The Stage

Soaring Tony staging costs are causing a commotion

Published Thursday 14 June 2007 at 15:10 by Michael Quinn

As the dust settles on the 61st Tony Awards, controversy is growing about the cost of staging excerpts from nominated shows at the prize-giving ceremony.

Producers are increasingly concerned that the need to fully produce numbers for the live annual broadcast show from New York’s Radio City Hall can leave them up to $300,000 out of pocket with Tony organisers contributing just $20,000 towards the cost of each segment.

Figures reported on Bloomberg.com reveal for this year’s event, producers of the twice unsuccessfully nominated revival of A Chorus Line spent $260,000 to specially stage its finale number, One, for the Tony ceremony. Also $200,000 was spent by the creators of Spring Awakening, a musical based on the play by Wedekind, which proved to be a sound investment with the production triumphing in eight of the 11 award categories it was nominated for.

Besides the high level of production costs for nominated excerpts, producers are also complaining they are expected to contribute towards the staging costs of the ceremony itself.

Award organisers told Bloomberg their contributions to each excerpt had doubled this year from 2007’s $10,000 with managing producer Elizabeth McCann also curtly pointing out: “Nobody has to be on the telecast. They’re invited.”

The discontent comes as the closure on July 1 of Company has been announced just days after it picked up the Tony for Best Musical Revival. It opened in late October 2006 at a cost of $4.1 million to universal praise but has been struggling to get audiences. Last week it played to 48% houses.