"Carrie,'' the musical based on Stephen King's horror novel, closed Sunday after 16 preview and five regular performances, thus becoming perhaps Broadway's most expensive flop ever.
The production cost of "Carrie" exceeded $8 million-less than some shows, but more than any other that suffered so quick a failure. Most of the reviews that greeted the show were negative, some harshly so. The stars-newcomer Linzi Hately in the title role and Betty Buckley as her mother-were praised, but the production was not.
Newsday critic Linda Winer said the show was "stupendously, fabulously terrible-ineptly conceived, sleazy, irrational from moment to moment, the rare kind of production that stretches way beyond bad to mythic lousiness."
Although the show had an advance sale of more than $2.5 million $500,000 of that evaporated after the reviews came out, as theater parties cancelled tentative bookings. Further, according to a spokesman for the show's management, box-office sales were "virtually nothing."
The collapse of "Carrie" is a blow to the purse and reputation of the Royal Shakespeare Company, which was a co-producer and financial participant in the venture. The prestigious British company supplied about $650,000-most of it inkind contributions of staff work and use of RSC facilities-for a 10 percent share of the show.
The hope was that "Carrie" would go on to commercial success and yield income to the financially strapped RSC. The company housed ''Les Miserables" at the outset and still participates in its great financial success; that success led to a deliberate- and controversial-policy of co-producing a commercial show each year in the hope of profit.
"Carrie" played to full houses during its tryout run at the RSC's theater in Stratford-upon-Avon. Although audiences reacted positively, British critics were harsh in their judgment. Much of the criticism was heaped on Terry Hands, the RSC's artistic director, who directed "Carrie" and designed the show's elaborate lighting.
The Guardian's critic said that "to call it a catastrophe would be grossly to exaggerate its significance . . . Hands' production, with his own beautiful smoky lighting design, vibrates with energy and speed, signifying little.