I don’t think I ever saw Edgar “Buddy” Freitag without a smile on his face.

I first met him at an ad meeting for Blithe Spirit.  He, and his equally smile-icious wife, Barbara, were one of the Co-Producers, like me, and I loved them both immediately.

What was it about them?

Well, the smiles, duh . . .

But what really did it was . . . they were both wearing Memphis hats.

This was 2009, mind you, and Memphis was still snaking its way to Broadway.  The Freitags had jumped on board to help produce the eventual Best Musical Tony winner, and they were wearing their swag with serious pride.  (For those of you who read the Godspell blog, you know that I’ve got a weakness for show caps.)

Every time I spoke to Buddy, I remember how much his love for the theater seemed to take over his whole body.  Broadway seemed to fill him up with such joy that . . . well .  . . it was as if he had to keep that Memphis hat on to hold it in.  And I remember thinking . . . “Boy, when I’m in my late 70s, I wanna be like Buddy Freitag.”

Buddy passed away yesterday and Broadway lost a bright shining smile, as well as a passionate Producer responsible for such shows as Passing Strange, The Miracle Worker, Catch Me If You Can, and three shows this season alone (!), including Nice Work . . . , Porgy and Bess, and End of the Rainbow.

Barbara, my condolences, as well as those of everyone reading this entry, I’m sure.

Buddy, I’m sure you’re lighting up whatever big room you’re in right now.  And I’m sure you’re still wearing that hat.

And that thought makes me smile on this sad day.

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First, let me say that the idea I’m going to propose below probably isn’t practical anymore.  Unfortunately for all of us, the number of theater critics has dwindled in recent years.  I know, I know, you’re probably thinking, “But Ken, I thought you’d be an advocate for less critics, and more of the popular voice!”  Regardless of how I feel critics affect or don’t affect the life of a show or regardless of whether or not I feel they echo the sentiment of the theater-going public, the fact is that the more critics there are, the more articles and therefore the more discussion there is about the theater.

One of my missions is to amplify the conversation about theater . . . and well, theater critics start that conversation everyday . . . so having less of them ain’t helping any of us.

Keeping theater in everyday conversation should be all of our goals, and critics help do that, whether or not we agree with them.

So pretend the papers and the media companies out there like The Times and The Post and NY1 had a few critics to choose from . . .

Wouldn’t it be more interesting and more accurate of an analysis if they specialized?

Theater is divided into three niches:  musicals, plays, and those that don’t belong in either category.

Musicals are very different from plays.  And classic plays are very different from contemporary ones.

So what would theater criticism be like if there was a reviewer of classical plays and a different reviewer of contemporary musicals?  Surely in other art forms there are these distinctions.  Does a classical music reviewer also review the latest Madonna album?  And since our world has the same sort of extremes between the commercial and the non, shouldn’t we be afforded a similar judgement?

This blog is a bit of a non-starter, because of the current plight of the critic.  We’re lucky we have critics at all, and despite the fact that we may disagree with them at times, we should all be lobbying for their survival.

But it does make me think . . . with an art form that has so many different subsets, how can we paint the most accurate pictures of their quality for our theater-going public?

(Got a comment? I love ‘em, so comment below!  Email subscribers, click here then scroll down, to say what’s on your mind!)

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Buzzer sound!  The fourth and final quarter of the 2012 Broadway season is over.  Can you believe it?  Another year come and gone.

And this one was a beaut . . . depending on how you look at it.

Once again, the press release reads that we’ve posted the highest grossing Broadway season in history!  (I mean, we’re getting to be a bit like the Jerry Lewis telethon . . . always beating last year.)  But, unlike Jerry, we didn’t beat last year by a buck.  We beat last season by a few million bucks.

This year’s total take at the box office was a whopping  $1,139,311,457.  Last year, we did a paltry 1.08 billion, which means we bumped our numbers by 5.4%.

You can’t argue with that increase, can you?

Can you?

Well, see it’s not just about dollars.  It’s also about butts in seats.

Did that increase by 5.4% as well?

Unfortunately, as has been in years past, the answer is no.

Attendance remained flat this year, with 12.33 million bodies coming through the Shubert/Nederlander/Jujamcyn doors.

Prior year’s body count, you ask?  12.3 million.

More dollars, same bodies.

Getting the picture?

The great news is that these numbers prove we’re really starting to master the art of variable and dynamic pricing, “taking advantage” of the demand for certain shows.

The bad news is that 5.4% increase is probably coming primarily from the handful of big fat hits on the street (give me a couple of days to dig through the data to see if I’m right), and the majority of the shows are fighting for whatever of the business remains.

The gap between the monster hit and the medium sized show is getting wider.  And as the big shows do better, our vendors and unions have to price themselves accordingly, which means the middle-of-the-road shows suffer.  (Unless we start looking at premium pricing for labor and such for shows that have mastered premium pricing.)

What’ll happen next year?

You don’t have to have a crystal ball to predict that once again our grosses will go up.  And once again, our attendance will remain flat.

How can we break this trend?  No one has really figured that out yet.

But we should get on it.  Because increasing attendance is the only way we ensure we have an audience for tomorrow.

(Got a comment? I love ‘em, so comment below!  Email subscribers, click here then scroll down, to say what’s on your mind!)

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FUN STUFF:

- Win 2 Tickets to New Mondays at the new hotspot,  54 Below.  Click here to enter!

- LA “Get Your Show Off the Ground” Seminar announced!  Click here for info.

- Win an iPad in our Tony Award Pool!  Click here to play!

If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!

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