Broadway robbery

$450 for one ticket to a Broadway show? Are you kidding me??

When Mel Brooks’ new musical adaptation of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN hits the Great White Way in November that’s what the top tix will cost. For a musical that hasn’t even opened yet. They’re charging outrageous prices on the assumption that this show (which has yet to go before a single audience) will be a smash rivaling or eclipsing THE PRODUCERS. Yeah, like it’s so easy to just knock one of those out.

Unless Barbra Streisand is playing Frau Blucher and the kids from SPRING AWAKENING appear and have real sex with YOU on stage, $450 seems excessive.

For a date night at the theater, two people, dinner beforehand, parking in Manhattan -- $1300. Maybe $1400 depending on what they charge for Junior Mints in the lobby.

I understand that it’s getting more expensive to mount these musicals. I shudder to think when Disney gets around to adapting THE LITTLE MERMAID and the entire audience is underwater. It’s a risky business, hard for investors to get their money back, yada yada, so theatergoers have to shell out three figures to see Jerry Mathers??

At what point does it become sheer greed? And at what point does the general audience, the tourists, the “bridge and tunnel” crowd, the eight people who watch the Tonys say, “Fuck it. I’ll go the Bahamas instead.” I think that time is now.

Producers claim scalpers get those big prices. Oh yeah? How many did they sell when Brad Oscar starred in THE PRODUCERS instead of Nathan Lane?

Sure, these high prices are just for the “VIP” seats but that means what, the rest of us have to sit way way back in the orchestra or up above the timber line? And if it's just a few seats, is it really worth the bad PR for the extra couple grand per performance?

I love Broadway. I want to see it prosper. You may think I'm bitter because they're turning every old movie into a musical except VOLUNTEERS but it's not that (entirely). I want to see Broadway give people a reason to go, not 450 reasons to stay away.