The ‘Sleep No More’ producer’s vision for rescuing the shuttering ‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’ reveals what the discourse keeps missing: running a successful show is incredibly gauche.
I was sipping a twelve-dollar thimble of mezcal out of a prop skull in a VIP holding pen beneath The Box last night when Randy Weiner leaned over the velvet rope to tell me the truth about the American theater. As the visionary producer behind immersive nightlife behemoths like ‘Sleep No More’ and ‘Masquarade’, Weiner understands something that the legacy purveyors of midtown tourist traps simply refuse to accept. We were discussing his recent public offer to take over the shuttering production of ‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’, a show that is currently suffering from the absolute worst affliction in live entertainment: a traditional closing date.
Weiner has correctly pointed out that the entire Broadway model is predicated on failing, which is exactly why he needs to intervene. For too long, the industry has labored under the oppressive, outdated assumption that a theatrical production should attempt to cover its weekly operating costs by selling assigned seating to the general public. It is a creatively bankrupt way to make art. When a show puts up a closing notice, the traditional producers view it as a tragedy. But to a true impresario of nightlife, a shuttering show is just an unmonetized vibe shift waiting for a bottle service minimum.
During my recent stint moderating a panel on Post-Narrative Commercial Viability at the Soho House, I was struck by how deeply misunderstood Weiner’s genius remains. His proposal for the Jellicle Ball isn’t to save it in the pedestrian sense of keeping the actors employed on a proscenium stage. Instead, he recognizes that the show’s impending demise is its most valuable intellectual property. Why let a production quietly end when you could rip out the theater’s chairs, force the audience to wear plastic feline masks, and charge them four hundred dollars to wander through a basement looking for a plot that has been intentionally scrubbed from the building?
This is the brilliance of the immersive nightlife model that Weiner has perfected. ‘Sleep No More’ has managed to turn its own protracted closure into a multi-year luxury event, proving once and for all that the threat of ending is vastly more profitable than the promise of running. If Weiner takes the reins of the ballroom-inspired musical, he can finally liberate the performers from the tyranny of choreography. Instead of executing complex dance numbers, the cast can simply loom threateningly in a dark corridor while a tech executive tries to find the coat check. It is the purest distillation of the form.
The most creatively stifling thing a director can do is allow the ticket buyer to comfortably watch the musical they paid for.
I have always argued that Broadway’s obsession with accessibility is its undoing. When I sat next to a prominent theater owner at a gala for sustainably sourced stageblood last month, I told him frankly that the future of live performance is exclusivity through physical discomfort. The Box has thrived for years on this exact premise: providing an environment where the wealthy can pay astronomical sums to feel vaguely disoriented and entirely superior to the people standing outside on Chrystie Street. By injecting this ethos into a beloved Andrew Lloyd Webber property, Weiner isn’t just salvaging a sinking ship. He is upgrading it to a private submarine and sealing the hatch.
The traditionalists will whine about the loss of narrative, but narrative is merely a crutch for people who cannot afford a private table. The true joy of the Weiner model is the radical democratization of confusion. When you remove the stage, everyone in the room is equally lost. The actors are no longer burdened with the responsibility of conveying emotion, and the audience is freed from the obligation to pay attention. It is a perfect closed loop of commerce, completely untethered from the burden of artistic clarity.
Imagine the sheer cultural impact of a ‘Cats’ where you never actually see a cat. You simply hear a distant synthesizer, pay a mandatory twenty percent gratuity on a thimble of gin, and spend three hours trying to decipher whether the person standing next to you is a paid performer or just another stranded publicist. This is the immersive utopia Weiner is offering us. It completely bypasses the humiliating process of waiting for a New York Times review and skips straight to the prestige of being entirely sold out to people who do not care what the show is about.
If we can just remove the singing, the dancing, and the recognizable characters, we believe this property has a real chance to recoup over a decade of exclusive midnight previews.
The conversation surrounding the death of Broadway is always so tiresomely focused on rent prices and union wages, completely ignoring the obvious solution staring us in the face. We do not need more critically acclaimed shows that close after four months. We need sprawling, un-air-conditioned warehouses where the concept of a show once happened, heavily guarded by a bouncer who will not let you in unless you know the promoter. If ‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’ must shutter, let it shutter correctly: behind a velvet rope, refusing entry to anyone who actually wants to see it.