Marketing a new musical? Phil Willmott argues that audience enthusiasm on social media will get more bums on seats than good reviews.
There was a certain amount of unseemly glee from the media following the news of early closures for new musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Both Stephen Ward and From Here to Eternity would probably have succeeded in the past, when people got to know an upcoming musical via a cast album. But times are changing, and if these giants can't have a hit, what chance for the rest of us without celebrities or millions in backing? It's a problem my colleagues and I have been wrestling with over the past few months.
On a cold evening back in January, I opened my new musical, Lost Boy, at the Finborough to a tough crowd of professional newspaper critics (obliged to turn out because there was little else opening that week) and 20 or so unpaid bloggers and website critics who were eager for tickets.
Lost Boy has no pop stars or a movie tie-in, but has an original book and score. It's spiky, idiosyncratic, doesn't aspire to be Sondheim, and it aims to engage a wide audience with the story of how the characters from Peter Pan lose their innocence as young adults in the first world war... Keep reading on The Guardian
There was a certain amount of unseemly glee from the media following the news of early closures for new musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Both Stephen Ward and From Here to Eternity would probably have succeeded in the past, when people got to know an upcoming musical via a cast album. But times are changing, and if these giants can't have a hit, what chance for the rest of us without celebrities or millions in backing? It's a problem my colleagues and I have been wrestling with over the past few months.
On a cold evening back in January, I opened my new musical, Lost Boy, at the Finborough to a tough crowd of professional newspaper critics (obliged to turn out because there was little else opening that week) and 20 or so unpaid bloggers and website critics who were eager for tickets.
Lost Boy has no pop stars or a movie tie-in, but has an original book and score. It's spiky, idiosyncratic, doesn't aspire to be Sondheim, and it aims to engage a wide audience with the story of how the characters from Peter Pan lose their innocence as young adults in the first world war... Keep reading on The Guardian