porschesrule wrote:There are many reasons, which I'm sure we'll hear from the many knowledgeable members of this forum.
One of the biggest reasons, however, has to be cost. The labor costs alone are considerably more for a Broadway show than for one in the West End. The unusually large child cast and the need for multiple casting of some of those child roles, the training required, and all the other support they required made it a very expensive show on Broadway compared to in England. I've read where they pay child cast members "peanuts" compared to the much higher salaries demanded by Equity contracts in NYC and elsewhere in the US.
I don't think I've ever seen comparative weekly revenues for the London production of the show, but the Broadway numbers were published weekly and are public information. I remember reading at the time of the BETMNY closing announcement where a producer mentioned that if the show had an average gross of $700K a week, that wasn't enough to make ends meet (the show grossed over $1M a week for many weeks in the first couple of years).
I think another very significant reason is cultural. BETM is a British show and many of the theatre-goers in London are British. While I think the creative people in the US and other places where a production of the show has been mounted did a very good job of adapting to their audiences and there are definitely universal themes in the show that play well elsewhere, I think the "Englishness" of the show in London is a different atmosphere than when the production is in another country.
A third reason (and then I'll shut up an let others add to the discussion) is the huge amount of school groups that pack the matinees every week at the VPT. That never was the case in the US. Again the coarse language etc. is culturally accepted differently in Great Britain than it appears to be in the US and that has been frequently cited as a reason why schools in the US haven't as enthusiastically embraced the show as they have in London.
I agree that the lack of school groups has much to do with the fact that Billy Elliot The Musical failed to reach the "critical mass" of fans who would continue to spread the word to keep the theaters full. And that has everything to do with how silly Americans are with respect to what they consider "bad language".
The British got over their silly idea that "bloody" was an unacceptable word. And they accept other crude language. But Americans are only starting to ease up on their shock over the use of four letter words. It seems that recently the use of "freakin' " is allowed, even though everyone knows what word is really meant. But the prudes still can't accept the word "fookin' ".
Freakin' is OK, but Fookin' or the actual word is not. Come on America, grow up.