Great article on pre-Broadway tryouts

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Posted: 11/5/07 at 12:35pm

Broadway's bounty goes bye-bye

Once upon a time, Minneapolis and St. Paul were trendy spots to road-test new musicals before they hit the Great White Way. Nowadays, those tryouts are going to other cities - taking prestige, money and jobs with them.

Ten years ago, Twin Cities audiences were the first to see "The Lion King" before it moved to New York. But a decade later - with the long-lived and lucrative musical again taking up residence at the Orpheum Theatre - Minneapolis and St. Paul have fallen to the second tier of American cities that can host pre-Broadway tryouts.

It's not that local theater folks aren't trying. St. Paul's Ordway Center for the Performing Arts was on the short list to host the pre-Broadway version of a new musical based on the hit animated film "Shrek." In Minneapolis, the Orpheum was one of the finalists to house this summer's tryout of Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein."

The producers of "Shrek" haven't announced where they'll take up residence in summer 2008, but it won't be in St. Paul. "Young Frankenstein" wound up in Seattle. And Walt Disney Theatricals - the folks who brought "Lion King" to Minneapolis a decade ago - opted to road-test its newest musical, "The Little Mermaid," in Denver this summer.

"I think we were ahead of the curve in knowing that these would be things that would put us on the map," said Fred Krohn, president of Historic Theatre Group, which manages the State, Orpheum and Pantages theaters in downtown Minneapolis and the guy who helped broker the "Lion King" residency. "And now everybody wants to be on the map."

Trying out a Broadway musical "out of town" is an old Broadway tradition and used to take place in cities like New Haven and Philadelphia.


Fine-tuning a show outside of Gotham's glare has become more important in days where musicals are progressively more expensive.
Bloggers and the Internet don't allow for a completely insulated experience. But, according to the Ordway's producing artistic director, James Rocco, Broadway's money men and women "want a place where they can get a smart reaction but don't want to be so close that Ben Brantley (the influential theater critic for the New York Times) is going to get on a train to see it."

There are tangible and intangible reasons for New York producers to choose one city over another. For "Young Frankenstein," Seattle's Paramount Theatre offered abundant space and arguably the nation's hottest city for a Broadway tryout. The Ordway couldn't ultimately compete for "Shrek" because it couldn't clear the needed number of weeks in its theater, which it shares with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Opera.

But not getting the tryout of a big new musical means that the prestige, money and jobs from such engagements go to other cities. A Broadway producer might spend anywhere from $1 million to $4 million out of town, and a goodly chunk of that change goes into the pockets of local backstage workers as well
as the tills of hotels, restaurants and shops in the area.
The deals that can bring a Broadway tryout to town can be as different as the musicals themselves. Like the Ordway, Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre both produces its own shows and houses touring companies of Broadway musicals. When it hosted the 2002 pre-Broadway tryout of "Hairspray," 5th Avenue essentially co-produced the show, spending about $1 million of its own money.

That, said 5th Avenue's producing artistic director David Armstrong, meant the Broadway producers didn't have to raise as much money for the show, which cost an estimated $10.5 million. Also, 5th Avenue's upfront investment in what was then an unknown musical with no stars and an untested creative team gave it a piece of ownership of the show.

"It's a tiny piece, but when the pie gets as big as 'Hairspray,' it can be very significant," said Armstrong. "We're very close to having returned back to us about $1 million from the show" beyond what the theater spent.

Better-known titles like "The Little Mermaid" and "Young Frankenstein" are less likely to give up a piece of the show's equity. They usually come into town with a "four-wall" agreement under which the producer essentially rents the out-of-town theater and splits the box-office receipts with the local presenter.

It's a good deal for the Broadway producers, especially if they have a well-known title that's pretty much guaranteed to draw audiences. And local markets can be so eager to have the imprimatur of a pre-Broadway tryout that they're willing to virtually give away the theater space for the weeks and months of rehearsal leading up to performances.

Disney technicians, for instance, first descended on Denver's Ellie Caulkins Opera House in late May to prepare the newly renovated space for the pre-Broadway tryout of "The Little Mermaid." The show began performances for paying audiences in late July and completed the Denver engagement Sept. 9 on the way to a December opening at New York's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

Though he wouldn't elaborate, Randy Weeks, president of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which runs the Ellie Caulkins, said his organization made some economic concessions to entice the Disney people to come to Denver for three-plus months.

"We didn't recoup the entire cost of the tryout," said Weeks, even though the production played to 99.67 percent of capacity. "But there is a bit of prestige that goes along with this. Our subscribers and the people of Denver had the chance to take a first peek at this project."

There are other ways for locals to make money on a pre-Broadway production. Savvy presenters will build a season around the buzz and prestige of a big Broadway tryout and tie the best tickets to patrons who will buy a season subscription.

The good graces that a local presenter earns on a tryout also can pay dividends down the road. Minneapolis' Orpheum, for instance, is the first theater in the country to host a third visit from "The Lion King," which continues to be a bankable property.

Broadway producers will pit one city against another to get the best possible deal for a Broadway tryout, but there are other factors besides economics. An experienced corps of backstage workers and technicians helps. So does a theater with lots of room to stretch out and build sets, costumes and props. Local presenters like to tout their audiences - and even their theater critics - as savvy and sophisticated ... but not as brutal as those in New York.

And a can-do attitude goes a long way with demanding Broadway types.

"It's about cementing relationships," said the Denver Center's Weeks. "We had lots of staff meetings while the Disney people were here and my mantra to all of my people was that it was our job to make sure that Disney is happy all of the time. That was our responsibility. We stayed out of their way. We marketed the show very well, working with their people. And whatever they needed, it happened the day before they asked for it to be done."

Theater critic Dominic P. Papatola can be reached at [e-mail] or at 651-228-2165.

http://www.twincities.com/papatola/ci_7297370

Updated On: 11/5/07 at 12:35 PM