Crunching The Numbers On This Season’s Straight Plays

Once again, it’s number crunching time.This Broadway season saw 19 straight plays get produced. There were 4 non-commercial productions: Manhattan Theatre Club presented 3 original plays– Constellations, The Country House and Airline Highway; and the Roundabout presented a revival of The Real Thing. Since not-for-profits like MTC and Roundabout have both subscription sales and box office sales, it is harder to tell how well these shows fared than it is for commercial productions. So there’s not much more to say here.Of the 15 straight plays presented in commercial productions, 5 were presented in open ended runs: Disgraced, Hand To God, Living On Love, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and The Heidi Chronicles.That leaves 10 straight plays that were presented in limited commercial runs this Broadway season: A Delicate Balance, Fish In The Dark, It’s Only A Play, Love Letters, Skylight, The Audience, The Elephant Man, The River, You Can’t Take It With You and Wolf Hall 1 and 2.Which of these limited runs succeeded? Fish In The Dark and It’s Only A Play were so successful that they brought in new stars and extended their runs; You Can’t Take It With You also extended its run. Skylight, The Elephant Man, The River and The Audience all recouped their investments. A Delicate Balance, Love Letters and Wolf Hall 1 and 2 failed, or is failing, to find audiences.What else can we say about these limited runs? Fish In The Dark and It’s Only A Play are the only original shows. Skylight, The Audience, The River and Wolf Hall were all West End transfers (OK, Skylight is a transfer of a revival of an American play presented in the West End). A Delicate Balance, Love Letters and The Elephant Man were all revivals. With the exception of Wolf Hall, all were star-driven vehicles (although Wolf Hall is a transfer of a Royal Shakespeare Company production, which does lend the production some name recognition).Turning to the open-ended runs, Disgraced, Hand To God and Living On Love were all Broadway debuts (although Disgraced was produced in smaller productions in London and Chicago). The Heidi Chronicles was a revival and The Curious Incident was a West End transfer. Of the 5, The Curious Incident is the most successful, although fingers are crossed for Hand To God (no pun intended).Is there a pattern here? Perhaps.1. Clearly, whether it be a limited engagements of an original American play, a revival or a West End transfer, plays with a single high wattage star -- Bradley Cooper, Larry David, Hugh Jackman, James Earl Jones, and Helen Mirren – had the highest success rate.2. Limited runs with one or two lesser wattage stars were a mixed bag –Skylight with Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan succeeded, while Love Letter with Brian Dennehy and Mia Farrow did not. Adding more stars was also not an automatic win, however – arguably, A Delicate Balance had a more famous cast than did It’s Only A Play. West End transfers with no stars – The Curious Incident and Wolf Hall -- were also a mixed bag. Certainly, this group of plays on average did not fare as well as did the star driven limited engagements.3. Sadly, based in this season, original plays without stars had the worst odds. Disgraced and Living On Love did not fare well, and the jury is still out on Hand To God.So what’s the takeaway? I see at least two:1. Star driven limited runs are the safest choice a producer can make for straight plays on Broadway.2. The riskiest productions are open-ended runs of new straight plays with no stars. In fact, it the very near future we may see original American straight plays only being produced on Broadway by not-for-profit theatres like MTC and Second Stage.Personally, my love of theatre started when I was a kid watching great American plays like the original productions of The Elephant Man, Children of a Lesser God, Agnes of God, Torch Song Trilogy – all open ended runs without huge box office stars. I do feel a sense of loss that these kinds of shows are no longer being produced successfully on Broadway with any frequency; my guess is that I am not alone. Playwrights used to be stars; not so much anymore.That being said, I do think that original American plays will be successfully produced – just not on Broadway. Moving forward, I predict that we will begin to see alternative theatre markets emerge. Arguably, Chicago is already there; San Francisco is well on its way.What that means for the industry in the long run, I couldn’t say. But I look forward to watching this process unfold.