SHN sues in bid to keep two plays off Curran stage
The Broadway productions of the Tony Award-winning plays “Dear Evan Hansen” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” previously announced for the Curran theater in San Francisco, have been thrown into doubt by a lawsuit.
Tickets already are on sale for “Hansen,” with only limited availability left in the 1,600-seat house. Winner of the Tony Award for best musical of 2017, it opens in December. Ticket sales have not yet started for “Potter,” which won for best play in 2018, and is scheduled to open in the fall of 2019.
But in a court motion filed Sept. 25, the plaintiff Nederlander of San Francisco and SHN Productions has asked a judge for a preliminary injunction to prevent CSH Theaters, controlled by Carole Shorenstein Hays, from opening either show.
The suit, which is essentially a battle for control of San Francisco’s commercial stages between former business partners Robert Nederlander and Shorenstein Hays, was filed in the Court of Chancery for the State of Delaware, where both theater companies are operated as limited liability corporations.
As first reported by the New York Times, the suit calls for an
expedited proceeding to stop the production of the two plays. Nederlander maintains their staging at the Curran violates a non-compete contract clause for productions staged within 100 miles of San Francisco. Citing “irreparable harm” and loss of subscription sales for SHN, the suit asks the court to block the staging of “Hansen” and “Harry Potter” at the Curran.
Plaintiff ’s attorney Tammy Mercer of Young, Conaway, Stargatt and Taylor, in Wilmington, Del., did not respond to a request for comment. Scott Kane, spokesman for SHN, said that “SHN does not comment on litigation matters.”
In a statement to The Chronicle, David B. Tulchin of Sullivan & Cromwell in New York, attorney for the defense, noted that the Delaware Chancery Court had already ruled for Shorenstein Hays and her husband, Dr. Jeffrey Hays, in a related suit this summer.
“This is a situation where a sore loser seeks again to strike out at Mrs. and Dr. Hays, and is also trying to interfere improperly with the business of the Curran theater and of unrelated thirdparty producers who have made arrangements to present their successful shows in a theater of their choosing” albeit one that Mr. Nederlander does not control, Tulchin said.
The earlier lawsuit was brought about after the breakup of the SHN partnership, presenters of the “Best of Broadway” series and longtime operators of the Golden Gate and the Orpheum — the two largest commercial stages in the city. The SHN breakup was complicated because Shorenstein Hays still owns half of SHN. But she left the board and gave up any active control of SHN in 2014.
At the time, Shorenstein Hays announced that she was forming her own company, CSH. She had already bought the Curran, for $16.6 million. SHN had leased the Curran for decades and Shorenstein Hays allegedly made an oral promise to continue to lease it to SHN. Shorenstein Hays later denied that she had made any such promise.
In January 2017, after a two-year, multimilliondollar remodel, CSH hosted a grand reopening of the Curran, with the Broadway hit “Fun Home.” The lawsuits soon followed.
On July 31, the Chancery Court ruled on the side of Shorenstein Hays, on the grounds that there was not a preponderance of evidence to prove that she promised to lease the Curran to SHN, and even if she did it was not an enforceable agreement.
In the ensuing motion, Nederlander asked the judge to expedite the motion to prevent the staging of “Dear Evan Hansen” from beginning. But no timetable was given.
“We expect the court in Delaware to reject Nederlander’s claims again,” said Tulchin, “and we fully anticipate that theatergoers in San Francisco will have every opportunity to see both ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ at the Curran.”