Saw The Cherry Orchard at Classic Stage Co. the other night. The production is a lot of fun. Most of the performances are stellar. Especially outstanding (no big surprise) is Alvin Epstein in his third turn as Firs, the loyal elder servant who ends the play by falling asleep in the abandoned house he has called home for most of his life. There aren't too many seats in this Off-Broadway house. It's a great venue. The three-quarter thrust makes for intimate theatre. I was seated in the back row of the center section which is Row F. That should tell you all you need to know about just how intimate this space is. Sam Waterston was seated directly in front of me -- his daughters are in the cast. The cast features a lot of star power and it got me thinking.
If producers pack casts with famous names to sell tickets, perhaps there ought to be an agreed-upon star to seating capacity ratio. For example, if, say, Dianne Wiest can by herself fill a 500-seat house to capacity, maybe the rest of the cast should be peopled with the un-famous. Otherwise what we have is a waste of a valuable asset: star box office power. Let's do the math.
So even without taking into account fans of the Waterston sisters, Alvin Epstein, Juliet Rylance, Daniel Davis and Roberta Maxwell, this production packs enough star power to sell 1,500 tickets a night, easy. So, in a theatre that seats about 200, that amounts to a nightly surplus of roughly 1,300 seats.
Okay, I'll admit there is absolutely no scientific basis for my assertion. But that doesn't make it unworthy of discussion, does it? I mean, think about it. If Turturro and Hamilton had instead each been farmed out to two other Off-Broadway theatres, we could be looking at three sold-out plays instead of one.
On the other hand I did hear an ad this morning on NPR for the Broadway production of Ralatively Speaking, which the 30 sec. spot informed me was "Directed by John Turturro" so clearly his name is working overtime to fill additional seats in another theatre in another part of town. Turturro is a talented and famous actor. He may be a wonderful director. I don't know. But I do think it's safe to assume that alot of folks who buy tickets to Relatively Speaking because they heard his name in an ad may be disappointed when they discover they won't be enjoying either his performing talents or the recognizability of his face.
