Hey, clanwilson, you may be making history as the first person to ever own tickets for two shows on the same night because one of them extended its run! Keep posted on how the situation plays out!
Incidentally, the producers of Ragtime said they extended the show for a week, because there was a big fluu\rry of ticket buying after the announcement about he January 3 closing was made.
On the closing front, another announcement: Finian's Rainbow shutters on January 17.

Drat. I really wanted to see Finian's Rainbow. I arrive ON the 17th.

Update on Ragtime/Brief Encounter Dilemma:

St. Ann's Warehouse could not refund for my Brief Encounter ticket, which I expected. However, I was offered another night, so that I could still see Ragtime. Unfortunately, that wasn't a possibility since I already had tickets for other shows. (Four in three days!)

After being on the phone about 30 minutes, yikes, Ticketmaster did refund my Ragtime ticket since it was at fault for telling me the show was cancelled in the first place. Brief Encounter, here I come!

Ah, there still is goodness and fair play in the world!
Still, it's too bad you couldn't fit Ragtime in.

Listen...you can hear Doris Day singing, "Que Sera Sera." I'll just have to catch Ragtime when it rolls around again in a decade or two! :-)

It's a shame about 'Finian's Rainbow' too. It's too traditional to survive in these lean times. And their radio ads didn't help themselves one bit - Had I not seen the show and loved it, the ads would not have convinced me to go - they were pretty lame. Any bets on who's biting the bullet next?

And 'Bye Bye Birdie' still lives on - go figure!

"It's too traditional to survive in these lean times."

You mean like the smash hit South Pacific? That's about as traditional as they come as far as musicals go. What's the difference? For one thing South Pacific got pretty much rave reviews all around and was a really well done revival. While I didn't see Finian's Rainbow, the reviews were very mixed and little made it sound like anything near the quality of that South Pacific revival.

No. I wasn't comparing it to SP. They're not the same for a number of reasons. What I meant, and I've said it a number of times, is that so many B'way goers want to see productions like Billy Elliot (complete with trapeze), Mama Mia, Jersey Boys (both pop music, more revue than play), etc. The FR review in the NY Times was spot on and excellent. We know that an excellent review does not necessarily guarantee a long run. While you're mentioning SP, I feel that most Lincoln Center Theater productions (performed at LC) don't get the same theater going crowd as Times Square. Yes, of course there is overlap, but you get fewer out of NY visitors there and in general, more avid theater goers attend their productions. You find less applause for a mere curtain rising, etc. I attend there often enough to have this opinion.

cpg, your theory isn't totally valid, since studies have shown that out-of-towners comprise the majority of Broadway theatergoers. Thus, South Pacific would have a smaller base from which to draw than Finian's Rainbow!

PS: Of course, the failure of Finian's Rainbow could also be traced to the simple fact that a lot of theater regulars (like me) just weren't attracted to the show.

This just in...I received an email from Ticketmaster this morning saying that there's a musical coming across the pond this Spring called ENRON.

Yeah it's about the ENRON disaster!!

For those of you who don't know, TDF Off Off (house under 100 seats) Broadway are available to anyone. You can buy them in advance (sets of 4 - 36 dollars) and they send you a quarterly newsletter about shows but the newsletter is online if you click the note in red that says it's online.

http://tdf.org/TDF_ServicePage.aspx?id=102&%20do=v

Interesting theater in interesting neighborhoods.

CPG, no I didn't mean that you were comparing the two shows, I just meant that your concept of "too traditional" just doesn't hold water. The reasons a show fail or succeed are really complex, but generally speaking the old "it didn't find its audience" is perhaps the best one. Howard is right, that after the usual Lincoln Center subscribers have seen a show at LC, its success depends on word of mouth and general interest from the tourists and general public. One might say that the name of South Pacific is a bigger draw than the name of Finian's Rainbow -- but I meant it's hardly fair to say the reason Finian's failed is because "it's too traditional".

And incidentally, I have not yet seen South Pacific. It had been running quite a while when I was last in New York, but I could NOT get tickets at all and there were NO discounts. That is in direct contrast to Finian's Rainbow which ran on discounts and partial audiences from the beginning. One cannot attribute the success of South Pacific to being at the Lincoln Center and drawing from a different audience base -- especially after running for a year or more!

<< One cannot attribute the success of South Pacific to being at the Lincoln Center and drawing from a different audience base -- especially after running for a year or more!>>

Never said this and never meant this. I've seen enough 'dogs' at LC to know. Perhaps I should have started a new paragraph when talking about SP. (no more stream of consciousness for me!) When NP mentioned SP, I just threw in my opinion; it was an aside. I just feel that, on the whole, it is a different audience. SP would be successful if it played in Macy's!

Howard - I don't follow your last sentence of the 7:24 post. Please explain.

I'm starting 2010 in the fog!

Oh god help me. I just went to NYC and theater there in early Dec. and following this thread is making me want to go back already. April come quickly, please. I have a gift cert. for two nights at DeNiro's Greenwich hotel and am using it then. But I need theater and a good bistro meal and a walk through Chelsea right now.

I'm not Howard, but I'm sure he was responding to your comment about Lincoln Center having a different audience base than mainstream Broadway. Following that idea, it would be logical then to assume that that "artsy local base" for Lincoln Center would be a fraction of the huge base of tourists coming to NYC to see theatre -- therefore using that different base idea, SP would have a very limited base to draw from compared to the huge base of mainstream Broadway. So clearly the success of SP draws from tourists much more than the Lincoln Center crowd. As you just said, there are dogs too at Lincoln Center and they don't become huge held over hits -- so the audience base there should not have anything at all to do with making SP a huge long running hit. Does that lift a little of the fog?

I didn't mean to make a big deal about SP. I was only using a single example to say that I don't believe "being too traditional" has anything to do with Finian's Rainbow closing.

Don't you think that many theatergoers (whether tourist, New Jersey, the boroughs or local) want to see things that are either extravaganzas, have a big name starring in it, already familiar, or pop related? I see this all the time and imo, this is a big base, one that supports some mediocre to average theater. You are not the average theatergoer; hence, I think that you would have liked FR, the Royal Family, Superior Donuts, and others that I can't think of right now.

Thanks Patrick for supplying the accurate response to CPG's question.
While you are right, CPG, is saying that the masses (my word) certainly do support some mediocre to average theater. But, they also support some damned good theater like West Side Story, Hair, South Pacific and Billy Elliot!
The more I think about the failure of Finian's Rainbow to draw an audience, the more I'm convinced it was simply a case of most people just not being attracted to its story line and message. Good music can only go so far in bringing in an audience!
Serious drama is another matter. The lack of support for it by the overwhelming majority of theater attendees is a rather sad situation. It's almost tragic that having a big-name star or two is just about mandatory for a straight play to succeed.
Tomorrow's NY Times arts section has two very interesting articles--one about the status of musicals and the other about the use of big-name stars in straight plays.

So why did you decide to pass on FR?

That's easy to answer....There were other shows that we would rather see. And, since we don't have an unlimited budget for the theater, we tend to make careful choices. Do I feel bad about missing Finian's Rainbow? Not really. The way I see it, any year when we can see productions of Waiting for Godot, West Side Story, Billy Elliot and even a less-than-perfect Ragtime is good year!