Here Lies Love, the costly David Byrne-Fatboy Slim immersive musical that required an extensive renovation of the Broadway Theatre for its dance club setting, will play its final Broadway performance on Sunday, November 26 2023.
When it closes, Here Lies Love will have played 33 previews and 149 regular performances at the Broadway Theatre.
At an estimated cost of $22 million, Here Lies Love, which uses a dance club setting to tell the story of the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos, will now be among Broadway’s priciest flops in recent years. Despite a promising start when it opened July 20, the show failed to sustain the level of ticket sales that would cover its weekly operating costs. During the week ending November 5, for example, the show filled just 79% of seats at the Broadway, grossing $768,244.
A long-gestating production, the musical had its world premiere Off Broadway at The Public Theater in 2013, returning to the venue in 2014-2015. A West End production debuted at London’s Royal National Theatre in 2014, and a production opened at Seattle Repertory Theatre in 2017.
The Off Broadway production was an audience favorite and drew mostly excellent reviews. The transition to Broadway, however, never quite took hold, either critically or among audiences (despite various ticket initiatives). Much of the show’s appeal – or intended appeal – is its fun-night-out approach to theater, with a large segment of the orchestra-level audience required to participate in the dance-club goings-on. The unusual approach likely found a more receptive audience at the downtown Manhattan Public Theater.
It's disheartening that a show's weekly nut (weekly operating expenses like salaries and rent) appear to be at more than 80% of capacity. It means that a show has to effectively sell out just to get to the point where investors can even start to make back their capital investment (initial costs like development, rehearsals, set/lighting/sound design and construction and - in the case of Here Lies Love - extensive theatre renovations).
That particular figure of $768,244 in the Deadline article doesn't quite line up with the Variety article on Here Lies Love's closing, which refers to a Washington Post article, stating:
But the overall point remains. You have to be a hit just to have a chance of breaking even on Broadway, and a smash hit to turn a profit.
The Broadway production of Here Lies Love had a bit of a bumpy ride - I remember that some members of the Filipino community objected to the show's subject matter (claiming it glorified the Marcos regime), and the production also got into trouble over its planned use of pre-recorded music rather than live musicians. Eventually they agreed to use 12 live musicians, but of course 12 live musicians also adds about $25,000 to the weekly nut. (Broadway musicians are paid at least $2143.10 per week.)
It's a tough business.
BTW, I saw the Public Theater production of Here Lies Love back in 2014, and while the style of music wasn't my cup of tea, I loved the immersive staging. It was one of those shows that made me realise what a talented director Alex Timbers is. I remember that I really wanted him to have used the immersive approach on a production of Evita instead. (Cause Here Lies Love is basically the Filipino version of Evita. 😁)