As that good old song goes in Annie Get Your Gun, “there’s no business like show business”.
Why? Because with every great thrill, there’s an even
greater risk. It’s risky for everyone involved
– actors, writers, musicians and especially the investors and the theatre
owners.
About a year ago I was asked by a potential show biz investor
if I could speak to Billy Joel on their behalf on my forthcoming regular trip
to New York.
“No problem” I said, thinking, how could I do that?
As it turns out Billy Joel plays in New York 8 or 9 times a
year with sell out performances at Madison Square Gardens. All these years
later, the piano man is still a hit.
I “reached out” as the Americans say, to a good friend Jimmy
Nederlander, whose family are big theatre owners in New York. Within 48 hours
of arriving, I was talking business with Jimmy and Billy in his dressing room.
People who own theatres take risks. And that’s the way it’s
been for centuries.
More than a generation ago, Robert Holmes a Court, the great
Australian financier who terrorised a lot of companies and at one point had planned
to take over our biggest company BHP, became enchanted with “the smell of the
grease paint and the roar of the crowd”. He quickly went on to become the
largest single owner of London’s West End Theatres.
The biggest daytime star of Australian television in the ‘70’s
and ’80’s was Mike Walsh. Mike is still around and in his gentle retirement he owns
and runs Her Majesty’s Theatre in my city of Melbourne and the Hayden Orpheum
in Cremorne Sydney.
But this story is about the great theatre owning dynasty of
Melbourne – the marvellous Marriners; David and Elaine and their son Jason. They
own the giant Regent Theatre, The Forum where I once saw the Blind Boys of Alabama
and the Princess Theatre which is about to join a very exclusive theatrical
club.
From January next year, the Princess Theatre of Melbourne
will join the Palace Theatre in London and the Lyric Theatre in New York in
presenting the dazzling awarding winning play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
It's a massive exercise that requires a huge investment in
preparing the theatre. This is no ordinary “bump in” as they say in the theatre.
It takes months of technical set up for all the mind-boggling wizardry of the
books to turn into a magical live theatre experience. This show will run for at
least 3 years and it will build the economy of Melbourne, Victoria and Australia
as people fly in from all over Australia, South East Asia and the South Pacific
to see it.
The show takes up where the final Harry Potter book finished.
I can’t say much more than that because commentators
and reviewers are asked not to be spoilers. In the London production front of
house staff hand out badges at intervals asking audience members to #KeepTheSecrets.
So, my hat’s off to people like the Marriner’s. They put a
lot on the line to bring delight into the lives of thousands and to build an
economy that benefits everyone including those few people who have never read a
Harry Potter book or seen a film – even those who won’t go to the live
performance.
You see, when you start to plan a show like this many years before
the opening night, you’ve got a blank sheet of paper and a $30 million hole
before anyone turns up. But it’s risk takers like the Nederlanders in New York
and the Marriners of Melbourne who know how to make it all work.
Not everyone can do it but we’re grateful for that those
that do. And to all the others who start up new ventures at any point. I salute
them all.
Harry Potter tells us a lot. It’s all about seeing beyond
what many think is possible. Just consider JK Rowling who had the idea of Harry
Potter one day on a train and the people like the Marriners who bring a new
version of the story to all of us.
Without spoiling the show for any reader, I can tell you
that in the first scene of the play, the forty-year-old Harry Potter instructs
his son to run straight at a brick wall. He repeats the advice that he had received
20 years earlier - “Don’t stop and don’t be scared you’ll crash into it; that’s
very important”.
What more do we need to know about taking the chances that
life offers to us all?
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