tony voters could see it.

Why did “Leap” fall short? The easiest answer is that it wasn’t very good, or so many critics said, and apparently preview audiences agreed in sufficient numbers that they didn’t urge friends to buy tickets. Roughly 75 percent of Broadway shows close at a loss. Only a handful of poorly reviewed productions emerge as critic-proof — “The Addams Family” in 2010 — but they usually have a major star (like Nathan Lane as Gomez Addams) who can be counted on to sell tickets. Shows can also persevere when based on popular brands, like the Abba music of “Mamma Mia!” and the Four Seasons tunes of “Jersey Boys,” or on beloved movies like this season’s “Ghost the Musical,” whose ticket sales are far better than its mostly awful reviews.

“Leap” had respectable assets, but not a priceless jewel of the type that commercial Broadway covets these days, like a Nathan Lane. The show starred Raúl Esparza, a four-time Tony nominated actor but not a box-office powerhouse, and was based on a modestly known movie from 1992 — a lifetime ago by current standards. The music was by the Oscar winner Alan Menken, though many critics concluded the score was not one of his best.

“Those are all good ingredients, but they didn’t add up enough to draw big numbers of people like the brand-name shows like ‘Ghost’ or the new revival of ‘Evita’ that has Ricky Martin to help move tickets,” said Stephanie Lee, the president of Group Sales Box Office, a major Broadway ticketing agency.

Whether the “Leap of Faith” producers made a fatal move in opening the show on Broadway this spring, rather than this fall as originally planned, is harder to assess. The lead producers are Tony-winning veterans of the show development process, with musical hits like “Hairspray” and “The Producers” to their credit. But they faced a curve ball this winter when their intended Broadway theater, the St. James, became available in February instead of late summer as they expected. (The reason was the quick failure of the musical revival “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.”)

The “Leap” producing team faced a choice: Move up their production schedule to the spring and lock in the St. James, a nicely located and well-sized house, or stick to their fall 2012 plans and risk the owners of the St. James bumping it in favor of another show. Thomas Viertel, one of the show’s lead producers, said in an interview that the owners of the St. James, Jujamcyn Theaters, did not give the producers an ultimatum. Rather, it went without saying.

Mr. Viertel, for one, was skeptical that opening early hurt “Leap of Faith,” saying more time would not necessarily have helped. The musical had already been overhauled after a poorly received tryout run in Los Angeles in 2010, and the producers had not planned to hold another developmental workshop to make further changes before the intended opening on Broadway in the fall.

“We thought the show was already in pretty good shape, and while we had to move very fast to build the sets and get ready for Broadway, it seemed doable,” Mr. Viertel said. “Yes, we did a lot of work on the show during previews, trimming back songs and other tweaks. But that’s the usual work in previews. The reality is, you don’t have time to change 50 percent of a show once you’ve started previews. And if we’d thought we’d be needing to change 50 percent of the show, we wouldn’t have come to Broadway in the first place.”

Some producers, including Mr. Viertel, have another theory about why “Leap” failed. “It may be hard to intrigue a Broadway musical-theater audience with a show that undertakes a semi-serious discussion of faith,” he said, before adding that even he wasn’t sure if that view held up. One of the show’s marketing consultants, Tom Allen, who specializes in outreach to religious groups, challenged the theory by pointing to musicals like “Memphis” and “Sister Act” that are “faith oriented” and have been running for a year or more.

The unexpected news about the best-musical Tony nomination complicated life for the “Leap” producers. Some began seeking more than $1 million to keep the show running through the Tonys ceremony. Mr. Viertel said nowhere near that amount was secured, and he was loath to take people’s money without box-office projections that offered hope. He also said the producers had not decided whether to stage a number for the CBS telecast of the Tonys; those numbers usually cost each production $50,000 to $250,000, adding that it would come down to money and cast members’ availability.

Dozens of producers and investors in “Leap” lost money, including the Passionists, a financially struggling Roman Catholic order that invested $50,000 in the show. A leader of the order, the Rev. Edward Beck, said on Wednesday that he had hoped the show would run through the Tonys but was at peace with the decision to close.

“In its short run ‘Leap of Faith’ still touched thousands with a message of hope and belief, and most of those are people we could never have touched inside a church,” he said. “I had my own fantasy about actually winning for best musical. That would have been the perfect justification for ‘keeping the faith.’ But, alas, the money simply ran out.”

Updated On: 5/10/12 at 02:12 AM

[Nickhutson]

Posted: 5/10/12 at 6:18pm

Where is this from? :)

[hotjohn]

Posted: 5/12/12 at 11:25am

I saw the Wednesday matinee this week and struggled to stay awake. The show and, particularly the music, was dreary to say the least - I guess you've really got to love gospel music to sit through two and a half hours of it. How this snooze fest made it to Broadway I cannot imagine.

[madlibrarian]

Posted: 5/12/12 at 9:05pm

Nickhutson: the article is from The New York Times.