FINANCIAL problems beset two high-profile Broadway shows this week, forcing the postponement of one and a scramble to raise money at the other.
The scramble is on at “The Visit,” the new musical starring Angela Lansbury and Philip Bosco that’s slated to open at the Broadway Theater in the spring, after an out-of-town tryout in Boston this fall.
Skylight Productions, which had agreed to put up $4 million of the show’s $8.5 million start-up costs, recently reduced its investment to less than $1 million, production sources said.
Barry Brown, the lead producer on the show, has spent the last month replacing Skylight’s investment.
He said the financial shortfall “has been closed,” but declined to identify the new investors. He also said the show “was absolutely on target” to open on Broadway in March.
Russell Lewis, executive producer of Skylight, said he cut back his investment “for personal reasons, which I am not at liberty to talk about. But we are still involved in the show and are still very much supporting Barry.”
Based on Friedrich Durrenmatt’s famous play, “The Visit” tells the story of a rich woman (Lansbury) who returns to her hometown after many years to exact revenge on her former lover (Bosco).
The score is by the legendary songwriting team John Kander and Fred Ebb (“Chicago,” “Cabaret”), and the book is by Terrence McNally, who is doing double duty this season as the author of “The Full Monty.”
The director is Frank Galati (“Ragtime”), and the choreographer is Ann Reinking.
Brown said, “When you have Lansbury, Kander, Ebb, Galati, McNally and Reinking in your show, it’s not difficult to raise money.”
Still, some Broadway money people who’ve seen investment papers for “The Visit” say they passed on the show because it has a high weekly overhead and will have to run at near capacity for a year before it begins to make back its production costs.
Others say mainstream audiences may be put off by the nastiness of the story – revenge, greed and murder are the driving forces – and the unpleasantness of the characters, though Brown says McNally has done “a great job” of making the characters more sympathetic in the musical than they are in the play.
“The Visit” also has an ace-in-the-hole – Angela Lansbury, one of the great musical-comedy leading ladies of all time, and, thanks to TV’s “Murder, She Wrote,” an international superstar whose name above the title will ensure that the show opens with hefty advance ticket sales.
Meanwhile, the producers of “Little Women” announced yesterday that the show, which was to have opened in the fall at the Ambassador Theater, has been pushed back to the spring.
The postponement gives the producers more time to raise the musical’s $7.5 million start-up costs.
“The money is committed, it’s just taken us longer than we expected to get the financial papers in order,” producer Randall L. Wreghitt said yesterday.
“Little Women” was thrown into disarray in April, when Wreghitt replaced the creative team – composer, Kim Oler and lyricist Alison Hubbard – with new writers, Jason Howland (music) and Mindi Dickstein (lyrics).
Before he could begin raising money for the show, Wreghitt had to buy out the original writers – or risk a lawsuit.
The buyout deal went through this week.
“Everything is a little saner now,” Wreghitt said. “And now we have more time to work on the show.”
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Lea Thompson, star of the TV series “Caroline in the City,” will take over the role of Sally Bowles in the hit revival of “Cabaret” beginning Aug. 1 … “Copenhagen” this week joined that very exclusive club of Broadway plays that actually return their investments. The Tony-winning play made back its $1.5 million start-up costs in just 11 weeks. The only other shows from the 1999-2000 season that are in the black are “True West” and “Dame Edna,” which closed last Sunday after posting a $700,000 profit.