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On Broadway
AT $24 million, it was billed as the most expensive stage musical ever.
And now that it's going to close after a run of about six months, it's also the most expensive bomb ever.
"The Lord of the Rings"? I don't think so. "The Lord of the Flops" is more like it.
The announcement this week that "The Lord of the Rings" would close in Toronto on Sept. 3 shocked many Broadway insiders.
They knew the show was struggling, but they thought, with all the money that's been poured into it so far, it would run at least until the end of the year.
But the situation was getting bleaker by the day in Toronto, where, according to a production source, the show barely made a profit each week.
In fact, this source says, "The Lord of the Rings" will lose nearly all of that $24 million, $3 million of which came from the province of Ontario, which hoped the show would boost Toronto tourism.
(Note to Canadian taxpayers: NEVER PUT YOUR OWN MONEY IN THE SHOW.)
Kevin Wallace, the lead producer of "Rings," has been doing some spinning concerning the premature closing.
A few days before the notice went up, he made a splashy announcement that the show would open next year in London at the fabled Drury Lane Theatre.
The owner of the Drury Lane, Andrew Lloyd Webber, saw "Rings" and, according to Wallace, said: "You've created an astonishing piece of theater."
But Lloyd Webber is a theater owner, whose premier house will soon be empty when "The Producers" closes in London later this year.
For him, "The Lord of the Rings" is "just a booking," says a source.
Wallace and his co-producers put the blame for the demise of "Rings" on Toronto critics, whose notices were brutal.
The producers said London critics were much more receptive to the show, although the only heavy-hitting London critic who reviewed it was Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph,
who said it was "weary."
Asked about the role he and his fellow critics supposedly played in slaying "The Lord of the Rings," Richard Ouzounian of the Toronto Star says: "I just tried to report what I saw. To quote George S. Kaufman, 'There is no limit to the number of people who will keep away from a bad show.' "
Wallace has said "Rings" will be revamped for London, but people involved in the show say that the changes he's been discussing - more songs, shorter running time - are cosmetic.
"I haven't heard anything that sounds like a major change," a production source says. "Shorter isn't going to make it better."
I love it when theater people get into a war of words with critics.
Here's a good one, courtesy of the very funny - and very politically incorrect - Marc Shaiman, co-writer of Martin Short's new Broadway-bound musical revue, "Fame Becomes Me."
Shaiman was taken aback by the harshness of Kamal Al-Solaylee's review in the Toronto Globe and Mail last week.
The critic said the creators of the show should "start working like fiends on salvaging the mess that bears their names."
Shaiman joked: "Kamal obviously is the one terrorist they didn't catch."
I ran that crack by Al-Solaylee, who zinged back: "He makes a bomb like 'Fame Becomes Me' and I'm the terrorist? Au contraire, my dear, I think of myself as a hero, as I saved many readers the suffering his show can inflict."
Keep at it, boys, keep at it!
DULY noted:
* The Kennedy Center's popular revival of Jerry Herman's "Mame," starring Christine Baranksi, will not be transferring to Broadway's Palace Theatre this summer.
In the end, the costs simply were too high.
"We looked at it every which way, but you can't do it for a reasonable amount of money," says a producer who was going to be involved in the transfer. "You'd be dead with it on Broadway."
There was some talk that the Paper Mill Playhouse's revival of another Herman show - "Hello, Dolly!" - might play the Palace instead of "Mame."
Its star, the go-get-'em Tovah Feldshuh, has been courting New York producers.
But, again, the cost is prohibitive.
And so the Palace will remain dark until "Legally Blonde" arrives in early 2007.
* Kevin Kline has decided to do a full-scale production of "King Lear" this fall at the Public Theater.
As The Post reported last week, Kline did a private reading of the play last week for a small group of friends and associates.
He was happy, director James Lapine was happy, even Bill Shakespeare was happy.
michael.riedel@nypost.com
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