How did the “end of happiness” overcome a fragile start and a great win in Tonys
“Perhaps a happy end” was a very unhappy start.
The victory of the show at the Tony Awards ceremony on Sunday night, where he won six honors, including the best new music, crowned a remarkable transformation of a small production of a confusing title and a hypothesis that is difficult to sell by those familiar with the industry as dead when it arrived when a preview began last fall.
But in the early hours of Monday morning, as the performance of artists and producers in the strange show with their creative team and investors in Bryant Park Grill, the celebrities ultimately allowed to admit that their offer against everything is broken.
His star, Darren Chris, who won the first Tony to play Oliver, is one of the escaping accompanying, and he wanders in a relationship that changes life (good, life changed) with a robot through the hall: “We did not know whether this offer would open.” Chris, winner of the Emmy Award (for “American Crime Story”) and “Glee” graduates, is also a member of the show production team.
“We didn’t have the luxury to dream of a scenario like this,” he said. “This was definitely the little show that could.”
How bad is things? Last summer, the main producers of the exhibition, Jeffrey Richards and Hunt Arnold, postponed the first performance for a month, referring to the problems of the supply chain, which the producers insist that they be real (there was a delay in the availability of digital video tiles from China), but there was a lot of thought that was a cover story to hide financial problems.
“They put a thorn in us,” said Alan Williams, executive producer of the exhibition.
Production has temporarily cleared workers, recovered tickets for the month A suggestion that music may not open.
“People have started sending text messages to me with sympathy,” said Helen Ji Shen, the star participating in Chris, who later plays a robot named Claire. “We never felt safe.”
Some are expected to help finance the offer. The offer started away, not the desire to put their money in a sunken ship.
“We have lost a lot of investors because of this Tiktok,” said Arnold. “No investor wants to write a check and believe they will not be able to see the show.”
By the time when “Perhaps Happy End” began a preview on October 16, she had sold only $ 450,000 tickets – which is very low for new Broadway music.
“Perhaps a happy end”, which has not finished collecting the value of $ 16 million until the opening week of the opening, bleeding money through the inspections. The weekends were less than $ 300,000, which is less than the weekly operating costs of $ 765,000. The Belasco Theater was 973 seats about 20 percent. By the fourth week of offers, the average price of tickets in the exhibition decreased to 45 dollars in catastrophic, partly due to the fact that the producers decided to provide all tickets for between $ 30 and $ 69 in a calculated effort, but also desperate, to get seats filled with seats and build a word.
Then there was a huge marketing challenge: how to describe a offer with only four representatives, two of them playing robots, exploring isolated isolation, memory and love. Music is a mixture of American independent pop, jazz and Broadway, and the design is a scene that slowly reveals automation and projections to enhance stories.
Arnold said: “Every time you try to explain,” Well, there are these two robots, in unmatched torrents, South Korea, “People like,” This does not seem like a music for me. “
The exhibition website does not use the word “robot” when explaining what is going on around it. The director, Michael Ardan, described the music as “a nice, contemplative piece, in several ways, and it is not an easy sale.” Sheen said her favorite argument was “just trust me.”
“It is like a new color description,” she said. “We did not know how to describe this piece to people.”
Those who watched the show were transferred, and started to tell others. “I think people like to be able to share a secret,” said Erdin.
The offer was opened on November 12, and critics’ reviews It was largely positive. The New York Times wrote: “The Western.” “Jewel Habibi,” Washington Post announced.
But still, doubt. Broadway is an exposed cross industry, and performances can be disrupted quickly-in late 2022, “KPOP” closed the music after just two weeks of opening and last year, “Tami Vai” continued after only three weeks.
“We left the city this morning after the opening night, and we said this very emotional farewell to everyone because we thought it would be very short.”
Producers, who felt comfortable by the word mouth and reviews, raised another $ 1.75 million to promote this offer. Holding began. “It was simply built gradually,” said Arnold. “We were burning a lot of money. But we could see that online feelings were changing, sales patterns were changing.”
The following week for the opening, the offer achieved $ 591,000. During the Christmas holidays, she had its first million dollars, and since then its beauty has exceeded the costs of running for most weeks. The offer has been sold mainly since the announcement of Tony’s nominations in early May.
It is still unclear whether the offer will make a profit on Broadway. The high costs of production have almost impossible on the new musical plays made money in New York – during the past three seasons, “& Juliet” has done this. But Tony Awards should help: There are usually theater pioneers who want to see the best musician winner.
“Perhaps a happy end” has an extraordinary history. Aronson and Park, who first appeared in Broadway with the show, are a team of songs – Aronson from the United States and a garden from South Korea. They worked in both countries and both languages.
Park had the idea that “maybe a happy end” while sitting at the Brooklyn Café in 2014. He heard the song.Daily robotsShe began to contemplate the interaction between technology, isolation and interconnection.
The first commercial production of the exhibition was in Seoul in 2016; Later that year, the book presented a copy in English in New York, where Richards saw that. He watched many offers in more than 50 years of work on Broadway, and his families what he considered “absolute creativity”, obtained commercial rights.
Music was on her way. Korean production was successful, and had several runs. There were also productions in Japan and China. In 2017, the English version, which was called “What I learned from people”, which included only three actors, won the Richard Rodgers Award, which supports the development of new musical plays.
Richards began helping to collect a creative team, hold workshops and collect money. Jordan signed in 2018, and Richards told an email that he found the material “destroyed, beautiful and ultimately confirmed life.”
The American show was the American show, directed by Jordan, in early 2020 at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta; Atlanta Journal It was called “impressive”, “ The Times Criter, Jesse Green, was called “Broadway ready”. Richards was hoping to bring him to Broadway next season, but then came the Box Coronverus.
By the time when theaters began to reopen, the momentum was lost, and the investors were high in demand and theaters were booked. “We had to return to the beginning,” Richards said.
But there were positive developments as well. Chris, whose performance was in the production of “American Buffalo” produced by Richards, agreed to do “perhaps a happy ending”, and encouraged his participation in theater and investors.
“Perhaps a happy ending” needs a theater with a small house (a small size) and a large stage (the collection is complex, and you need an elevator below its floor), and he could not find one for several seasons. But finally, last fall, belasco is available.
The space worked, and it also has a convincing history. Richards indicated that in 1960, a bad review called “All The Home Home” had a semi -artistic experience there and recovered, and she won the title “The Miracle on 44th Street”. Now, Richards said, “We are a miracle in the twenty -first century on Street 44.”
Before two in the morning on Monday, the Tony winners at the exhibition were still hosted by their silver statues while taking pictures with the well in an outdoor dining room, celebrating the full distribution of prizes that voters hosted the basics of their show-won their design, picturesque design and direction.
“You may feel that the industry is behind it because it is exactly the type of theater that everyone wants in this work,” said Dan Lafri, a scenic designer. “It is the heart, it’s original, it’s innovative – it’s all frightening things and risky but it has a greater reward in the end if you can stay in the cycle.”