Mirvish's Lord may close by Labour Day

Get ready for the final curtain on Toronto's Lord of the Rings adventure, even though the show has been enjoying the glow of good news for the past week.

Last Thursday the musical's London-based producer made it official that, as predicted here eight weeks ago, the show will open a year from now at the most prestigious theatre in London, the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane.

It is owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber (who flew to Toronto to catch Rings two months ago).

On Monday night the $29 million show -after playing at the Princess of Wales Theatre for the past four months -swept the Dora Mavor Moore awards.

Now comes the next bulletin. A new closing date for the Toronto production will be announced within days or weeks, sources say. Although tickets are on sale until Sept. 24, the show may not continue beyond Labour Day.

"I'm not saying a word about this," David Mirvish said yesterday when asked to comment.

So far, after mixed to negative reviews, Rings has kept going on the basis of hefty advance sales racked up prior to its opening, with the help of 40,000 Mirvish subscribers.

But to flourish in the summer, it will need an influx of tourists, especially from the U.S. Given the 90-cent dollar and the portrayal of Toronto as a potential target of terrorism, they seem to be staying home.

By setting a closing date now, Mirvish may hope to twist the arms of local residents who would otherwise wait until fall to buy tickets.

Until now, attendance has been good enough to meet the show's running costs and pay its marketing bills -but not high enough to allow investors to recoup more than a fraction of the money they put up.

Most of them, including rock promoter Michael Cohl, went into this venture knowing it was a high risk. They weren't frittering away grocery money; they were gambling funds they could afford to lose.

Still, nobody wants to take on bigger losses by keeping the show going once its weekly take drops below the breakeven point.

And Toronto investors may get a break if the show closes soon. If producer Kevin Wallace can re-use the Toronto sets at Drury Lane, that will reduce the cost of mounting the second production. And Toronto investors might be given a chance to cut their losses if the show becomes a hit in London.

Mirvish is not merely an investor; he's also the owner of the Princess of Wales Theatre. And since the fate of Lord of the Rings was uncertain, nothing has been booked into this theatre -the most desirable venue in Canada -for the '06-'07 season.

Donating money to an opera house can be a dangerous game, as Conrad Black recently discovered. His $500,000 donation to the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts -which I plead guilty to revealing in the Star two weeks ago -seems to have raised disturbing questions in the mind of Black's nemesis, U.S. federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

Partly because of his relentless style and partly because he's in Chicago, Fitzgerald is a latter-day Eliot Ness crime-fighter. In asking a judge to revoke Black's $20 million (U.S.) bail and put him behind bars immediately -a motion turned down on Monday -Fitzgerald made reference to Black's donation.

How, he wondered, could Black afford such a contribution when he's had to mortgage or sell his multi-million-dollar homes? Fitzgerald clearly missed the point: that the donation was from the Black Family Foundation, which can't be touched by accusers closing in on the former press baron.

Still, it seems unfair that other donors who gave $500,000 are not getting nearly as much attention. Take Kevin Garland, executive director of the National Ballet of Canada, and her husband, retired Four Seasons hotel executive Roger Garland.

The green room at the opera house will be named for them. "I like the idea of having our names on a space used by artists," says Ms. Garland. Even so, their gift is unlikely to create as much buzz as the Black gift.

Click here for original story on TheStar.com

Click here for related story on BroadwayWorld.com

Click here for Lord Of The Rings page on 21st Century Musicals