The Biggest All-Time Flop Ever

By William A. Henry III /

Just a few days earlier, Choreographer Debbie Allen had been counseling the young performers of Carrie about how to handle sudden stardom. But as the disheartening word spread backstage, the ensemble members realized that they might have to learn instead to handle sudden unemployment. Last week, less than 72 hours after it opened as the Broadway season's most opulent American musical, Carrie closed. Stephen King's 1974 novel about a tormented teenager with psychic powers became a best seller, then a multiple Oscar nominee as a 1976 movie. But onstage it set records of a different sort: losing more than $7 million made it Broadway's biggest failure ever. Said President Rocco Landesman of Jujamcyn Theaters, which invested $500,000 and provided a house for the show: "This is the biggest flop in the world history of the theater, going all the way back to Aristophanes."

Carrie is just one more example, if an especially lurid one, of the self- destructive expansion of the Broadway musical. The form has become as ungainly and vulnerable as the dinosaur. Although the season just past is regarded as the strongest for musicals in a decade, eight of its 15 musical productions have closed, and two may soon join them.

Still, with Carrie the actors were not the only ones startled by the abruptness of the shutdown. The technical staff, the press agent, even the creators thought they had been assured of at least one more week by Producer Friedrich Kurz, 39, a West German impresario making his Broadway debut. Although most of the reviews had been scathing -- particularly about the superannuated kick line of high school girls, cumbersomely elaborate sets and inadvertently hilarious dance number about slaughtering a pig -- a number of critics nonetheless expected the show to find an audience and thrive. That was what had happened, despite savage reviews from London critics, during a four- week British trial run at the Stratford-upon-Avon home of the co-producer, the Royal Shakespeare Company. And night after night during Broadway previews, while some audience members laughed derisively, others thundered applause for the pelvic dances, the pyrotechnic effects and the open-throttle singing of Stars Linzi Hateley and Betty Buckley.

But after surveying the prospects, Kurz, who has prospered by importing Cats into his home country, flew back to Europe without telling Landesman or many of his other collaborators that he had ordered a closing notice to be put up at the theater. According to investors, Kurz thereby saved an estimated $150,000 to $175,000, the difference between another week's operating costs and the projected box-office income. He was really prompted, however, by what usually determines the fate of unfavorably reviewed shows: he had run out of money. To have any hope of turning things around, he needed an additional $2 million or more. That would pay for TV advertising and cover losses for up to two months until the ads and word of mouth might bring in a profitably large audience. "I made an economic decision to cut my losses," said Kurz in his Hamburg office. "Broadway is Russian roulette, and I'm not a gambler."

The advertising-and-word-of-mouth strategy worked for Evita (1979), which opened to unenthusiastic reviews yet ran for almost four years. But it is not infallible: an additional $1 million enabled the 1985 Singin' in the Rain to survive almost a year, yet apparently did not recoup the show's $5 million- plus investment. Still, says Carrie's composer Michael Gore, whose credits include the movie Fame, "you can't produce a Broadway show without a reserve fund. That is my major dissatisfaction with this show."

Carrie might have had just such a reserve if it held to its original $5 million budget. The show was eventually capitalized at $7 million, primarily by British and West German investors who had scant Broadway experience. But runaway costs reached, by some accounts, about $8 million, attributable partly to the high-tech fashion in current musicals, partly to the complexity of multinational production, partly to old-fashioned indulgence. Says the Royal Shakespeare Company's artistic director Terry Hands, who staged the show: "It started to be loaded with lavish trappings, none of which I believe were necessary." Sources involved in financing the project estimate that the show's design elements alone cost nearly $4 million, including about $1 million each for costumes, sound and the elaborate hydraulically powered sets. About a third of Jujamcyn's $500,000 investment was spent on repainting its Virginia Theater black, to suit Carrie's somber theme, and on installing electrical wiring for effects like the laser barrage at the climax, when Carrie burns down her school gym.

The Royal Shakespeare Company was paid for mounting Carrie as part of its season, and thus secured a profit of roughly $500,000. As a result of the unusual transatlantic production, there was a hefty bill for the transport and lodging of the creators and the Anglo-American cast. On Broadway, some 20% of each week's box-office income was set aside for royalties to the creative team, including Novelist King, who otherwise had no role in the show. Another debated expenditure was $500,000 plus for a print, poster and TV ad campaign in New York City before the show opened, much of it teasingly mysterious rather than hard sell.

As a result of all these costs, Carrie barely had carfare home after its Broadway opening night. There was no contingency plan, just a hope against hope for generosity from the critics. When that failed, Gore, Librettist Lawrence Cohen and Lyricist Dean Pitchford started shopping for emergency investors to create an instant reserve fund. Landesman pondered stepping in with more cash from Jujamcyn but in the end decided not to underwrite even one additional week's losses so the search for investors could go on. Explains Landesman: "I would have put up $500,000, but I didn't see the rest of the $2 million coming from anywhere." After a last forlorn scramble, neither did anyone else.