Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Hot Feet Inches Toward Closing


Hot Feet Inches Toward Closing

From the "What took so long?" file comes news that Hot Feet -- the jukebox musical filled with Earth, Wind & Fire songs -- will finally close on July 23. Never catching, er, fire, Hot Feet was one of the worst reviewed shows of the last Broadway season and rarely attracted more than 40% of the Hilton Theatre's cavernous 1,813 seat capacity -- that's four more seats that the Gershwin currently holds for Wicked.

In fact, the only week that it was filled to exactly 50% of its capacity was during its original week of previews. Last week, Hot Feet attracted a mere 5,442 audience members (compare that with 14,472 for Wicked), translating to a capacity of 37.5%; however, with a significant chunk of seats most likely coming from TKTS sales, its weekly gross was a paltry $273,533 (compared with $1,438,835 for Wicked).

Notwithstanding the excellent music, it's a mystery to me how this show has clung on this long.

This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).

Click here for tickets.
Related Stories:
Hot Feet Get Cold Shoulder (May 1, 2006)

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Monday, May 01, 2006

Hot Feet Get Cold Shoulder



Hot Feet Get Cold Shoulder

Just for the record, let me state that Earth, Wind & Fire is one of my all-time favorite bands. But the critical cold shoulder given the latest jukebox musical Hot Feet was hardly unexpected, given not only its less-than-wonderland initial run at Washington DC's Ford's Theatre, but perhaps more endemically the response experienced for the musical genre itself.

For every Mamma Mia, there appears to be several left Hot Feet trying to dance their way to critical success on the Great White Way. The latest ill-fated attempt has just invited enough scorn to make me wonder whether producers will need more than a leap of faith, an iron-clad love of the artist's repertoire and a shining star to make a solid go of it. Let's face it, in a season where Lennon and Ring Of Fire can't survive, all I can say is, "That's the way of the critical world." Hopefully, the long-term result will be some truly original musical theatre bereft of ill-conceived and easy clichés, including mine!

This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).

Click here for tickets.

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