NEIL Simon has written 33 plays and musicals — just a few shy of the number of theories floating around Shubert Alley this week as to why one of his best, “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” closed faster than one of his worst, “Jake’s Women.”
His humor is passé. His audience is dead or, worse, in Florida. The production didn’t have a star. It was in the wrong theater, the Nederlander, on remote 41st Street.
All probably had something to do with the quick demise of this affecting revival — and all have been carefully catalogued by the Times’ Patrick Healy, who’s hit the ground running in his new job as “Brighton Beach Memoirs” bureau chief.
But there’s one culprit Healy overlooked: his own paper.
The Times had a hand in killing “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” And I don’t mean critic Ben Brantley‘s mixed review (although that didn’t help).
The Times offered the producers of “Brighton Beach” several weeks worth of splashy ads in the paper and on its Web site at steep discounts, production sources say.
In exchange for what one source calls the “fire sale” price, the Times demanded exclusivity.
“Brighton Beach” couldn’t advertise anywhere else until after opening night.
No radio spots, no e-mail blasts, no direct-mail campaign — none of the things most shows do to generate advance sales.
But the Times ads didn’t work, and the show opened with an advance of less than $500,000, sources say. Some nights, the cast played to 500 people.
“It was a pilot program,” one source says. “It was supposed to be secret. And it crashed and burned.”
Another source says: “No matter what we did — we changed the ads all the time — nothing worked.”
A producer not involved in the production says the Times deal was a “strategic mistake.”
A direct-mail campaign — in which fliers and ticket offers are mailed directly to people who go to the theater on a regular basis — should have been a key component of the “Brighton Beach” marketing plan, several producers say.
(Everybody’s playing Monday morning quarterback this week.)
Simon’s audience is older and accustomed to getting ticket offers through the mail.
“They like fliers, they like pictures, they like a description of the show, they like coupons,” one person says. “You buy the mailing lists of Roundabout, Manhattan Theatre Club and Lincoln Center subscribers, and you send the stuff. That’s how you reach the people who want to see a Neil Simon play.”
Once upon a time, a full-page ad in the Times generated strong ticket sales. But that was when the paper, unchallenged by the Internet, had absolute power over Broadway.
Those days have gone the way of the bulldog edition.
“Times ads don’t even pay for themselves anymore,” one producer says.
Many shows don’t even bother advertising in the Times. If they do, it’s to reinforce direct mail, radio spots, word of mouth and so on.
The media landscape has changed radically. Producers now believe they have to be everywhere with their shows.
If, as some have suggested, Simon’s gags are old hat, then advertising exclusively in the New York Times is haberdashery of an age when there were lines at the box office, the TKTS booth took only cash, and the Nederlander Theatre really was in a bad neighborhood.