Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Investor Schloss Takes Final Broadway Bow as `Gardens' Flops :

July 31 (Bloomberg) -- The critically acclaimed Broadway musical ``Grey Gardens'' played its 307th and final performance on Sunday afternoon. Money manager Edwin Schloss says his 33- year sideline investing in commercial theater closed with the show.

``I felt wounded by the experience,'' the balding 57-year- old said over lunch last week, about co-producing the $5 million commercial failure. ``If a serious musical like `Grey Gardens' can't make it, I feel producing quality is an exercise in masochism.''

After a Broadway season in which just five out of more than two dozen commercial productions recouped the cost of producing them, perhaps it's inevitable that some investors would abandon the enterprise. Schloss said that after three losers in a row, two of them critical successes, he's through with producing.

He compared attending the closing matinee of ``Grey Gardens'' -- an original and tuneful show about eccentric relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy -- to spending time with a cherished pet just before it's euthanized.