Tune Tuesday : By playing it safe, did Disney Theatrical miss the chance to turn “Tarzan” into a real Broadway spectacular?

Jim Hill

17 years ago

By now, I’m sure that you’ve heard that the Broadway musical version of “Tarzan” will be shuttering on July 8th after only 486 performances and 35 previews.

To be honest, this news took a lot of theater insiders by surprise. By that I mean: Everyone in the industry was aware that — since this Disney Theatrical production had long since burned through its $20 million advance — that “Tarzan” had been struggling for months now to try & fill all 1319 seats at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. But the conventional wisdom was that the Mouse was going to let this show at least run through September. With the hope that all of the tourists who visiting NYC this summer who could no longer get tickets for Disney’s “Beauty & the Beast” (Which ends its historic 13-year Broadway run at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on July 29th) would then just troop across the street and buy tickets to “Tarzan.”

Under this scenario, Disney Theatrical was to have kept “Tarzan” alive long enough to determine if “Beauty & the Beast” ‘s absence would then have created a renewed demand for tickets to the company’s ape man musical. And if not … “Tarzan” was to have then ended its Broadway run in October, just prior to the arrival of Disney Theatrical’s next extravaganza, “The Little Mermaid.”

But in the end, it was the numbers that did in the Son Of Man. As Tom Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatrical, explained in an interview with the Associated Press yesterday:

“(The sudden closing of “Tarzan”) is completely a business decision – I have to run this (division of the Walt Disney Company) like a business. If I look at how we have been selling through the spring, if I look at our advances. I can tell that I am going to have a summer where I am going to be losing a substantial amount of money (on this show).”

I’m told that another significant factor in Schumacher’s decision was “Mary Poppins” ‘s extremely poor showing at this year’s Tonys. Given that Disney Theatrical’s newest musical only took home one award (For Best Scenic Design in a Musical), that meant little or no free publicity for the show. Which meant that the Mouse now had to commit an awful lot of its own money in order to keep “Mary Poppins” profile fairly high. Which was going to be rather costly if DT was still spending dough on promoting “Tarzan.” If, on the other hand, Disney Theatrical were to shut down the Broadway version of this Phil Collins musical … Well, that means more money for “Mary.”

Whatever the real reason was, “Tarzan” is now officially shuttering on July 8th. A full three weeks before “Beauty & the Beast” ends its epic run. With probably a 10th of the publicity that Belle & her hairy boyfriend will receive.

Which is a shame. For — in spite of this show’s sight line problems — the Broadway version of “Tarzan” still had its charms. That said, one has wonder how this new musical would have been received if Disney Theatrical would have had the courage to stick with this show’s original concept. Which — according to Michael Lassell, author of “Tarzan : The Broadway Adventure” — was …

” … not to create a live-action version of Tarzan in the usual sense of a stage musical, but produce it in some kind of large traveling structure, like a touring circus. So Bob Crowley’s early work on the production focused more on the way the tale would be told than what the tale itself would be, as the show seemed to get larger and larger the more people talked about it, until it seemed to be spiraling out of control — and out of scale.

Copyright Disney Enterprises, LLC. All Rights Reserved

‘At one point we were considering two buildings,” recalls Crowley,” we were going to hopscotch these buildings across the country and one would be under construction while we were performing in the other. The show was getting epic, and I think we began to get very tense that all our energies were going into where we were performing and not about what we performing.’ “

Still, this Cirque de Soleil-inspired version of “Tarzan” got fairly far along in the production pipeline. Until Disney Theatrical’s long-in-development revue, “On The Record” hit the road in November of 2004 and immediately got middling reviews. And given that this innovative production lost an awful lot of money during its eight month long tour … Well, Disney Theatrical lost a lot of its taste for innovation then. Which is why — starting in early 2005 — “Tarzan” was re-imagined as a conventional stage musical that could then be presented on a proscenium stage.

Of course, the irony of all this that “Tarzan” ‘s first international production — the one that’s currently be presented at the Circustheater Scheveningen — has been a huge success because this version of Disney’s musical actively embraced Bob Crowley’s original concept for the show. With the ape man often dangling directly over the heads of the audience and Terk leading a group of curious gorillas through the auditorium as they make their way to the stage for the start of Act 2.

Again as he spoke with the Associated Press, Schumacher admitted that he was …

“… disappointed that the Broadway production of Tarzan will close earlier than any of us had hoped, and I would have loved for it to have been as successful in New York as it now is in Holland.”

Tom did seem to take some comfort with the fact that the first international version of “Tarzan” is sold out through the end of the summer, and that other productions of the show are now in the works for Germany & possibly Japan. But that said, the failure of the stateside version of “Tarzan” (Which Disney Theatrical had once hoped to clone and take to Vegas. Where it was hoped that all of the show’s spectacular aerial stunts — not to mention the half-naked apes — would have appealed to the high rollers).

But that dream has now been deferred. In part because Schumacher just couldn’t bring himself to roll the dice on Bob Crowley’s original concept for “Tarzan.” Which was an epic traveling show where the audience sat inside this enormous tent that seemed to place them right in the middle of the jungle. Where even the supports that held up this temporary structure were to have been shaped like trees. And the cast of “Tarzan” was to have come at the audience from all directions. From above their heads and even below their seats.

But — as they say in Vegas — “In order to win big, you have to bet big.” And after what happened with “On the Record,” Tom just couldn’t bring himself to spend any more of Disney’s money on a needlessly risky proposition. Which is why Schumacher then pushed for the more conventional version of “Tarzan.” Which — given that the set seemed to be made up entirely of green streamers — the original Broadway production was once likened to ” … a spectacular inside of a shoe box draped in yarn.”

The end result … Well, you know how that story turned out. With the original production shuttering early next month.

But now that the first international production of “Tarzan” has proven that this new Disney musical can be staged in a way that really wows audiences … In a few years time, maybe Tom Schumacher will recover his nerve and then send a traveling version of “Tarzan” out on tour just like the one that Bob Crowley originally designed.

Here’s hoping that that actually happens someday soon.

Your thoughts?