PLAYS THAT CRASH

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18467, 19 May 1928, Page 25 (Supplement)

PLAYS THAT CRASH

WHO STANDS THE RACKET? Nearly £5.000.000 is spent every twelve months (says an English paper) in providing new plays. But the public only pays about £4,000,000 for the pleasure. or otherwise, of seeing them. Who stands the.loss? “The Girl from Cook’s” disaster at the Gaietv Theatre not only lost some £20,000, but caused a Liverpool business man, Mr Morris Rorenweig, to put his hand in his pocket to the extent <1 £II.OOO. The musical comedy cost £IO,OOO before the curtain went up, and was soon losing at the rate of nearly £IOOO a week. But there is nothing extraordinary in this instance, save in the rather sensational circumstances of the play's career. Dozens of men far too wise to back horses or speculate on a certain*}' arc always quite willing to throw away fortunes in the theatre. And no amount of advice' will stop them. Lord Lathcm is credited with having spent tens of thousands of pounds on plays and revues. One of the greatest revue successes of the decade, “A to Z,” ran for over a year, but it cost Lord Lathom over £IO,OOO. At the Gaiety itself many fortunes have been lost since seven years ago, a show called “Faust on Toast” lost £20,000 in an almost incredibly short space of time. , A young officer in the Dutch Army, Henry Taunay. was suddenly inspired to become a London impressario, for reasons that have never been adequately explained. “Riki-Tiki” lost £IO.OOO and ended in complete disaster. But quite undaunted, he put on another, and better, show called AdrifV This only lost £BOOO. It is quite easy for anyone to “invest” monev in theatrical enterprise. There are a dozen well-known managers willing to do the bidding of any man with a fat cheque in his hand. He. will quote for the cost of the production, up to the time 'of the first night. The idea is that the manager himself will touch nothing until the original sum put up by the backers has been wiped off ; after that it is a case of fiftv-fiftv. However, no tears need he shed on account of the manager, for lie

shares on the other side of the. sheet. The rentals, of course, take up most of the money. Theatres can be hired outright for as little as £SOO a week. But where most of the money is lost is in the sharing rentals, where the show takes, say, 00 per cent and the theatre takes 40 per cent. But the gross takings must reach a certain figure each week; if they fall below it for two weeks running, the play, however promising, must end its run.