“Clear the flop wall at Joe Allen! We’re going to need the space!”
That’s how one wag sizes up the situation on Broadway this week. To accommodate the coming bloodbath, Joe Allen may have to remove some of the posters on the long brick wall of his West 46th Street restaurant — of shows like “Nick & Nora,” “Carrie” and “Dude” — or start putting them up next door at Orso.
The first to fall was “The Heidi Chronicles,” which, despite glowing reviews and Elisabeth Moss, will close May 3. Though I liked Wendy Wasserstein’s 1988 play the first time around, the subject of a single woman deciding to have a child on her own doesn’t pack much punch in 2015.
Broadway vultures believe the next to close will be “Living on Love,” starring opera’s Renée Fleming. The box office was so weak in previews, sources say, the producers considered posting a closing notice on opening night. They decided to wait for the reviews, some of which turned out to be the equivalent of closing notices (“lumpy,” “a piffle,” “I laughed twice”).
The betting is that this one goes down within two weeks.
“Doctor Zhivago,” the $10 million “Les Miz” wannabe, “has no chance,” one insider says. “ There is no audience for the show.”
The day the terrible reviews came out, sources say, the little trickle of box office receipts dried up completely. With no prospects of any meaningful Tony nominations — and unless Omar Sharif decides to join the cast — “Zhivago” may be headed for Siberia by the end of the month.
(A blini of “Zhivago” gossip: I’m told tensions among the creative team were running so high during previews that a “creative wrangler” had to be brought in to run shuttle diplomacy. But the creative Cold War continued . . .)
“It Shoulda Been You,” a new musical directed by David Hyde Pierce, is likely to hang on for another few weeks or so. Producer Daryl Roth has the resources to put up a fight. She’s aggressively courting the suburban audience, for whom, she believes, a sweet show about a wedding has appeal.
“It’s a noble effort, but it’s not going to work,” a veteran producer says.
There’s another straggler out there, but I can’t remember it. Wait.
“Gigi.” That’s it!
Well, that about sums up its situation. It opened, but nobody knows when, where or why.
As for the newly opened “Something Rotten!,” insiders were surprised at the vitriol hurled at it by Ben Brantley in the Times. I happen to agree with him. I find musicals in which guys wear giant codpieces and mug as if they were graduates of The Charles Nelson Reilly Academy of Dramatic Arts insufferable.
But he and I are in the minority.
“Something Rotten!” is making a lot of people deliriously happy. The cast will perform the opening number (“Welcome to the Renaissance”) on the Tony telecast and the audience will love it.
Ben and I will cringe.