A sluggish environment complicates the fortunes of productions birthed since the pandemic.
One afternoon last week, the ticket-holder line outside the Broadway Theatre, where “Here Lies Love” is running, stretched two blocks. Unfortunately for the David Byrne and Fatboy Slim musical, the crowd was queuing for the show on the next block: “Late Night With Stephen Colbert.”
Such has been the frustrating early days of “Here Lies Love,” a pulsatingly alive musical that has seemed to have everything going for it since its official opening in July: stellar reviews, world-famous songwriters, an immersive party atmosphere, proven appeal in previous productions. The expectation by producers was that the fall would be smooth sailing. Instead, “Here Lies Love” is struggling to stay alive. Its weekly running costs (about $700,000) have exceeded its weekly box-office take ($500,000 to $620,000). Which means it is losing money at a point in the run when it needs to be raking it in.
“What I didn’t anticipate was really the struggle for it to find its audience,” said Diana DiMenna, one of the lead producers. “I’m flabbergasted that there are not lines of people around the block.” She is part of a core team of five lead producers who are attempting to innovate their way out of the doldrums afflicting “Here Lies Love.” And it is not the only new show limping along. Broadway has returned only sluggishly since the pandemic shutdowns of 2020 and 2021. New productions have been especially hard hit.
The warhorses, like “Wicked” and “The Lion King,” are doing fine. But lavish, recently opened musicals such as “New York, New York,” “Once Upon a One More Time” and “Bad Cinderella” shuttered rapidly. Even better-reviewed entries like “Some Like It Hot” are not doing so hot: That show, which has received more Tony nominations than any production this year, is closing in December. The 2023 Tony winner for best musical, “Kimberly Akimbo,” has not been immune either, with erratic box-office results and some weeks when the house is only 75 percent filled.
“All of the new musicals are struggling,” said Robert Wankel, the chairman and chief executive of the Shubert Organization, which owns and operates 17 of the 41 theaters on Broadway, including the Broadway. “We still haven’t had back all of our audience, and that doesn’t help.” Everyone is trying to understand why. Though tourists are returning to New York City, the numbers are below levels before the pandemic: According to New York City Tourism & Conventions, about 63 million visitors are expected this year, down from nearly 67 million in 2019. (Tourists traditionally account for about two-thirds of Broadway ticket sales.)
A corresponding decline has occurred in many of the nonprofit regional theaters across the nation. Changes in entertainment habits, high ticket prices and the graying of the audience are all factors. On Broadway, another complication has been the decline in people working from their Manhattan offices, the potential patrons who used to seek weeknight diversions in the city.
The difficult path “Here Lies Love” has encountered, trying to build momentum at the box office, is a troubling case in point. In a group interview at the theater, the producers outlined a passel of initiatives to entice audiences of all ages to the musical, a rollicking, 90-minute party under a glittering disco ball. The show is a rock-opera account of the despotic regime of Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos (Jose Llana) and his wife, Imelda (Arielle Jacobs), who ruled the Asian nation from 1965 to 1986.
Educating potential patrons on the unique facets of “Here Lies Love” has proved tough, the producers said. The orchestra section of the theater had to be removed and the space renovated for the $22 million production. The party floor for audience members who opt to stand, and where most of the action occurs on moving platforms, displaced about 600 seats, reducing capacity to 1,100. Included in this smaller audience footprint are seats in a variety of configurations: banks of seats ringing the performance floor, dozens of rows of seats in the mezzanine, even a VIP section under the mezzanine.
“We are tasked not only with outputting artistic work, we are also tasked with creating the audience,” said Clint Ramos, the costume designer and another lead producer. He said that with a cast entirely made up of Filipino Americans, “Here Lies Love” had a goal of reaching a new cadre of fans. Indeed, as noted by Jose Antonio Vargas, another of the core producing group (and a former Washington Post reporter), on some nights those of Asian and Pacific Island descent make up as much as 25 percent of the crowd, when the norm on Broadway is in the single digits.
“You have an untraditional story told in an untraditional way,” lead producer Patrick Catullo said. “Then there is the layer of, ‘Okay, do you sit or do you stand? What is this experience?’ There are just so many more layers of introspection that you need to do for the consumer on a show like this.”
That is why the “Here Lies Love” producing brain trust, whose fifth member is Kevin Connor, spitballed a strategic plan into existence that it hopes will save the show. Its components include special matinees with free child care, an incentive program with gifts and discounts for those who want to see the show more than once, a sweepstakes offering free tickets, a subsidy program called Democracy in Action that has raised $150,000 in donations, and after-show parties on the theater floor with guest DJs.
“The bars are still open and DJ Cherish will be out here in a second!” an announcer intoned last Saturday, moments after the curtain call. Dozens of audience members milled about, drinks in hand, for an hour of entertainment unlike that in any other Broadway theater. (Cherish is one the myriad producers of “Here Lies Love” recruited from the Filipino American community, another of its attempts to broaden industry reach.)
DiMenna, for one, said much more needs to be done to revolutionize the business and eliminate the barriers to doing things in a new way. (A confrontation with the musicians union last spring over the use of karaoke resulted in adding several instrumentalists to the payroll, but it also, the producers said, disrupted the publicity momentum at a key juncture.) “There are all these rules and laws, and I get how it helps and how it serves,” she said. “I find that it slows down the rate of innovation that I think we all know is necessary.”
Whether the innovation rescues “Here Lies Love” will be known in short order, though you would not know it from the exhilarating contributions of the cast that the show is running on fumes. Wankel, the Shubert Organization chief executive, is trying to help. “We are going to be as supportive as we can be,” he said. “In the end, it is all about the money. It depends how much money you want to lose. The problem with theater is our operating costs are very high, so the question is, ‘How much money can you burn trying to build an audience?’”
Vargas said that in recent days, the box office has begun to pick up, which would be good not only at the Broadway Theatre, but for the Broadway theater. “We would love nothing more,” Wankel added, “than to make this show a hit.”