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Bon Voyage
Matt Purdue
05/01/2007

Conventional wisdom holds that nine of 10 Broadway shows fail to make money. For producers and investors, extreme risk is an understatement. One of Broadway’s newest production teams, married partners Moya Doherty and John McColgan, find themselves walking this tightrope. They have commissioned and launched The Pirate Queen, by all accounts an ambitious, expensive, epic of a musical, on New York’s 42nd Street. The show is based on the true story of a 16th-century seafaring Irish chieftan, Grace O’Malley, and her struggles to unite her country’s clans to oppose the English, led by another matriarch, Queen Elizabeth I.

HADLEY FRASER and Stephanie J. Block perform in The Pirate Queen, produced by Moya Doherty and John McColgan.(Photograph by Joan Marcus.)

Last fall, The Pirate Queen previewed to mixed reviews in Chicago and, as this story went to press in March, Doherty, McColgan, cast and crew were tweaking the show for its Broadway bow in early April. During its preliminary run, Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune called it an "earnest and epic but ill-ruddered and oft-cartoonish voyage," while Steve Oxman wrote in Variety that "despite great singing, it fails fundamentally to create characters deep enough to engage an audience."

After spending just over $10 million of their—and their investors’—money to bring the show to the stage, Doherty and McColgan, the first Irish producers to launch a musical on Broadway, admitted in London’s Daily Mail that the combination of their roots and the output of two French writers, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg, may have lent the show a European sensibility lost on North American theatergoers. "We obviously have some hurdles to meet the expectations of our audience," Doherty told Worth. "That is the most important—beyond reviews and beyond awards. History has shown that there are shows that do not receive the awards and do not receive the critical acclaim, but do receive the audience."

Beauty and the Beast, for example, won just one Tony (for costume design), but has played more than 5,200 times on Broadway. Mama Mia!, a show based on the music of ABBA, never won a Tony, but has staged more than 2,000 Broadway performances, grossed $1.6 billion around the world, and will reportedly be adapted into a feature film produced by Tom Hanks.

"We are interested in doing something that reveals something about ourselves and our culture, as well as producing entertainment."

In 1994, Doherty created Riverdance, growing the Irish step-dancing performance from a seven-minute intermission piece on a European television special to, one year later, a full stage production that opened in Dublin. McColgan directed that show. Today, Riverdance continues to make money around the world, with two companies touring throughout Europe and North America. Their theatrical triumph (published reports peg their Riverdance earnings at more than $90 million) helped Doherty and McColgan attract investors for The Pirate Queen—and the right kind of investors. Many of their current backers also invested in Riverdance, including U2 manager Paul McGuinness. "We made five phone calls and got five yeses straightaway," Doherty recalls. "Then we got one phone call from a man who said, ‘I want to invest in [The Pirate Queen.] I want to invest my life savings.’ I said to John, ‘Have him bet on a horse.’"

Their Riverdance achievement also afforded them the capital to hire the best in the business to create their new show. They’ve spared no expense, beginning with the writers. Even jaded theatergoers gasp at the names Boublil and Schonberg. The pair penned the most- performed musical in the world, eight-time Tony winner Les Miserables, which has grossed more than $1.8 billion and been viewed by more than 50 million people. They also collaborated on Miss Saigon, which set a Broadway record for advance-ticket sales ($24 million) and reportedly repaid investors in less than 10 months. Two-time Tony Award winner Frank Gelati directs The Pirate Queen. Scenic designer Eugene Lee has won three Tony awards and costume designer Martin Pakledinaz has won two.

Since The Pirate Queen’s Chicago preview, the producers have invested more dollars into the creative team, luring two well-known artists to rework it for Broadway: Tony Award winner Richard Maltby Jr., who cowrote the lyrics for Miss Saigon, and Graciela Daniele, who has worked on such hits as Ragtime, to oversee musical staging. "We decided to cast it in North America with some Irish dancers, singers and musicians," Doherty says. "The risk is high, but the reward is also high. North America has some of the most talented wonderfully experienced people in the world of musical theater."

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.