Oh, what a fat and happy time it is to be a theater owner.
Every day you go to work, there’s a line of supplicants — otherwise known as producers — outside your door, begging, hoping, praying you’ll take pity on them and give them a theater.
There’s no negotiating the rent: It’s 6 percent of the gross, soon rising to 7 percent, and unless you’re a theater superstar — Scott Rudin, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Hugh Jackman, Ira Pittelman — you have to settle for whatever theater’s available.
“They hold all the cards right now,” a veteran producer says of Broadway’s three landlords — the Shuberts, the Nederlanders and Jujamcyn Theaters. “You are at their mercy.”
On Broadway, the landlords are the 1 percent.
Occupy Shubert Alley!
A lot of plays are circling Times Square with no place to land — and the normal level of schadenfreude has been turned up several notches.
In other words, everybody’s rooting for everybody else to fail. And what could be more fun than that?
Look up and you can see the vultures.
My favorite is producer Jeffrey Richards, who may be in the unusual position of feeding on his own carcass. Richards is producing “Bonnie & Clyde” at the Schoenfeld. It’s a Frank Wildhorn show — “Bonnie & Hyde”? — which means the critics are primed to kill. And so the Shuberts have lined up a backup: the revival of Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man,” starring James Earl Jones and Angela Lansbury.
Its producer is — Jeffrey Richards!
“He has to root for himself to fail,” says a longtime press agent. “What a spot to be in.”
I wouldn’t rule out “Bonnie & Clyde” just yet, however. The score is better than you’d think, and the leads — Laura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan — are said to make a pair of sexy outlaws.
The backers of “Venus in Fur,” which just opened at nonprofit Manhattan Theatre Club to rave reviews, are also circling. They want to move the play, starring breakout star Nina Arianda, to the Longacre, where David Henry Hwang’s “Chinglish,” an underrated play, is waging its own Battle of Gaixia to survive.
Its general is — Jeffrey Richards!
“He’s got so many shows he could single-handedly book the entire Shubert chain,” a rival producer says.
Other shows looking for theaters include “A Streetcar Named Desire,” starring Blair Underwood; “Clybourne Park,” which won the Pulitzer this year; “Once,” a new musical, based on the film of the same name, generating good buzz at New York Theatre Workshop; “The Holy Rosenbergs,” which is coming in from London; “Little Miss Sunshine,” a new musical by William Finn and James Lapine; “Peter and the Starcatcher,” which is being backed by Disney; and “Magic/Bird,” a new play about the rivalry between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.
“Magic/Bird” is eyeing Circle in the Square, should “Godspell” run out of miracles in the dead of winter. The play is being put together by the same team that produced last season’s “Lombardi.”
“They just swapped a basketball for a football,” a wag says.
The backers of off-Broadway’s “Sons of the Prophet,” which opened to some of the strongest reviews this season, have all but given up hope of finding a Broadway theater this spring.
“We were told there’s nothing for us,” one of them said the other night.
This booking jam should ease up in the winter, when vulnerable shows will be culled from the market.
“Stick Fly,” starting previews today at the Cort, has no advance and is in danger of being squashed like, well, a bug. “Lysistrata Jones,” a cute off-Broadway musical, may seem a little thin at the Walter Kerr, and anemia has set in at the box office. “Relatively Speaking,” at the Brooks Atkinson, is unlikely to survive the winter. Or taste. And “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,” at the St. James, isn’t exactly burning up West 44th, though it might benefit from spill-over business from Hugh Jackman, who’s across the street.
On a cheerier note, “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” a Gershwin show starring Matthew Broderick, has found a home — the Imperial, which opened up when the revival of “Funny Girl” fell apart.
I’m told the producer, Scott Landis, is beside himself with joy. He’s married to the show’s director, the wonderful Kathleen Marshall, and was deeply embarrassed that it was taking him so long to get a theater.
But if he thinks he’s in the clear, he’d better think again.
I’m going to be keeping close tabs on “Nice Work” to see (a) if a Gershwin musical about bootleggers can ever be fresh; and (b) if Broderick, who hasn’t done a musical since “The Producers,” knows his lines and lyrics by the first preview.
Think of me, Mr. Marshall, as Someone Who’ll Watch Over You.