Entertainment

‘PARTY’ POOPERS! PUBLIC’S FLOP COSTS BACKERS $5.1 MILLION

AFTER losing money every week for almost two months, the Public Theater’s “The Wild Party” bowed to the inevitable yesterday and posted a June 11 closing notice.

The show, which was nominated for seven Tonys but won none, will have played 36 previews and 68 performances at Broadway’s Virginia Theatre.

It will lose its entire $5.1 million investment, which was split between the Public and a group of prominent Broadway producers – Roger Berlind, Scott Rudin, Anita Waxman and Elizabeth Williams.

The Public threw an additional $1 million (drawn from its endowment) at the show to keep it afloat through the Tonys, bringing the theater’s total loss on “The Wild Party” to about $3.5 million, production sources said yesterday.

The closing of “The Wild Party” is a black eye to the Public and its artistic director, George C. Wolfe, who staged the musical.

It comes on the heels of another high-profile Public flop, last season’s misguided Broadway revival of “On the Town,” which Wolfe also directed.

The Public produced that show on its own and lost $7 million.

The failure of both shows raises questions about Wolfe’s tenure as the head of one of the city’s leading cultural institutions.

He is a controversial figure in the theater world – hailed for his directing talents, but knocked by some for his outsize ego and stubbornness.

The two flops also raise the issue of why the Public, a not-for-profit theater with five off-Broadway venues at its disposal, insists on playing in the risky, all-or-nothing world of the Broadway theater.

Wolfe was unavailable for comment yesterday, but Kenneth B. Lerer, the chairman of the Public’s board of directors, said the board continues to back Wolfe.

“George is a creative force and a brilliant director, and the seven nominations reflected what the [theater] community thought of the piece,” Lerer said.

He pointed out that “The Wild Party” received several strong notices from important critics, many of whom praised Wolfe’s direction.

The exception – and it was big one – was Ben Brantley of The New York Times, who panned the show.

“We never climbed out of the hole of that one bad review,” Lerer said. “We could stack all the good reviews and the increasingly good word-of-mouth against that review and still not overcome it.”

As for the issue of whether the Public should be producing on Broadway at all, Lerer said, “The mandate of the Public Theater is to produce great theater that pushes the envelope. And if, from time to time, they find their way to Broadway, that is great.”

He said he and his fellow board members had no regrets about opening “The Wild Party” on Broadway.

“It was a brilliant piece, and we are proud that we did it. Broadway should have more, not fewer, shows like ‘The Wild Party.’ Unfortunately, shows that push the envelope are not always commercially viable.”

Despite losing more than $10 million on both “The Wild Party” and “On the Town,” the Public “was in great financial shape,” Lerer said.

“We have in excess of $33 million in the bank, and have a plan in place to become even more financially healthy.”