Irene rains on Broadway's bottom line

NEW YORK - When Kate Naver, an Australian who'd come to New York to see Broadway shows, watched Friday night as

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

star John Larroquette ad-libbed a joke about Hurricane Irene, she was tickled.

But shortly after the show ended, she was far less pleased when she learned that the storm had forced the cancellation of Broadway performances the rest of the weekend, including a Saturday evening staging of Mary Poppins for which she held a ticket.

"I'm from Melbourne, where we have storms like this all the time," said Naver, 37. "I can't believe so many people now have their theater plans ruined because of some rain, or even a lot of rain."

Naver is among the thousands of theatergoers, many from out of town and on restrictive schedules, whose plans were thrown into disarray when the theater trade group the Broadway League announced it was canceling all weekend performances because of Irene.

Many Off-Broadway theaters had to follow suit when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg halted all mass transit at noon Saturday, effectively cutting off actors and crews from Manhattan.

It was the first en masse closure in New York theater for nonlabor reasons since a blackout in August 2003. To some, the pain was more acute because Irene caused little damage in the city and also brought little rain during the daytime matinee hours.

Theatergoers weren't the only ones losing out. For an industry that has been blessed lately with healthy attendance - Broadway took in a record $1.08 billion for the year ending May 31, a 6 percent increase over the previous year - it was a substantial blow. For some shows, the storm scrapped four performances, each one capable of bringing in as much as $250,000 in ticket sales, according to one estimate. Off-Broadway productions had it even rougher; they usually operate on thinner margins.

After the approaching hurricane prompted producers to cancel matinee and evening performances Saturday and Sunday, every show lost money.

According to the Broadway League on Monday, one of the hardest hit shows was Billy Elliot: The Musical, which was able to put on only four performances last week and made only $358,485, down from $731,895 the preceding week.

The biggest casualties of Irene were The Lion King, which dropped almost $710,000 from the preceding week, and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, which had revenues fall about $634,000.

The least-hurt shows were Master Class, with Tyne Daly, down only $106,000 from the previous week, and Hair, which saw receipts dip $145,000.

Overall, the total box-office gross for the week ending Sunday was a meek $11,622,879, compared with last week's robust $20,079,820. Even so, the total haul so far this season is still ahead of last season at this point.

Refunds are being given to all Broadway patrons, with some shows working out exchange policies, though many out-of-town visitors won't be able to take advantage of them. The Broadway League and many Off-Broadway theater operators resumed a normal schedule Monday, when a full roster of public-transit services returned.

For Spider-Man, the closures were especially difficult, slowing momentum on a show that seemed to have been given a jump-start when it rebooted with a new book and director in June.

"There was a little bit of here we go again," said Spider-Man colead producer Jeremiah J. Harris, alluding to the show's much publicized problems. "It was definitely something we didn't need."

Harris said he and his partners had decided to shut down even before the Broadway League came to the same conclusion for the entire theater district.

"It would be a problem if, during a performance, the electricity went out with 2,000 people in the theater and only the emergency lights came on, and Spider-Man was hanging up there," he said, seeming to evoke the show's history of actor mishaps.

Producers point out that, unlike baseball, theater performances can't be made up, since Actors' Equity and various circumstances limit the number of performances in a given week. That meant the shutdown caused a particularly difficult issue for smaller productions, which need every dollar they can get.

"What [Bloomberg] did was cut us off at the knees," said Pamela Hall, a partner and director at the St. Luke's Theatre, a popular Off-Broadway venue near Times Square that is staging several productions, including the farce My Big Gay Italian Wedding and the musical Danny and Sylvia.

"First he sent out a directive telling us to close, and our actors all live in New Jersey and Brooklyn, so they couldn't get here even if we wanted to stay open."

A hugely popular show such as The Book of Mormon was less likely to feel the impact. But ticket holders may not have been thinking that way; many had waited months for tickets to the Tony-winning musical satire, often paying hundreds of dollars for the privilege of entering the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. Those who bought tickets at the box office could exchange them for another time subject to availability - a challenge, since there isn't an available Mormon seat for weeks if not months.