Posted 6:32 AM by Gene

Another unintended eulogy from the press:

WILL the acclaimed revival of "Sweeney Todd" end Stephen Sondheim's decade-long slump at the box office?

For theater insiders, the financial history of a Sondheim show is all too familiar and depressing.

The critics rave (always about the score, if not always the production), Sondheim fanatics race to the box office — and mainstream theatergoers stay away in droves.

The last Sondheim show to make a profit on Broadway was the 1996 revival of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."

To find a new Sondheim show that made money on Broadway, you have to reach all the way back to "A Little Night Music" in 1973.

"Forum" and "Night Music" duly noted, every other Sondheim show since 1973 — among them, "Merrily We Roll Along," "Sunday in the Park With George" and "Passion" — were financial disappointments on Broadway.

The 1979 original, Tony-winning production of "Sweeney Todd" returned only 50 percent of its $1.5 million investment on Broadway, says its producer, Marty Richards.

A Sondheim show "rarely becomes a marriage between the critics and the audience," says a theater investor.

But it most certainly is a marriage of ad-blurbists and ad-blurbists, and Sondheimaniacs and Sondheimaniacs, and ad blurbists and Sondheimaniacs -- and with all that onanism going on is it a wonder normal people say no?