You forgot about this one, didn’t you?

It’s ok, I announced it back in February, when it was freezing outside so who can remember that? (Side note:  When it’s super hot like it is now, do you ever say, “How the heck can the same exact geographic location ever be so cold?  Man the planet is amazing!?”  Sorry, I’ve already had two cups of coffee today so I’m a little all over the planet).

Back to the contest!

In frigid February I posted the list of five limited run plays that were opening this spring . . . and challenged you to play Producer and pick which ones would recoup.

And I offered $500 worth of theater tickets to the person who picked the highest percentage of recoupers.

The last play on this list just closed this past Sunday.  So, while the accounting books on the shows haven’t all officially been closed yet, our spies as well as the public record (when shows recoup, Producers tend to scream it as loudly as Mel Gibson screamed “Freeeeeeeedom!” at the end of Braveheart) have given us the info we need to announce the winner.

A reminder, here are the five plays in this year’s game:

Blackbird
Eclipsed
Fully Committed
Hughie
The Crucible

And now, the results . . .

Well, shoot.  Would you look at that?  For the first time in the history of “Will It Recoup” . . . none of the shows recouped.  Now that’s pretty damn depressing, especially since there were some fantastic shows in that group.

Ok, ok, I’m not going to go into a worm hole of what happened with these shows . . . whether it was because of rising costs or “The Hamilton Effect” or just too much product on the street . . . because that’s not what today’s blog is about.

We’re going to try to keep this bad news positive, because we’ve got a winner to announce!

The winner, a practical pessimist, who said that none of the shows would recoup is . . .

Well, would you look at that, we had a few folks who picked “goose egg” for the number of shows that would recoup.

It comes down to the tiebreaker!

And so, let’s try this again . . .

The winner, the practical pessimist, who said that none of the shows would recoup and who also said Eclipsed would win the most Tonys, is . . .

Dang it!  Three people picked the same thing for the tiebreaker!

That means we have a tie.  We’ve got three winners!  Which means we have no choice but to Solomon the $500 prize into sections, giving $167 to each one . . .

And those three winners are . . .

Steve Tate, Melissa Bell, and Doug Marino!

Congratulations, my friends!  You’ve each won $167 in theater tickets, which hopefully will help another show recoup.  Email me to claim your prize!

And now, let’s hope that this zero for five shows was some crazy anomaly, and not a trend.  Because in an era of increasing grosses, recoupment should be going up, not down.  (But if it is a trend, you know I’ll be talking about it here, so stay tuned.)

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