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We talked about the divergence in Broadway ticket sales on July 20. The attendance decline is just part one of a two-part forecast. The other aspect focuses on a slackening demand for more extravagant musical productions. The Cycle V bull market of the 1980s and 1990s was a nostalgia wave that celebrated and re-celebrated the "classics" of the lareger bull market dating back to the 1940s. Since the lows of 2002 ,when Into the Woods crashed and burned despite good reviews, the riskiness of such ventures has emerged. The one revival set for the coming season, Sweeney Todd, is a throwback to the last bear market. Here's how one web site describes it: "It's a very dark look at the underside of human nature--self-serving greed, lust, corruption--but it's cast in irony and black humor, and delivered in edgy, often dissonant, but always melodic music." In other words, perfect accompaniment for a bear market.

EWFF, August 1997
Entertainment industry histories covering the Supercycle peaks of 1835 and 1929 show that flashy but shallow drama is a recurrent theme in fifth waves of Cycle degree. The book Reinventing Broadway notes that Broadway was also booming in the late 1920s. The all-time record for shows was set at 294 in 1928. But the quality fell off as the volume of the audience increased and producers were forced to “limit theatrical repertory to the sure thing.” Like the action movies of our time, “Theatrical fare on Broadway during the Twenties strikes us as formulaic and repetitive, tailored to the moment and the need to be constantly entertaining and undemanding.” Of course, the theater business was decimated by the crash of 1929, just as it was in 1835. In 1835, the number of theaters in New York City expanded to a preposterously high total of five. At the time, reporters said the total was too high to be sustained. They were right; the lights went dark almost immediately. But here too, the fifth wave went out in a blaze of glory. Before the crash, the public demanded and got “parades and spectacles.” Sound familiar?

Lending support to this quantitative assessment is the more qualitative analysis that appeared in the August 1997 issue of The Elliott Wave Theorist. A study of New York City’s theater district at past peaks revealed a clear tendency to finish long advances with a flourish of activity and showmanship. “Entertainment industry histories covering the Supercycle peaks of 1835 and 1929 show that flashy but shallow drama is a recurrent theme in fifth waves of Cycle degree.” The same word, “spectacles,” continually surfaces in descriptions of Broadway’s earlier fifth wave peaks and its latest era. “You have two kinds of shows on Broadway revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles,” laments Stephen Sondheim, who was recently tabbed “the Broadway musical’s last great artist.” “Broadway today is more than ever about spectacle than real drama or real emotions, more about giving audiences an ‘experience.’” Like the figures for Broadway ticket sales, this more subjective confirmation of a fifth wave also carries a clear sign its impending demise. “Cats, the longest running production in Broadway history will close June 25,” says The New York Times. “Cats fundamentally reshaped the Broadway landscape by ushering in the era of the megamusicals: big flashy spectacles that required little theatrical sophistication or knowledge of the English language to appreciate.” Cats came to Broadway on October 7, 1982, a few weeks after the stock market’s upside explosion of August 1982. When the curtain falls June 25, Cats’ many critics will undoubtedly applaud, but probably not for long. “In 1930,” Times Square, a history of the NYC district notes, “the frivolity of the 1920s gave way to a serious, if not grim tone.” By 1932 only six shows were playing on Broadway. That compares to an all-time high in 1928 of 294! The show will go on, but not without drastic changes in tone and reductions in number.