Dialing Up a Hit? Influence Over Musical Is in the Crowd’s Hands
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Version 0 of 1. PORTLAND, Ore. — Seven minutes into his new musical, “Somewhere in Time,” the Broadway producer Ken Davenport leapt off his stool at the back of the theater the other night, and began pointing. Not at the stage, but at a nearby laptop that showed — in a fever-chart line — the reactions of 60 audience members as they turned hand-held dials among three choices: “Love this part,” “Neutral about this part” and “Hate this part.” The dials seemed to pinpoint a problem with the song “Tick Tick Tick”: the fever line slid as the main character, Richard, lamenting the rush of life, was interrupted by dry dialogue from his brother. “The dials matched my instincts,” Mr. Davenport explained during intermission at Portland Center Stage here, where he was trying this system for the first time for the musical’s world premiere. “By the time we get the show to New York, I bet we’ll drop that dialogue.” Thus dial testing, common in politics, television and movies, has now arrived in the theater. Though at this point Mr. Davenport is the first to embrace it eagerly for Broadway, the very idea of it is raising questions in the industry about what makes good theater. “Did Michelangelo ask dial testers, ‘Do you like this part of David’s leg?’ ” said Emanuel Azenberg, a Tony Award winner and a producer for 45 years. “Did Beethoven ask, ‘Was the second movement too dull?’ This is scary. Do we want to test-market Broadway until it becomes a theme park?” Focus groups and audience surveys are increasingly part of theater already, to the distress of some producers like Mr. Azenberg, who see them as crutches that lead to lowest-common-denominator shows. While the dials seem like a natural extension of focus groups, if not a more precise gauge of real-time audience reaction, several producers dismissed them as the most simplistic and desperate research tool yet, the enemy of groundbreaking work. Others, like Sue Frost, who used focus groups on her show “Memphis” — which won the best musical Tony in 2010 — were intrigued but skeptical that dials would catch on among Broadway producers because the technology might make audiences “so hypercritical that you get more data and opinions than are useful.” “I also believe that I can tell a lot by standing in the back every night and listening to the audience,” she added. “You know when they’re bored, when a song is going too long.” This old-school approach — relying on eyes and ears, not gizmos — evokes the era of auteur-producers like David Merrick and Harold Prince, who began new musicals out of town and compiled fix-it lists based on their aesthetic sensibilities, the body language of audiences and feedback from trusted friends and critics. During the out-of-town run of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” before its Broadway opening in 1962, Mr. Prince drew on input from his friend Jerome Robbins and the talents of the composer Stephen Sondheim to come up with a new opening number, “Comedy Tonight,” which is now beloved in musical theater. Yet few producers today are in the mold of Merrick, Mr. Prince and other hit-makers who have been lionized for having a sixth sense about producing. Mr. Davenport himself acknowledges that his last two outings on Broadway as lead producer, the current “Macbeth,” with Alan Cumming, and the 2011 revival of “Godspell,” were modest sellers and did not receive any Tony nominations. The harsh reality of commercial Broadway today is that 75 percent of shows lose money and that many producers struggle to develop productions that will have mass appeal. “Why not use dials and every other tool possible to create more musicals that please audiences and turn a profit?” said Damian Bazadona, president of Situation Interactive, a marketing company that works on Broadway shows. Dial-testing caught on with television commercials and series in the 1960s and ’70s, and gained wider popularity in the 1980s as political strategists tested audience responses to speeches by President Ronald Reagan and other leaders. Frank Luntz, a Republican consultant who has pioneered dial-testing in political messaging, said the feedback did not guarantee a successful result “but oftentimes can prevent failure.” “The sharpest reactions are to the things that aren’t working, the lulls that undermine the impact of a scene, or the characters that don’t make an impact, or the words and phrases that don’t grab people,” said Mr. Luntz, who has also done dial-testing for many television shows, which he declined to name. “I’m a little surprised Broadway is doing this, to be honest,” he added. “Producers have a vision in their head, and they don’t want the masses affecting or impacting that vision.” Mr. Davenport said the dials were guidance, not a veto, for his judgment about “Somewhere in Time,” based on a 1980 film about a playwright who travels back through the years to pursue a romance with an actress. The movie, which starred Christopher Reeve, was critically panned but earned fans, particularly among women — leading Mr. Davenport to view “Somewhere in Time” as a pretested brand that might appeal on Broadway, since roughly two-thirds of audiences there are female. He even wrote the musical’s book, after other writers passed, and held closed-door readings before reaching out to Chris Coleman, artistic director of Portland Center Stage, about mounting the tryout. The Portland theater had never worked before with a New York producer on a musical aiming for Broadway, and Mr. Coleman, liking the material, said yes quickly. The show, which runs through Sunday, received mixed-to-good reviews. Over three performances of dial-testing, no single song bombed, but parts of songs and scenes caused consistent dips in the fever line; Mr. Davenport said those moments would be assessed by the creative team and perhaps be changed. One musical number that received the show’s highest dial score — 80 out of a possible 100 — was “A Trip to the Grand,” which delivered ballroom choreography and lavish period costumes, the sort of big production number that musical traditionalists love. “This Portland production cost $1 million, and our Broadway production will cost $10 million, but that score of 80 tells me that maybe ours should cost $11 million,” Mr. Davenport said. “Maybe another $1 million could get us to 90 in that number.” As for the dial-holders, who sat scattered through the audience, the chance to play armchair producer was a treat, even for those who were cool to the show. “The time-travel scenes were hard to buy, and I felt grateful I had the chance to say so,” said Holly Ng, 33, as she held up her gray four-inch-long dial. “There have been more negative moments than positive, but I didn’t want to be too mean to the show. And the dials made it more fun.” |