Still seeking a bounce
'Lord' fizzled, but Toronto biz still OK
Although the big-budget tuner proved to be less than a ringer at the box office, plenty of other shows are drawing the crowds in record numbers, proving that the theater habit thrives, even when the theater hobbits fail.
However, when the $24 million mega-musical announced June 28 that it would be closing prematurely on Sept. 3 after a run of less than six months, it initially looked bad for legit action in the city that once had been seen as the second city for theater in North America.
Back in the 1990s, during the heyday of Garth Drabinsky's Livent empire, things were thriving in Toronto. Productions like "Kiss of the Spider Woman," "Show Boat," "Ragtime" and "Fosse" began their Broadway journeys here, and sit-down versions of "The Phantom of the Opera," "The Lion King" and "Mamma Mia!" all enjoyed lucrative multiyear runs.
That all changed. The aftermath of 9/11 put a dent in tourism, the SARS epidemic of 2003 knocked it for an even bigger loop, and supposed sure-fire hits like "The Producers" and "Hairspray" found their local productions folding in a couple of months.
"The Lord of the Rings" was supposed to change all that, but when the show opened on March 23 to generally dismal reviews, the audiences never materialized.
Producer Kevin Wallace blamed it all on the Toronto critics, but the truth is that the audience appetite for the show was never really there.
Despite the "LOTR" disappointment for the city, there's plenty of evidence that the auds here are going to the theater in record numbers and making up their own minds about what they want to see.
The Shaw Festival's production of "High Society" received unanimously negative notices from the Toronto press, far worse, in fact, than those that "LOTR" garnered, but it's playing to 91% attendance in the 850-seat Festival Theater -- the largest audiences in that venue for more than five years.
At the Stratford Festival, its version of "South Pacific" earned mixed notices, but it's sold out its entire run through the end of October in the 1,100-seat Avon Theater and is holding over two additional weeks in November. The touring production of "Monty Python's Spamalot" also opened to a divided press but is expected to go clean for its entire run through Sept. 10.
But it's not just commercial fare that's doing well. Soulpepper, the city's classical repertory company, is enjoying the biggest hit of its seven-year history with a production of Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing," which is playing to capacity houses and has been extended twice.
And the Toronto Fringe Festival, which mounted more than 1,000 performances of 136 plays, just enjoyed the largest attendance in the 18 years of its existence.
Local playwrights also are enjoying a boom, driven perhaps by the Tony-winning success of "The Drowsy Chaperone" and its four Toronto authors.
Leslie Arden, best known for "The House of Martin Guerre," which played at the Goodman, is heading back to Chicago with her latest work, "The Boys Are Coming Home," which moves Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" to the 1940s.
It's being directed by Gary Griffin as part of Northwestern U.'s American Musical Theater Project and has been invited to Gotham's Festival of New Musicals this fall.
Also this fall, two other Toronto tuners, "This Could Be Love" and "Job: The Hip-Hopera" are on the bill at the New York Musical Festivals.
And trey anthony's hit "Da Kink in My Hair" will be opening at London's Hackney Empire Theater in November.
In other words, it's a great time to be part of the Toronto theater scene, as long as you don't have fuzzy feet or pointy ears.
