Séamas O'Reilly: Musical theatre ideas that could put RTÉ back in the black

The RTÉ logo, at its studios in Donnybrook, near Dublin.

Learning that the Toy Show Musical lost more than two million euro during its short run has filled me with questions. 

A loss of €2,203,231 seems a lot, and a spend of €339,634 on Marketing & Press seems particularly high, considering that it was literally made by Ireland’s state media apparatus.

I could be cynical about RTÉ’s actions in all of this, and draw the same conclusions you’ve seen everywhere else, positing senior management policy as dysfunctional, almost as if it was geared toward treating the public purse as an infinite spigot of cash turned manically by a coterie of besuited chancers. 

I could even go further and express dismay at how the money paid in management costs somehow outweighed those paid toward the creatives who actually worked on the show.

This despite the fact, as Lisa Tierney-Keogh, one of the musical’s writers, highlighted on Wednesday, that management costs should logistically be lower for any show that had “the might and resources of our national broadcaster behind it”.

But all such nitpicking would be rather against the loving and progressive spirit of the arts. No, instead, I’m going to turn my energy toward optimism. 

The Toy Show Musical may have floundered, but there is clearly a lot of money to be made from live theatre, if done right. 

As a man of letters in want of a few quid, I submit myself to the powers that be, and offer my services to manage and oversee a few shows that will get RTÉ back in the black in no time.

Liveline: The Musical

• Pros: It’s there in the name, you can see it in your head already: Joe Duffy, pen poised between hand and mouth, sitting at a desk taking calls from the public about whatever happens to be in the news that day, all interpreted through the medium of song and dance. There’ll be something here for everyone, from the scabrous wit of songs like They’re Putting Ecstasy Pills In The Water, Joe, to the winsome romance of There Was A Woman You Just Had On (And I Love Her).
• Cons: This idea does have a few staging issues since the Liveline musical will live up to both parts of its titular premise; it will feature live calls from concerned citizens, which will need to be incorporated into the production in real time, presenting unique challenges for any written show. It will also feature an awful lot of line dancing, which admittedly no longer enjoys the popularity it had during its brief ‘90s vogue. I feel, however, that such things are cyclical, and I reckon this could lead a charge back up the popular consciousness.

Rock & Roll Kids

• Pros: This musical about rock and roll-loving Irish people in the late 50s will, in the style of Bugsy Malone, be performed entirely by children, cutting down on wages and offering family-friendly fun pitched right at the demographic desired by the Toy Show Musical itself. There will also be much less by way of creative costs as Rock & Roll Kids is a jukebox musical, taken entirely from the oeuvre of Eurovision winners Paul Harrington & Charlie McGettigan.
• Cons: Cynics might note that Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan do not have a particularly large catalogue as a duo and, within that body of work, exactly one song that anyone has ever listened to on purpose. We can get around this by featuring the titular song as many times as legally allowed, tracing our characters through time as Rock & Roll Kids become Rock & Roll Men.

Séamas O'Reilly. Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan

The Crucible

• Pros: Arthur Miller’s stirring drama is one of the greats of 20th Century American literature, but no one has yet thought to update its setting from the metaphorical crucible of the Salem witch trials, to Sheffield’s premier snooker venue, The Crucible, and specifically Ken Doherty’s world championship winning turn there in 1997.

Sports fans will enjoy reliving the glory days of Irish snooker, while massive nerds will love watching the entire text being performed, as written, albeit by actors playing snooker matches which perfectly recreate Doherty’s last day of play. RTÉ also does not currently have the rights to show snooker on TV, so this could be one in the eye to the BBC and Eurosport, and a chance to show them that RTÉ Sports broadcasting is still very much in the frame.

• Cons: Some might allege that Miller’s probing treatment of the Salem witch trials is an odd fit for this new setting, but people probably said the same when they heard he was using those themes (the witch trials, not Ken Doherty) to explore the anti-communist purges of the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and boy do they look stupid now. Let’s get ahead of the cue ball on this one.

The Toy Show Musical Musical

• Pros: There is such a thing as sunk costs, and if RTÉ have already ploughed a lot of our cold hard cash into this production, this is the best way for us to get a return. The Toy Show Musical Musical will be an all-singing, all-dancing treatment of how the Toy Show Musical came to be, and how it eventually came apart. The revolving set will re-use assets and props made for the initial production at very little extra cost, and require only a few more additional bits of set dressing to recreate the Oireachtas investigations that followed in their wake.
• Cons: Some may balk at the idea of giving more public money to RTÉ to prop up a failed project, but sometimes you have to throw good cash after bad. At the very least, I promise that under no circumstances will we use any of that money on creative persons, since all money generated will go directly to the management teams and commercial directors who deserve it. Best of all, if this too should fail, it comes with its own back-up plan.

I’ll say my bit to the Oireachtas and jot down a few song ideas while I’m there. Give me a couple hundred grand and I’ll have The Toy Show Musical Musical Musical ready to go in a matter of weeks.