In about a month, the professional life of the musical version of The Scarlet Pimpernel will come to an end in Grand Rapids, Michigan, some four years and $22 million after the original version opened on Broadway to a chorus of jeers from the critics.
It is a production that has gone through as many changes as the characters do themselves, being remade from the critical flop into one that not only has re-won the critics, but has also built a loyal and growing following. Not enough, however, to turn around the financial fortunes of this show.
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Among its last stops will be a performance this week at Providence Performing Arts Center. The show opens tomorrow night and runs through the week.
“It’s a very very rare production that returns its investment and makes a return on the initial investment,” said Joshua Rosenblum, a producer at Radio City Entertainment, a division of Madison Square Garden and the show’s producer. “It’s been a long haul. The original investors put in about $11 million to get the show up on BroadwayProbably another $11 million has been put in over time in the three versions since.”
But to Radio City, Rosenblum said, the value of the show has been in what he terms “advancing the brand.”
“We always want to advance the brand status of Radio City Entertainment,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons we go into this. By going across the country and tying our name to productions like this you can advance the brand.”
Radio City became involved after it opened on Broadway about three years ago to poor reviews.
“It definitely got beaten up by the critics, but it was an audience favorite,” Rosenblum said. He said the show “hung around” because the producers had “deep pockets,” but eventually those pockets weren’t quite deep enough and Radio City Entertainment and another investor stepped forward to buy the show from the original producers, taking over the show’s assets.
They chose to remount the show while it was still running and turn it into what they hoped would be a profitable production. They would rehearse the new show during the day, and put on the old one at night, Rosenblum said. It closed for just one week, and then reopened to good notices.
The Scarlet Pimpernel ran another six months on Broadway, but closed again because the theater it was in was promised to another production. It returned to a smaller house on Broadway and then began the current 58-week tour.
In the end it will not be a money maker for Radio City.
“There’s a lot of ways to measure the value of getting into a venture like this,” Rosenblum said. “Our goal on the tour of The Scarlet Pimpernel was to basically break even. We didn’t set our goals outrageously high. The road portion will get to break even and beyond. We still have some losses to recover for the previous incarnation.”
One of the problems the show faced was the ability to market a musical that didn’t have the same name recognition as the mega-shows like Phantom of the Opera or Miss Saigon, or the classics, like Sound of Music or Fiddler on the Roof.
“We have a number of difficulties that other shows aren’t burdened with,” Rosenblum said. “Interestingly, if you surveyed audiences around the country, audiences who go to the theater and ask them what they most like to see, across the board they would say new musicals.
“The challenge for the presenter in each of these towns is that once they mount the show, audiences don’t necessarily go out and see them,” Rosenblum said. “We had a title that sounds familiar, a literary pedigree. What they think they are getting is a historical costumed drama. What they actually get is a modern pop comedy. They think they had read it in high school. They’re not quite sure what it is. What we’re selling is not that at all. It’s a musical comedy.”
In New York it was easier to sell, he said, because there was a longer lead time, but “when working with a week to go into a market, it’s a struggle.”
He said they rely on television and the show’s Web site, which he called its best marketing tool.
“It’s a great way to tell the story,” Rosenblum said. “We also have a group of intense fans. They call themselves the Pimpies. They are primarily a Web based community and they get the word out themselves in each of the markets.”
Once the show concludes its professional run in Grand Rapids in a few weeks, it will be up the “Pimpies” to keep it alive. And they will, Rosenblum said, with high school and community group and smaller productions, all of which will pay for the rights to the show, raising expectations that in time the Scarlet Pimpernel will also find financial success.
