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| Profile |
Bon Voyage
Matt Purdue
05/01/2007
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For all the anxiety that must fall upon a husband-and-wife team
striving to revamp one of the most anticipated Broadway musicals of the season,
Doherty and McColgan at least appear relaxed. In the middle of this interview,
Boublil and Schonberg stride into the VIP suite in New York’s Hilton Theater in
search of a piano. Sheet music in hand, they need to work on a scene
immediately. Doherty and McColgan smile and trade jokes before excusing
themselves from the room, making way for the creative process they fully realize
must peak by opening night.
 |  | MOYA DOHERTY and John McColgan. |
"For all my experience in the business, this is the hardest
thing. It’s stressful," McColgan explains. "We know we did not pick an easy
route, but we feel if we have the opportunity—and Riverdance has
given us this opportunity—we might as well go for the best, go for the top and
go for something that can make a difference, rather than play it safe."
These producers are certainly accustomed to risk. In fact,
their most hazardous adventure may have been Riverdance. "The story that has gone
into legend is that we could have lost our house on the gamble we took," Doherty
says. "It was high-risk, but obviously very high reward." In the mid-1990s,
McColgan and Doherty invested nearly $4 million (in 2006 dollars) in an Irish
national radio station after the previous licensee had very publicly failed.
After what Doherty describes as "two years of firefighting," they turned the
station into a successful venture. In 2001, they sold their equity to Scottish
Radio Holdings for approximately $22 million.
Despite their track record, and the fact that The Pirate Queen
generated at least $7 million in advance-ticket sales before the curtain went up
in New York, the producers continue to see their Broadway debut as a venture
laden with danger—perhaps not unlike Grace O’Malley’s. How will American
audiences react to the yarn of an obscure, 500-year-old Irish heroine spun in a
sung-through show? "We are interested in doing something that reveals something
about ourselves and our culture, as well as producing entertainment," Doherty
says. "We’re also interested in doing something new and different, and that’s an
enormous risk. But it is also fantastically artistically rewarding."
Matt Purdue is the executive editor of Worth.
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