Dion Fanning: RTÉ's staging of Toy Show musical extraordinary given its usual aversion to creativity
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The urban myth that was rejected by RTÉ has always concealed a more damning truth: RTÉ was not approached in the first place.
Bringing the idea to RTÉ, the show’s co-creator Arthur Mathews once said, would have made as much sense as bringing it to Waterford Crystal.
All creative projects run the risk of the dead hand, that powerful force that steals in and effortlessly robs a work of its most brilliant and inspirational aspects.
At RTÉ, it has often seemed there was not so much a dead hand as a zombie army rampaging across the terrain, vanquishing all it came into contact with.
Has RTÉ improved since those days? It would be hard to make that case when, to give an example, its sports panels, once such an essential part of cultural life, have been stripped of their potency.
These panels were public service broadcasting at its best, public service broadcasting with the added benefit that hundreds of thousands of people actually wanted to watch them.
So it would be hard to say things are better when one of the elements of RTÉ that mattered to people has become demonstrably worse.
This is what makes the story of so extraordinary.
A friend who works in the arts messaged me this week to say he felt when the show was announced it was a good idea and, given the great potential revenue from musicals, it was one he still believed had been worth pursuing.
I remember thinking something similar at the time, while also being sympathetic to the point of view of Alan Hughes, the Virgin Media presenter, who had his own pantomime at the National Stadium, that had an unfair commercial advantage over rival shows as it was promoted so heavily on RTÉ.
We now know the musical resulted in a loss to RTÉ of €2.2m. To break even, it would have needed 75,400 people to see the show, instead, 22,262 people saw it, but only 11,044 tickets were sold, with the rest being comps and prizes.
Many were wondering how this could happen.
If RTÉ stands for anything, it stands for saying no to crazy ideas and, indeed, saying no to any idea at all.
We know that box-office failures can, with time, be viewed as masterpieces.
Michael Cimino’s is a notable example.
After six days of shooting, Cimino was five days behind schedule, while the horses used in the movie were so traumatised they required psychiatric help afterward.
In 2015, the movie was voted among the top 100 American films of all time, showing the hazards of production can eventually fade from memory.
tells us a story that is as comforting in its familiarity as it is damning of RTÉ.
If RTÉ’s production was to have any chance, it needed no involvement from RTÉ.
RTÉ’s director of strategy Rory Coveney told the Oireachtas committee on Wednesday they “were reviewing how we might bring the show back in the future”, although given its association now with all that has happened, it may only be able to return under an assumed identity and heavily disguised.
Yet who knows how the show will be viewed in time?
Like most people in the country, I haven’t seen it, but the history of musical theatre tells us it is not unique.
Musicals are always a battlefield.
flopped when it was released in 1976, while the works of Stephen Sondheim were often greeted ambivalently by the public, even if Rory Coveney could never be confused with Stephen Sondheim.
In 1998, Paul Simon’s musical closed after 68 performances.
The show cost $11m and was considered one of the biggest flops in Broadway history.
This might provide some consolation to those involved in .
On the other hand, Simon did have the advantage of being the man who has written many of the great songs of the 20th century.
And he had the even greater advantage of not having to show his workings to Mattie McGrath at an Oireachtas committee on a Wednesday afternoon.