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Betty Blue Eyes was a critical success, but as soon as the curtain falls this weekend. Why are original British musicals to be expelled from the West End?

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In the last week before Christmas, I take a group of family and friends with the game more enjoyable and musical I saw as essential in the past 12 months. This year I added an emergency exit was on the basis of the triumph of the national drama A man, two Guvnor are unlikely to still be running in December, a prediction that proved false . But it was because Betty Blue Eyes - in my opinion, the brightest new musical in recent years -. It would be the trip of tinsel

This hypothesis was also proved wrong. Despite the criticism of four and five-star, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe musicalization Alan Bennett Malcolm Mowbray and the film A Private Function closes this weekend after a run of six months in which he played an average of only half-full houses, unexpected leaving gaps in the newspapers of the stars Sarah Lancashire and Shearsmith Reece, director Richard Eyre and lead: an animatronic pig face, the voice of Kylie Minogue, who snorts, shakes his eyes and sings, as she fights to avoid ending up as the black market, slices on plates of northerners looking for a way to avoid the laws of the flesh of the government.

the need to rethink my end of the day is not important. What worries me about Betty passage is that - the love of Andrew Lloyd Webber never dies closed too early - Billy Elliot, now six, is the only British-made music of these Recently, a completely original score. The other written from the ground indicates that began in London - Blood Brothers and The Phantom of the Opera - has opened a few decades ago, in 1983 and 1986, respectively. Even the two latest new music technology - Shrek and Spirit - were stand-out songs (I am a believer and Unchained Melody) that were not written by composers of the sample. Everything else - Mamma Mia! Jersey Boys, Lion King, We Will Rock You - is a "jukebox musical" (animation of a catalog of familiar songs) or film transplant

Therefore, in interpreting the worst, the death of Betty marks the failure to save the bacon of the British Canadian music really cool. It turns out that I am not alone in my extreme reaction to the closing of the show. Betty Blue Eyes's producer, Cameron Mackintosh, who has been in business for four decades, he said: "Something happened in that program that has never happened in my career Some newspapers have been giving us the free advertising for the last. a few weeks because they were so sad to come. "As the owner of the theater Novello, who waived his right to a week rent and rates, knowing where the fight shows that suddenly prospered to strong word of mouth, he ran all summer. However, the musical, which will cost £ 4 million in initial investment, came to lose "several hundred thousand more."

The result was a surprise: As expected, we analyzed what happened "Every show I do know with comments like we had over a considerable period.". "We had great players, but we had a super star. And writers are not well known. What I think is that it is more difficult to implement [...] cold in the West End, and new material for an event with the public. "He had already explored the possibility of starting work at the national level, or the West Yorkshire Playhouse, but was finally convinced to risk everything in the economy of the West End.

In fact, Betty Blue Eyes had a relationship with theater producers called "pre-selling name." Alan Bennett, after a long run of The History Boys, is most likely to respond at the box office in the commercial theater playwright. Charles Spencer, film critic for the Daily Telegraph, wondered why the words "Alan Bennett" have not been printed on posters and movie title recognizable, organized a private event.

The producer refuses to classify Betty Blue Eyes as a failure. "Look, there are many examples of large sample that did not work the first time." He notes that in Chicago, West Side Story and Sweeney Todd was disappointing initial run in London.