NEW YORK (REUTERS) — In the dark days following the attacks of Sept. 11, fear, anxiety and shock led many theatergoers to say, “Give My Regards to Broadway — but I’m staying at home.”
One year later, after a healthy dose of the theater world’s “The Show Must Go On” spirit, Broadway is back in big business, holding its figurative head high with the help of the first hit show of the new season, this summer’s “Hairspray.”
The campy, exuberant, feel-good musical based on the 1988 John Waters’ film of the same name, about the big hairdos and social issues of 1962 Baltimore, is fueling hopes Broadway will complete a full recovery at the box office.
“Hairspray” stars the unknown Marissa Jaret Winokur as a chunky but spunky teen-age Cinderella who becomes a poster girl for a hairspray, integrates the local television rock dance show, and gets her man — with froggy-voiced Tony Award winner Harvey Fierstein in drag as her mother.
“Hairspray is certainly a big hit,” said Jed Bernstein, president of the League of American Theaters and Producers, about the show that last week drew standing-room-only audiences and grossed more than $860,000.
“It has a multimillion dollar advance (sale) and a great buzz, but that’s not to say it’s the last hit of the season.”
Attendance is down three percent from the year-ago figures 14 weeks into Broadway’s new season, said Bernstein, who termed the decline “pretty insignificant” considering the aftermath of 9/11, the downturn in tourism and the ailing economy.
The fall season gets under way in earnest next month, with the scheduled opening of a slew of shows, including “Amour,” a translation of the French musical “Le Passe Muraille,” featuring music by Michel LeGrand; a new adaptation of the “Flower Drum Song” and “Movin’ Out,” a dance musical choreographed and directed by Twyla Tharp, also featuring songs by Billy Joel.
Farther on the horizon is “Hollywood Arms,” co-written by comedienne Carol Burnett based on her memoir; “Dance of the Vampires,” a musical featuring former “Phantom of the Opera” star Michael Crawford; “Imaginary Friends,” Nora Ephron’s play about feuding writers Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy; a revival of “Man of La Mancha” and noted film director Baz Luhrmann’s production of the Puccini opera “La Boheme.”
Happy vibes contrast with pain, uncertainty
The happy vibes of “Hairspray” contrast with the pain and uncertainty that haunted the Great White Way after the cataclysmic toppling of the World Trade Center twin towers that killed about 2,800 people about four miles south.
The lights of Broadway were doused for two days. Four shows posted closing notices a week after the attacks, and general box-office revenues plunged by 75 percent.
Tourism, which traditionally provides the lifeblood of the theater business, slowed to a trickle.
Stakes were high not only for Broadway but for New York’s economy.
In the previous season, Broadway contributed more than $4.4 billion to the city’s economy, supported 40,000 jobs and reigned as New York’s main magnet for tourists, according to the official tourism agency, NYC & Company.
“Of all the tourism attractions, Broadway is number one,” said Cristyne Nicholas, president of NYC & Company, noting the approximately 12 million tickets a year sold for shows. “It is greater than the sports teams and the museums in terms of ticket sales.”
Broadway battled back with a marketing campaign aimed at drawing a bigger local audience and benefited from government subsidies and sacrifices by the show business community that agreed to pay cuts in the weeks following Sept. 11.
By spring, a nearly full roster of 28 theaters was running shows, and four summer openings — highlighted by “Hairspray” and the well-received “Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune” — offset the usual rate of attrition.
Aftershocks still felt
But the aftershocks of 9/11 are still being felt. The city this week disclosed figures showing a drop of nearly $1 billion in visitor spending during 2001.
“The only worrisome issue at the moment is that advance sales continue to be less robust than usual,” Bernstein said.
“At a typical performance, about half the audience has bought their tickets about four weeks in advance, and that number right now is 37 to 38 percent, about a third less than we’d like to see it.
“In the immediate aftermath (of Sept. 11), that number had shrunk to 15 percent of the audience, so we’ve climbed back quite a way from there.”
In a revival of last winter’s successful Season of Savings program, some 20 Broadway shows have banded together to offer discounts on tickets, restaurants and parking in hopes of another boost on the road to recovery.