What? No “Will It Recoup” this year? Is this a trend?
Hey, don’t blame me.
I wanted to play Will It Recoup. After all, we’ve done it for three years in a row, and I have just as much fun as you do trying my luck at “Fantasy Broadway”.
If you’re new to the blog and don’t know what Will It Recoup is, here’s the short story. Every Spring for the past three years I’ve posted a list of the limited run commercial plays opening and asked you to guess which ones you thought would recoup, and the person who got the most right answers would win some sort of a prize.
Well, imagine the shock on my face when I took a good look at the schedule this Spring, only to find . . . a lack of limited run plays to choose from!
We’ve usually had 9 or 10 shows to make the competition interesting, but this year, we ain’t got nothing of the sort. Seriously, let’s look at the batting order this Spring for plays:
The Road to Mecca – Non Profit
Wit – Non Profit
Venus in Fur – Fall holdover and also Non Profit
Shatner’s World – Not sure what this is exactly, but it’s only running for a few weeks so I couldn’t count it anyway.
Death of a Salesman – There’s one!
The Best Man – There’s two!
Magic/Bird – Open-Ended
Peter and the Starcatcher – Open-Ended
One Man, Two Guvnors – Open-Ended
A Streetcar Named Desire – There’s three!
The Columnist – Non Profit
Don’t Dress for Dinner – Non Profit
Three. Just three.
What does this mean? Is this a trend?
Are the Non Profits picking up the bulk of the Play Producing duties these days (especially for revivals)? Are Producers getting riskier with more open-ended attempts (there are three on this list alone, and none of them have super star power going for them)? Is this a fluke?
Whatever it is, it sure is putting a damper on our Will It Recoup fun this Spring. Big ol’ 🙁 But since this is the first time we’ve seen anything like this in 4 years, it is something to watch, although I’d say it’s too early to call it a bona fide trend.
If you’re disappointed about Will It Recoup ,don’t worry. I’ll try and think of something else we can speculate on.
Hey – how about we take a survey on who is most likely to be the Tony host this year? Hugh Jackman? Darren Criss? Nick Jonas? NPH? Debra Messing?
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