Manny Azenberg, 92, on Broadway Then and Now: Ticket Prices, Playwrights, and Reclaiming Culture

Broadway + NYC

Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Off Broadway

Cabaret

Dance

Opera

Classical Music

Eastern

Central

Western

West End

WEST END

UK Regional

International

Canada

Australia / New Zealand

Europe

Asia

Latin America

Africa / Middle East

Entertainment

TV/Movies

Music

The legendary producer reflects on rising ticket prices, the loss of playwrights to film and TV, and what theater has become.

POPULAR

“I miss the theater and I don’t miss the theater,” retired general manager and producer Emanuel Azenberg said over lunch at his frequent haunt, The Flame Diner. “I miss what was. I don’t miss what is.”

Azenberg, known in industry circles as simply “Manny,” last produced a Broadway show over a decade ago, but the 92-year-old still keeps up to date on everything. Well known as a great Broadway of yesteryear storyteller (there is even a book of his stories, written by his daughter Jessica Azenberg ), no one knows the industry and the changes it has undergone better. So, I wanted to talk to him not about backstage scenes from 30 years ago, but rather what his view is of the theater industry today and what can be done to improve it.

Azenberg began our conversation by talking about the evolution of Broadway from the 1920s—when there “were 290 openings a year (none of them summer because there was no air conditioning) and 95 theaters to house them.” He rattles off shows and stats from every decade quicker than I can name this year’s Tony nominees. But his tone turns grave when he begins to talk about the modern era.

He asks his own questions before I can: “What are the names of the playwrights now? I’m not sure we can come up with those names. I’m not sure you can come up with the composers and the lyricists. So, what happened?”

He links it back to negotiations that began taking place in the early 1980s.

“Despite all the self-righteous conversation, all the elements that make up Broadway—the theater owners, the producers, the unions, the artists—they made the right noise, but nobody really looked out for the industry as an industry,” he said. “You talked it, but you still negotiated for your group so that they get more. And everybody got more. And who paid that price? The customer.”

For Azenberg, the high cost of tickets led to an inaccessibility that necessarily shrunk the import of the industry. When he was growing up as a kid in the Bronx, he used to skip school and attend a matinee for $0.90. It was a possibility. Despite some rush and discount tickets, theater is simply less accessible than it used to be, while many other forms of entertainment are more accessible.

“In 1962, the top ticket price on Broadway was $9.10,” he explained. “That was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum . The conversation on the street was, ‘Who’s going to break the $10 barrier?’ I bought a house seat for a friend of mine to Giant , it was $450.”

This is certainly not all inflation. If you take that $9.10 top ticket price and adjust to today’s dollars, your result varies depending on what service you use, but it is always around $100. Meanwhile, last week’s top ticket price was $575 for Oh, Mary! , an 80-minute play.

The high cost of tickets has an impact many do not think about—it hurts the industry in terms of building an audience, but it also hampers the talent base. When kids do not grow up going to a lot of theater, they do not develop into people who see themselves as part of the industry.

Azenberg referenced Jack O’Brien’s speech when O’Brien received his Tony Honor for Lifetime Achievement. O’Brien said of the theater: “It’s not a job; I don’t know what it is… It’s a privilege, it’s an honor, and I know this is weird, but it’s a calling.”

If people don’t go to the theater a lot, they are not called to it. Azenberg produced more plays on Broadway than probably anyone will again. He is most closely associated with Neil Simon but produced plays by many of the greats. According to him, two-thirds of the plays he produced were financially successful. Those included 17 Simon smashes, and 5 additional Simon plays that recouped but never made it to the sensation level. That is a record that is unlikely to be repeated in modern times for multiple reasons. First, less things are produced now. Second, we lose most writers to television or film. They may come back, but most don’t dedicate themselves fully to the theater. That is partially a money thing.

“If you’re going to write a screenplay for anything, they’ll give you money upfront, whether they use it or not,” he stated. “But in the theater, you write a play and then there’s a workshop. If it’s only mediocre, you make $1.40.”

And you cannot blame writers for wanting to make a living. But there is something more than just the financial component. When theater falls in cultural importance, there is less of a counterweight to the lure of money.

That means you end up getting worse product and it becomes a cycle. If you have worse product, even if you get people in the door, they may not fall in love with the theater. And because of the costs, you are getting fewer young people in the door, so you have less opportunities to grab them. Which doesn’t mean we don’t have great plays and musicals. It just doesn’t feel like the heyday. And that is irrespective of generation. Most generations believe they had a better culture than the generation after them, but I’ve asked people of all ages and I have not found people who think this will be remembered as the golden age of Broadway.

Not only have the huge costs impacted the audience and talent, but they have also reduced the amount of risk taking. More risks are taken in London because there is more Government support but, also, people get paid less, so capitalization and running costs are lower. Safe options often are not genius ones.

Of the nominees for Best Play, Azenberg selected Giant as his favorite, but did not think it was truly a great work. He questioned what had been great that first opened in the last decade, selecting only the dancing in MJ (not the show itself, but Christopher Wheeldon ’s choreography).

“In the 80s, I said to Bernie Jacobs, who was the head of The Shuberts , that we had to deal with the fundamental economic problem. You can’t just keep raising the prices. And he said, ‘When it becomes a real issue, I’ll be dead.’ And he was right,” Azenberg states.

His thoughts on specific shows and theater movements could fill a whole other column, but I was surprised to hear from him how little he thinks the producer matters in the process. One of the things I have thought hurt the theater in recent decades is the rise of investor producers. People who do not know how to shepherd a show but can get the money for one. Azenberg, like me, has trouble thinking of those folks as real producers.

“It is part of the producer’s job to be the general manager,” he said. “[Producer] is too casual a title now. For some of them, I would have a new category. It would say ‘ David Merrick and Manny Azenberg despite’ and then you list them. It used to be they were called ‘angels,’ then ‘investors’ and now they’re ‘producers.’ So general managers are now called Executive Producers. They just want the title because if the show works, they can get a Tony, which makes the Tony kind of worthless too.”

However, he doesn’t blame the money folks for failures, nor does he credit them with successes.

“It’s never about the producer,” he stated. “If I didn’t do some of the shows I did, somebody else would have done them. We would like to think we make a contribution, and I suspect we do, but don’t confuse it with creativity. You have something to say about the play that you’re going to do. You have something to say about who’s in it. And then it’s a collaboration of some other people.

Producers get the credit because they own the press agents, but it’s always about the talent. Occasionally, it’s about the director. And more than occasionally, it’s about the choreographer. But you don’t remember who directs plays, you remember who wrote them.”

To him, what he chose to do as a producer was tied to “an aesthetic” and most of the rest was luck. “Your participation in an existing show as a producer has these facets: one is managerial, two is psychological, and somewhere on the periphery is a sensibility, but not a creativity,” he explained. “Coming up with a good idea doesn’t make you an artist. We have to save the word artist. Every actor you know says he’s an artist. And everybody who writes says he’s a writer. But [Tom] Stoppard is different than somebody else.”

Of course, Azenberg still believes in nurturing producers. He meets with several producers frequently. He famously helped Kevin McCollum and Jeffrey Seller secure the Nederlander for no rent until recoupment for Rent and still regularly speaks to them. David Stone is another friend, as is Michael Bosner. Azenberg was famous for having industry lunches at Café Edison, while others chose fancier haunts. With that out of business, you can often catch him at The Flame having those same conversations. “There’s no question there are generational issues, but it’s expected,” he said. “Remember Jeffrey, Kevin and David Are now sixty. I say to them, ‘Welcome. Michael Bosner is going to replace you, just the way you guys replaced me.’ That’s the normal trip.”

And he offers them advice but admits that he has no solutions. He had a “good time in everything,” but knows the challenges are more now. He doesn’t know what will turn the tide. He mentioned his behavior on the 1999 revival of The Iceman Cometh , starring Kevin Spacey , as something that may provide a possible model for the future. After starring in the play in the West End, Spacey contacted Azenberg about a possible transfer. Azenberg believed it to be a “sure loser” because Spacey only wanted to do seven performances a week for three months. He paid everyone minimum, except people who came from California or London, who got minimum plus a per diem. The O’Neill estate gave the rights for very little money, as the play is rarely produced. There was one ad—paid for by American Express, not even the production—and the run sold out. They had a meeting about what to do with the unexpected windfall. Instead of pocketing it all, or simply using it to pay out investors, they spread the wealth. Cast salaries were tripled for the last five weeks. Additionally, he took 5% of the profit and divided it among the cast and stage management for an extra bump. Director Howard Davies got an extra $175,000. The estate got $300,000, in consideration for giving the rights at such a low cost. And, even with all this, investors doubled their money.

“If we could get to some Solomon-like socialistic formula to justify why you work on the stage, that could provide a model,” he said.

That seems more realistic than Azenberg’s other idea, which even he admits is likely a nonstarter. He cited what Balanchine did with ballet, making it more accessible through aesthetic changes and also the founding of the School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet.

His proposal: “If Meryl Streep and another star went to the Governor and said: ‘This really isn’t going to work, and it’s slowly drifting down. So why don’t we build three theaters on 18th Street and 11th Avenue on a totally different economic equation? And whatever the ills are in the contemporary world, the union ills, the producers’ ills, the disparate money, let’s change it.’ That might work. That is the effort Olivier put in in London with the National. It was driven by artists, so it became chic.”

But he knows it is unlikely. The love for it has diminished. Screens have taken priority over live artforms. Azenberg was well known to believe a show’s success was all about word of mouth, not advertising, and he continues to think that is the key. However, it is harder to get there given the accessibility of other artforms.

“There’s

_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Broadway-Vet-Manny-Azenberg-on-the-State-of-Broadway-20260526)._