‘Psycho’ killer feud
Greed on both $ides in bloody skirmish for musical
T HE gossip at the American Theatre Wing’s classy salute to Angela Lansbury Monday night centered on the spat between the producers of “American Psycho” and their former partner, offBroadway’s nonprofit Second Stage.
The producers, Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel and David Johnson of Act 4 Entertainment, have decided to take the musical directly to Broadway next year, leaving poor little Second Stage in the lurch.
Naturally, this has been portrayed by that socialist scold, the New York Times, as an example of “sharpelbowed,” greedy Broad way types sidelining Second Stage to get their hands on a hit.
But the nonprofits have their hands out, too — for Broadway glory, Tony Awards and “enhancement money.” Sources involved in the negotiations say Second Stage was asking for quite a bit of that last: $1.5 million, instead of the usual $500,000 to $750,000.
“I wouldn’t call it enhancement money,” a source says. “I’d call it highway robbery.”
The deal between Broadway producers and nonprofits works like this: The producers pay much of the production costs, which are considerably cheaper at a nonprofit theater than at, say, Boston’s Colonial Theatre or the Forest in Philadelphia, where shows used to try out before coming to New York. If the production does well on Broadway, the nonprofit gets a share of the profits while assuming very little of the risk.
But producers say many nonprofits are starting to ask for heftier fees. At some point, it makes sense to bypass them and put the money into a workshop instead: If the show’s a winner, the producers keep all the money for themselves. That’s what’s happened with “American Psycho.”
In their zeal to partner with Broadway producers, the nonprofits’ roster of shows is looking ever more commercial. What, pray tell, is the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta doing with “Bull Durham”? (Thank you, Charles Ish
erwood, for sparing us that one with your tepid review.)
The Denver Center Theatre is doing “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”? Cut
ting edge!
And does anybody think the Roundabout exhumed its revival of
“Cabaret” with Alan
Cumming (which I liked a lot, by the way) for the sake of art? I’m not going to let those sharp elbows at Richards & Co. off so easy, either. Some have portrayed “American Psycho,” which has a score by Duncan Sheik (“Spring Awakening”), as a surefire hit. It’s got a famous title, good buzz from London, where it originated, and a hunky
leading man, Benjamin
Walker.
But look at the London reviews, and you’ll see some red flags. “Heartless and pretentious,” from the Telegraph, jumps to mind.
I’m also chuckling at this: Act 4’s Johnson describes the group as dedicated to productions that “motivate and inspire audiences across the world toward social action.”
How a show about a serial killer who nails his victims to the floor and slices off their tongues will inspire an audience toward “social action” eludes me. And what kind of “social action” are we talking about? Something that could have been cooked up by Charles Manson, I fear.
But I’m just a little lamb picking my way through the sharpelbowed world of those greedy producers, both forprofit and not.