MICHAEL KUCHWARA
Associated Press Drama Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- At the end of Jane Street, on a cobblestone block not far from the remains of the World Trade Center, stands the dilapidated Riverview Hotel, where sailors from the Titanic were first housed after the ocean liner sunk in the north Atlantic.
On this evening, survivors of a different sort -- those who made it through last week's terrorist attacks -- arrived at the Riverview's shabby ballroom to see a musical with the now-uncomfortable title of ``tick, tick ... Boom!''
``We have the same concerns everybody in the business is facing,'' said the show's general manager, Roy Gabay. ``How are we going to get people to go back to the theater?''
It is a question that haunts the New York theater community, staggered by the closings this Sunday of six Broadway shows _ ``Kiss Me, Kate,'' ``A Thousand Clowns,'' ``Stones in His Pockets,'' ``The Rocky Horror Show,'' ``If You Ever Leave Me, I'm Going With You'' and ``Blast!'', the only one to have announced a Sept. 23 shutdown before the attacks.
Now the theater community is rallying around the shows that are left.
All Broadway unions, from stagehands to actors to musicians, have agreed to a 25 percent pay reduction for four weeks to help five long-running shows that have been playing to half-full or smaller houses _ ``Les Miserables,'' ``The Phantom of the Opera,'' ``Chicago,'' ``Rent'' and ``The Full Monty.'' The cuts take effect immediately.
And Andrew Lloyd Webber has come to the rescue of ``By Jeeves,'' his musical that earlier this week announced the cancellation of its Broadway engagement after two major investors pulled out.
According to Lloyd Webber, a consortium of five Brits, including himself, mounted a ``rearguard action'' to supply the missing $800,000 to open the show as scheduled on Oct. 28.
``I thought, `We've got to do this,''' Lloyd Webber said Thursday in an interview from London. ``It's the only thing (to do) after all I've done in New York (and) all the luck I've had there.''
Uncertainty is New York theater's new buzzword, on and off-Broadway. Still, many shows are determined to go on, and audiences _ though small _ are determined to see them.
At Wednesday night's final preview of ``Urinetown,'' some 500 enthusiastic theatergoers filled nearly 90 percent of the small Henry Miller Theatre; they stood and clapped loudly when the final curtain came down. ``Urinetown,'' the first Broadway musical of the fall season, was scheduled to open Thursday night.
Audiences at other shows were equally supportive.
``I can't see not coming to New York for anything,'' said James Smith, who traveled in from Butler, N.J., with his wife, Rosemary, to see ``The Full Monty'' Wednesday evening. ``You just got to come.''
``I had gone to `The Rocky Horror Show' last week when it reopened, and it was a great two-hour diversion,'' said Barbara Mason, a retired schoolteacher from Brooklyn. ``Half the theater was empty, so we moved closer to the stage.'' She also saw a recent performance of ``tick, tick ... Boom!''
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has been pushing this message in daily pep talks to New Yorkers: Go out, go to the theater.
Broadway is New York's No. 1 tourist attraction, according to NYC & Company, the city's tourism marketing agency. A record 12 million tickets were sold last year and the theater pumped $680 million into the local economy, said Cristyne Lategano-Nicholas, who heads the organization.
``It supports the restaurants and the hotels,'' she said. ``And now it is suffering. People need to feel safe to travel and assert their right to freedom.''
Business on Broadway plummeted more than 60 percent after the attacks. ``Kiss Me, Kate,'' for example, grossed only $84,766 during last week's abbreviated five-performance schedule, out of an adjusted potential of $518,864. Even ``The Lion King,'' one of Broadway's hottest shows, didn't sell out, taking in $561,585 out of a potential $750,456.
At the TKTS half-price ticket booth in Times Square, 9,851 tickets were sold for last week's five-performance week, compared to 31,750 for eight performances a year ago.
Producers feel off-Broadway may be in better shape than Broadway, although business is down and one of its major musicals, ``Bat Boy,'' is ending its run Sunday.
``Tick, tick ... Boom!'' is still playing to quite a lot of New Yorkers,'' said the show's Gabay. ``We are not in a situation like `Les Miserables,' which is playing to a majority of tourists. We are playing to New Yorkers. They're here. They haven't gone away.''
The small, three-character, off-Broadway musical resumed performances Sept. 14, three days after the towers fell. Before the performance began, the cast and entire audience of 40 to 50 theatergoers (the theater holds 250) spilled out onto the street to look downtown at the altered skyline.
Everyone carried candles, and one of the show's producers, Victoria Leacock, spoke about the poignant message of the autobiographical musical, written by Jonathan Larson, who died in 1996 of an undiagnosed heart ailment. Less than a month later, his award-winning rock opera, ``Rent,'' opened in Manhattan's East Village.
``Tick, tick ... Boom!'' was written before ``Rent'' and deals with Larson's attempts to persevere.
``It's about striving for your dream. ... It is about hope and is a very uplifting show,'' said another producer, Robyn Goodman.
The show's star, Raul Esparza, said that after the terrorist attacks, ``I first thought what we were doing is not essential. Then I thought, `Yes, we are. We get a chance to sing. We get a chance to help people forget. We get a chance to comment in a way that is also inspiring.' The audiences won't be huge, but we have the privilege of being something that people want to see.''
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