The Big Broadway Musical Is Back : Encouraged investors putting stock back into costly productions

NEW YORK —  For 10 years, says Tommy Tune, he had a recurring dream. He was standing in a ballroom with a shiny floor, a chandelier and lots of gold chairs with red velvet cushions. If it had been a musical, it would be just the place for a song and dance. But then he would wake up.

Then one Christmas he received a copy of “Grand Hotel,” Vicki Baum’s 1929 novel about Germany in the late ‘20s. He liked it so much that he rented the Oscar-winning 1932 film, which he didn’t like as much. But his interest was piqued enough that he decided to meet with Robert Wright and George Forrest, who worked together on “Kismet,” about their musical based on Baum’s book.

“Grand Hotel” opens on Broadway on Nov. 12 and will be virtually a dream come true for Tune, who has directed and choreographed the production. The lavishly mounted show will have a ballroom with a shiny floor, a chandelier and plenty of plush chairs.

“Hotel,” which finished its pre-Broadway run last night in Boston, is just one of several new, American-mounted musicals hoping to wrest the dominance of the musical theater back from the British.

Never mind that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s newest hit musical, “Aspects of Love,” playing in London, will land on Broadway next April. Or that it will certainly be followed by “Miss Saigon,” another new musical from the team that wrote “Les Miserables,” and which just opened in London to raves--and an $8 million advance.

Make way for the return of the home-grown musical. “This is truly the great American art form,” insists “Grand Hotel” producer Martin Richards. “I’m a little bored with Englishmen taking all the Tonys away. Maybe this season we’ll show them we’re all here.”

Rehearsal halls are jumping, costume shops are swamped and theaters are booked far into the season. More musicals are set to open between now and year-end than opened during the entire 88-89 season.

Musicals, explains Shubert Organization president Bernard Jacobs, “are popular, productive of better earnings and producers like to do them.” So, in addition to presenting stars like Dustin Hoffman in Shakespeare and Vanessa Redgrave in Tennessee Williams, this season’s producers are back to risking millions on musicals.

“Last season was terrible,” says producer Nick Vanoff, a backer of the Cy Coleman/Larry Gelbart musical comedy thriller “City of Angels” now in rehearsal here. “We thought we’d have one of the few musicals this season. But now there’s a real theater jam.”

Sting’s highly publicized Broadway debut in “Three Penny Opera” is set for Nov. 5, and a new production of “Gypsy” starring Tyne Daly opens Nov. 16. The late Hugh Wheeler’s take on “Meet Me in St. Louis,” based on both the 1943 MGM film and a series of New Yorker articles, opens Nov. 2.

Graciela Daniele’s dance drama “Dangerous Games” opens Oct. 19, and a musical based on Evan Rhodes’ best-selling novel, “The Prince of Central Park,” is scheduled for Oct. 30. The recently opened chamber version of Stephen Sondheim and Wheeler’s “Sweeney Todd” is already getting excellent notices at the small Circle in the Square.

“Things go in cycles,” says Jules Fisher, lighting designer on “Grand Hotel” and a producer of “Dangerous Games.” “Money was much harder to raise because a number of investors lost a lot of money. There was the stock market crash of ’87 and new tax laws. And inflation made it extremely expensive to do a musical.”

So what changed? At Jujamcyn Theaters, which will house “City of Angels,” “Grand Hotel” and “Gypsy,” president Rocco Landesman indirectly thanks British mega-producer Cameron Mackintosh. “ ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘Phantom of the Opera’ have been a big boost to the whole industry,” says Landesman. “People now perceive that it’s not a hopeless proposition and that if you have a big hit, you can make a lot of money. That’s encouraged investors. No doubt about it. And the economy is pretty good. That always helps.”

As Tune’s “Grand Hotel” experience indicates, ideas for musicals come from everywhere--and often take a while to materialize on Broadway. “At the Grand,” a very different project from the same writers and composers, originally debuted at the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera back in 1958, but never made it to Broadway. Author Rhodes, finally in rehearsal on “Prince of Central Park,” says it took nearly eight years before the right Broadway production team finally came along.

“These people never stopped working or thinking or collaborating,” says Richards. “It isn’t exactly done like a Xerox machine or a computer. It takes a while.” Shrugs composer Coleman, who worked with Gelbart for years on “City of Angels”: “They happen when they happen.”

Nobody knows which, if any, of this year’s musicals will survive the critics, much less become another “A Chorus Line” or “Phantom.” “We hope and pray they’ll all be huge smash hits because we want our people to work,” says John Glasel, president of the American Federation of Musicians Local 802. “We want boffo box office.”

So do producers. With musicals averaging $4 million apiece--and shows like “Phantom” and “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway” running double that amount--plenty’s at stake. Last season, for instance, producers lost “every penny” of “Carrie’s” $7-million cost “and then some,” says Landesman. “It was like when a car gets totaled--that’s what happened to ‘Carrie.’ ”

As a result, producers hedge their bets in several ways. Revivals abound in musicals as well as plays, and aside from “City of Angels,” all of the musicals opening the next few months have had another life before Broadway. And if there aren’t stars like Daly or Sting onstage, there are such big names backstage as choreographer Tune, playwright Gelbart and composer Coleman.

Producers are holding down costs--and, presumably, risks--however they can. Daly and “Gypsy” will have played 14 cities, including Los Angeles last July, by the time the production hits New York. “Prince of Central Park” originated in Florida.

“Dangerous Games” was both begun and developed in assorted non-profit theaters around the country--including the La Jolla Playhouse. Producer Fisher thinks that’s how it should be. “Nowadays, shows can open any way possible, and we should have that creative freedom to try venues. With so much money at stake, you have to have another opportunity before you plunk it down on Broadway and a very few critics determine its fate.”

Other shows have more traditional pre-Broadway tryouts. “Grand Hotel” ended its Boston run last night en route to New York, and “Three Penny Opera” ends its Washington tryout today. Says observer Paul Libin, producing director at Circle in the Square: “If you go to New York cold, you sit here with all the wise guys telling you what’s wrong. You want to shake down a new show.”

Back in the early ‘70s, when producer Barry Brown was rounding up cash to produce “Gypsy” in London with Angela Lansbury, “people were still investing in the theater as much for glamour and excitement as for making money. If you were investing $500 or $1,000, it wasn’t the end of the earth if you lost it. With the smallest investment today $60,000 to $100,000, the day of the small investor is over. Nobody is going to invest in a (Broadway musical) for the glamour anymore.”

Those jumbo price tags also make institutional money very attractive. Besides individuals and corporations--both domestic and foreign--it’s also rare today that producer credits don’t carry a theater owner’s name like Shubert, Nederlander or Jujamcyn above the title.

When James Nederlander brought in $2.5 million on “La Cage aux Folles,” says Brown, he immediately got producer billing. “Billing is the cheapest thing to give away because it isn’t going to cost me anything. If somebody says, ‘I want producer billing and I’ll give you half a million,’ I say, ‘Welcome to the family.’ ”

Producers also make money once the shows leave Broadway. The Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine hit musical “Into the Woods,” for instance, recently closed on Broadway after 23 months with one U.S. tour under way and a second planned for dozens of one-night markets. Productions are being discussed for Australia, Japan and London, and so is its “movie manifestation.” “One has to look at New York as the beginning of the process, not the end,” says Michael David at the show’s general manager, Dodger Productions.

Complemented by such off-Broadway fare as George Abbott’s “Frankie,” a musical about Frankenstein also expected before year-end, Broadway’s musical beat goes on. Ads are appearing for “Annie 2,” Lincoln Center Theatre may bring back “Guys and Dolls” and they’re talking musicals of films from “Arthur” to “Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York.” Producers are putting together Broadway musicals based on the lives of everyone from Hoagy Carmichael and Will Rogers to the Rev. Martin Luther King and Jimmy Durante.

Already, in fact, there’s a holding pattern for productions waiting to land on Broadway. “Durante,” a $4-million musical about the comedian that began in Toronto, opens Nov. 1 at the Shubert in Los Angeles for “a minimum of three weeks” as part of its pre-Broadway run. “All the musical houses are either occupied by long-term hits or have been committed to other new projects,” says the production’s general manager Frank Scardino. “If a theater opened up between now and Nov. 1, there’s every possibility we could go to New York directly from Los Angeles.

“Unfortunately, when you’re waiting for a show to come in, you’re in fact waiting for somebody else to close. You don’t wish that, but the historical fact is that not every show makes it,” says Scardino. “The likelihood of a musical house becoming available by the first of the year, or maybe before, is probable given past seasons.”

But at this point, says Jujamcyn’s Landesman, “everyone’s very hopeful. It’s a little like the baseball teams going into spring training. Every team thinks it has a great chance to win the pennant. Just ask again around July 4.”