(Laura Collins-Hughes’s article appeared in The New York Times, 1/9; via Pam Green.)
It was just last season that the bio-musical “Soul Doctor” opened and quickly closed on Broadway, a box-office failure with a price tag of at least $5 million.
And it was just last month that “Soul Doctor,” which celebrates the life of the influential guitar-strumming folk-music rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, reopened off Broadway in a streamlined new production.
Jeremy Chess, the eye surgeon who conceived the musical and was one of its troop of Broadway producers, is the lone producer now, and he knows what some people must think: “You went to Broadway, you lost money, like, call it a day already,” he said recently over coffee at his Upper East Side office.
Even Mindy Cooper, the director he chose to stage the latest version, was initially puzzled that he wanted to try again. “My first question was ‘Why?’ ” she recalled. “He said, ‘Because I want it to find its audience.’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/arts/soul-doctor-musical-moves-to-a-smaller-stage.html