BLAME Canada.
A Toronto production company has failed to come up with the millions of dollars it had planned to invest in several of this season’s new Broadway musicals, leaving the producers of those shows scrambling to fill significant last-minute gaps in their budgets.
Stage Ventures II, a consortium of Canadian investors put together by Bernard Abrams and Michael Speyer, two showbiz accountants, was to have kicked in up to 25 percent of the capitalization of such shows as “Brooklyn,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” and the revival of “La Cage aux Folles.”
But the producers of those shows yesterday told The Post that most of that Canadian cash has yet to make it across the border.
“I don’t know what happened to them, but they weren’t able to come up with it at the last minute,” said Marty Richards, one of the producers of “La Cage aux Folles,” which was counting on $2 million from the Canadians.
“For the first time in my life, I had to go back to all my investors and ask them for another $10,000 apiece. I had them over to my apartment, and all I did was play the [‘La Cage’] record over and over again until they screamed, ‘Don’t play it anymore! We’ll send you a check!’ ”
The situation is especially acute for “Brooklyn,” a new musical in previews at the Plymouth that’s scheduled to open next week.
Theater sources say the producers of “Brooklyn” have been calling around town all week trying to raise the nearly $2 million the Canadians failed to make good on.
Ben Mordecai, one of the show’s producers, told The Post yesterday: “When we realized about a month ago that Stage Ventures was not going to invest, we were fully prepared to replace them. However, a number of other parties have expressed interest in joining the production, so discussions have been continuing with other investors.”
Mordecai said “Brooklyn” would open as scheduled this Thursday.
“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” the new musical starring John Lithgow that’s currently trying out in San Diego, is on the prowl for the $2.5 million it had expected to get from Stage Ventures.
Making up that shortfall shouldn’t be a problem, however, since some of Broadway’s heaviest hitters are already in on the show – movie producer David Brown, Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein, billionaire investment banker Roy Furman and Clear Channel Communications.
“We haven’t had any trouble raising money,” Brown said yesterday. “This show required no hat in hand.”
Last month, in an article in Variety announcing the formation of Stage Ventures, Abrams said the company was planning to put up nearly 25 percent of the budget for “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” “Brooklyn,” “La Cage aux Folles,” “Spamalot” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”
But yesterday, in an interview with The Post, Abrams said he “had never made any commitments” to invest in those shows.
“We are in the process of raising money to invest in Broadway shows, but the process isn’t finished yet,” he said.
“We told everybody that we don’t have the money yet. We told them we were not holding out on them and that they should go out and raise money in the normal way, and if there is still room for us if we come to the table and have the money, that is wonderful.”
Abrams acknowledged that money was not coming into Stage Ventures as fast as he had hoped.
“But such is life, and the marketplace is what it is,” he said.
“We are starting to get some activity now, and hopefully we will have some moderate success this year, and be able to go back to the street next year with some history under our belt.”
I don’t know if she’s partial to samosas, but “American Idol” runner-up Tamyra Gray has been drafted to save “Bombay Dreams.”
Gray joins the struggling $14 million musical next month, replacing Anisha Nagarajan as Priya, the romantic lead.
She was fairly far down on the list of pop stars whom the producers tried to bring in to lift the show’s fortunes.
In their more deluded moments, they put out feelers to Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey.
Gray will appear in the show for 12 weeks only, starting Nov. 9.
