With road audiences demanding better quality, and shows like Phantom of the Opera “raising the bar,” theaters continue to be pushed to put on better quality productions, and at higher prices.
For Scott L. Zieger, president of PACE Theatrical Group, producers of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, which opens tomorrow night at the Providence Performing Arts Center, the “uptick” in the level of quality is the most significant change he’s seen in his 16 years in the theater business.
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“I think the subscription audiences are becoming more sophisticated,” Zieger said. “Phantom of the Opera and Le Miz raised the bars, forced every producer to uptick the level of qualitythe taste of the touring theater patron became more sophisticated.
“You can’t necessarily deliver a show of compromised quality,” he said. “Most of the major tours look like direct sisters of their Broadway counterparts. The quality has been upticked and so has the price. It costs a little more to get them out.”
Zieger believes Sunset Boulevard is just one of those “uptick” productions, a musical that combines a good score, with quality performances (Petula Clark who starred in the London version plays the lead here), and a “really interesting, compelling and dangerous” story. It is also an example of how a producer can take what Zieger characterizes as a “gigantic physical production” that played on Broadway and in London to one that fits into eight performance runs, and parades around the country to a variety of venues, playing in theaters that seat from 2,000 to 3,000 patrons.
It is, Zieger said, a matter of taking “the heart and sole of the piece – the score, the book and the costumes – it’s a wonderful pageant – structured to a particular physical environment.”
PACE produces the productions for not only theaters like Providence Performing Arts Center with which PACE contracts to present the performance, but also to the 38 cities where PACE itself runs subscription series.
