NY Post Theater Critic Michael Riedel Loves Him Some Gossip

At the time of Michael Riedel’s chat with Imus this morning, the cost of producing Broadway’s recently revamped flop, "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," was approximately $70 million. “By the time we finish this segment, it’ll be $76 million,” Riedel, the theater critic for the New York Post, predicted. “It goes up about four or five million every 20 minutes.”
 
The most expensive show in Broadway history reopened in previews last week, following a three-week hiatus during which writers Bono and The Edge came back to town to try to improve the musical. Riedel dutifully attended a performance, and reported to Imus, “What was inept, pretentious, and boring is now just boring. It’s an achievement of sorts, and I’m impressed with what they’ve done.”
 
First of all, they turned the plot, which Riedel described as “baffling,” into something that actually makes sense. The only problem? “It’s just not all that exciting,” Riedel said. “Unless a show grabs you from the moment it begins, like ‘The Lion King,’ it’s hard to get the audience engaged. I still think they have a struggle to pull this together.”
 
They’ll also struggle to make money, and fill the deep pockets of their investors, a group that normally finances concerts and tours for people like U2, The Rolling Stones, and Barbara Streisand.
 
“Not only do you have to pay back $75 million, you have just a weekly running cost, a weekly overhead of something like $1.3 million,” Riedel noted. “So you gotta sell a lot of tickets.”
 
Sort of like what Book of Mormon, the new musical written by ‘South Park’ creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, has been doing since opening on Broadway earlier this year. “You cannot get a ticket to the show,” Riedel told Imus, who managed to find three for tonight’s performance.
 
Beyond being “very funny,” Riedel touted “Book of Mormon” for being subversive. “But what’s really smart about it is that for all its subversive-ness, for all its foul language, it plays like an old-fashioned musical,” he said.
 
Speaking of old things, Riedel pointed out that even the “little old ladies” he has sent to see “Book of Mormon” have raved about how much they enjoyed it, and probably while the show was still going on.
 
“A lot of my friends on Broadway tell me, ‘We appreciate the matinee ladies, they pay for the tickets, we love them,’” Riedel said. “But they talk throughout the show.”
 
In fact, an old joke asks how many matinee ladies it takes to screw in a light bulb. “Two,” Riedel supplied. “One to screw in the light bulb, and the other to say, ‘She’s screwing in the light bulb.’”
 
Riedel has had a passion for the gossipy world of theater since he first became a reporter, and it was fitting that he was as interested today in the gossipy story of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest over the weekend for sexually assaulting a hotel maid.
 
“You have these incredibly privileged, elite people who live in this bubble, and feel entitled to do anything,” he said, noting that Strauss-Kahn’s French-ness is not helping him quash any stereotypes. “They think, ‘I’m a rich French guy, and here’s a chambermaid. She’s mine!’”
 
Imus agreed, and quoted Mike Lupica’s observation that guys like Strauss-Kahn “want what they want when they want it, and they don’t care.” Sound familiar? It did to Riedel, who accused Imus of being “familiar” with that mentality.
 
“Why are you dragging me into this?” Imus asked. “I’m battling cancer!”
 
You have to admit: it’s been a while since he’s played that card.
 
-Julie Kanfer