The Tony nominations have provided a substantial bump in revenue for three of the four musicals vying for Best Musical, the top honor to be doled out on Sunday, June 7, broadcast live on CBS. “An American in Paris” and “Fun Home” are both doing capacity business at their respective theaters, while “Something Rotten” has seen a steady increase in its grosses since it began previews last March. Straggler “The Visit,” however, continues to struggle.This is somewhat surprising given its stellar pedigree: an adaptation of a classic Friedrich Durrenmatt play, by a veteran creative team of Tony Award winners: legendary star Chita Rivera, protean playwright Terrence McNally, proven director John Doyle, and, most notably, a score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, one of the most successful collaborations in musical theater history with a resume that includes “Cabaret” and “Chicago.” Yet, since opening last April, “The Visit,” about a fabulously wealthy woman who returns to her village to take revenge on the man who has wronged her, has played to half-filled houses, grossing a meager weekly total of just over $200,000. The show’s five Tony nods — for Rivera, McNally, and Kander and Ebb — have had no discernible impact. And the show has little chance of prevailing at the Tonys if the theater experts at goldderby.com prove to be correct in their prognostications. That has left the show’s producers, led by Tom Kirdahy, in the position of touting “The Visit” as a show that might not gets its due in its own time but which history will treat favorably.“I’m not nervous about the future of ‘The Visit,’” Kirdahy remarked recently. “We believe that we are sitting on a masterwork and history is full of examples of masterworks that were not appreciated when they were initially presented. I have no doubt that ‘The Visit’ will survive the scrutiny of history, that it will be performed all over the world, and that it will prove to be an essential and important piece of the musical theater canon.”What may be having a deleterious effect on the commercial prospects of “The Visit” is the fact that it has arrived on Broadway at an especially competitive moment. The perennials, like “The Lion King,” “Wicked,” and “Book of Mormon,” continue to suck most of the energy out of the room, while the new musicals like “Finding Neverland,” “An American in Paris,” “Something Rotten,” and “Fun Home” are stealing much of its thunder. The latter can be said to be just as groundbreaking and challenging as “The Visit,” if not more so, and it is doing surprisingly well at the box-office. Nevertheless, “The Visit,” given its subject matter, was a riskier proposition than usual. In fact, it had been kicking around since 2000 waiting for a commercial producer to bring it to Broadway. Kirdahy signed on not only because he believed in the project but also because he is married to the playwright Terrence McNally. Furthermore, in the present feast-or-famine climate on Broadway, he has been feasting on the record-breaking grosses of his other production this season, the revival of “It’s Only A Play,” also written by McNally. After several extensions, the comedy, starring Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, and Stockard Channing, ends its run on June 7 having made a substantial profit.Kirdahy is not necessarily robbing Peter to pay Paul. But aside from making buckets of money and winning awards, the prospect of backing a classic can also be a potent draw for a producer. Who wouldn’t want to be like Irene Selznick, who produced “A Streetcar Named Desire,” or Herman Levin, whose name was above the title of “My Fair Lady?” Of course, those shows were smash hits. But the idea of producing a show with little hope of recoupment is hardly unprecedented. A famous example is “Caroline, Or Change,” about an embittered black maid teaching a life lesson to a kid in a Jewish household in the Louisiana of the 1960s. Written by Tony Kushner and with songs by Jeanine Tesori (“Fun Home”), the daringly inventive musical divided the critics, including a dismissal from Ben Brantley of The New York Times. Yet despite the headwinds, a group of New York producers decided that it was important for this particular masterwork to reach Broadway even if they lost their entire investment in the process. That was the ultimate result. Moreover, although it was nominated for six Tony Awards that year, it won only one for Anika Noni Rose in a featured role.But history has treated “Caroline, Or Change” with great respect in the intervening decade. There have been numerous well-received regional productions, and in 2006 the show was presented at the National Theatre, where it won the prestigious Olivier Award for Best New Musical. Kirdahy and his colleagues are hoping for the same for “The Visit” once its Broadway tenancy is up — which may be sooner rather than later.
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