The Annual Tony Award Spring Sprint

Every year, producers vie to open their shows in March and April. Why? Because Tony Award nominations come out in April, and conventional wisdom is that it’s a good idea to open your show close to the announcement of the Tony Award nominations – because if you get a bunch of nominations, it will wildly increase ticket sales. Especially for musicals.I’ve been questioning this logic for a while. Last year’s Tony winner for best musical, A Gentleman’s Guide, opened in the fall, and two of the remaining three best musical nominees (Beautiful and After Midnight) opened before the spring rush.So, let’s crunch some numbers. This year, no fewer than 18 Broadway shows opened in March and April. All four musicals nominated for Best Musical opened in the spring, as did two of the three nominees for Best Musical Revival. But four musicals that opened in the spring were virtually shut out. Doctor Zhivago, Finding Neverland (with Mathew Morrison and Kelsey Grammar) and It Shoulda Been You got no nominations, and Gigi got a single nomination – for Victoria Clark as featured actress.For straight plays, it is a very different story. Eleven straight plays opened in the fall, while eight opened in March and April (Constellations had a limited run in between). Two of the four nominees for best play opened in the spring, and only one of the four plays nominated for best revival opened in the spring. The most nominated straight play, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime, opened in the fall.So does running the Tony Award Spring Sprint work? It seems it can work marginally. There are four shows that could get a new lease on life from the nominations. Fun Home isn’t selling very well, but it just got ten Tony nominations, so it’s possible the nominations could help there. The Visit is struggling, but it just got five nominations. The same goes for Wolf Hall, which just got seven nominations. On The Town has been hanging on since the fall, but it just got nominated for Best Musical Revival and Best Actor in a Musical, so maybe that will give it a shot in the arm.To me, the question is whether or not An American In Paris, Something Rotten and The King and I would have fared less well in nominations and box office had they opened in the fall. Only three musical opened last fall, On The Town, The Last Ship and Side Show. On The Town got two nominations, The Last Ship got two nominations (but closed) and Side Show was shut out (and also closed). Should the takeaway be that opening musicals in the fall is a bad idea, or that the fate of a musical lies more in the quality of the show than in the number of nominations received?On the other hand, is not being nominated a death sentence? Probably not. Most of the shows that got shut out were already selling poorly, so you can’t blame the Tonys if they close soon. And it certainly won’t matter to Fish In The Dark, which is doing phenomenal box office. Finding Neverland is selling over $1 million a week but is still not selling out, so it will be interesting to see what happens in the weeks ahead in light of its shut out. That might be the one case were a lack of nominations could matter.But it would seem that the conventional wisdom of opening shows in the Spring may be over-rated. Which makes me wonder whether or not it wouldn't be healthier for the industry overall if more musicals opened in the fall.Next time, I’ll look at whether or not star-driven limited runs of straight plays are as strong an idea as conventional wisdom would have us believe.