Heaven on Earth

Seems like this show came out of nowhere as well. No one had heard of it and all of a sudden they announced a tour that was going to start like 6 months later. Seemed to go quite fast (of course they probably did a lot of prep behind the scenes). But I always felt that for big productions, more time passed between the announcement and the actual production. Any experts here know how much time usually goes into putting something like this on?

It's no surprise, barely a ticket was sold, the PR was almost non existent and was no buzz about it at all, but feel so sad for those involved who've grafted through weeks of rehearsals and in return get told of its demise in an email and.are told "no wage payments will be made tomorrow". How Christian...

My mum’s friend’s husband is one of the people involved with Eden International. He told us about a year ago he had some money to put into a new musical. He’s previously worked in IT. I was under the impression that all, if not most, of the people involved with setting this up are simply involved in the church. I’m not surprised this has happened as he has no experience at all in musicals! What a disaster for the cast and crew.

SUrely a tax dodge. “Springtime for Adam and Eve”

I am somewhat amazed that they were going to be having 12 weeks of rehearsal on this. 9 weeks already plus 3 weeks to the now-cancelled opening night.

I was reading in Sardines that the current tour of Legally had 3 weeks in the rehearsal room - and so 12 weeks sounds like an extraordinary amount of time.

Yeah that does sound very long. The 3 weeks for Legally Blonde is probably mostly because all the direction choices had been figured out in the previous productions. Heaven on Earth was completely new. Still sounds like 4 weeks too long though.

12 weeks is rather insane. Most small to medium shows are 4ish weeks (sometimes shorter. Blood Brothers tour often does 3 days as most of the company has done it before). The only shows I'd expect to have a period that long would be shows like Hamilton where they know they have a hit. Think Harry Potter was 24 weeks, which is two shows and includes tech weeks, so surely had greater time requirements.

Based on the Sheffield ticket sales, maybe Kerry could visit the ticket holders in person to make up for the disappointment? Shouldn't take more than a hour or so.

It is never nice to see a production fail but this did seem doomed from the start. Incredibly ambitious - with that cast they maybe could have made a go of it in smaller venues. I would imagine the arena setting would have put a lot of people off.

It's a nonstarter. The performers don't have the rights to the show, these would probably be in the hands of the liquidatiom company as an asset to sell or in the hands of the writers who probably don't want their work displayed in a quickie concert they have no creative control over. The cost of running these things is mammoth even if they got the venue for free. Ushers, technical staff, ticketing, security, sound/lx equipment hire... those one nighters of shows tend to make a loss and are there as a show case for producers and investors. And with all that, given no one bought a ticket to begin with, the hope of selling any for a concert version is still pretty small.

The other issue with Sundays of course is that Front & Back of House staff tend to be on double time, further increasing the cost. As awful as the whole situation is, I can't see any commercial theatre giving them a Sunday for free, just out of the good of their hearts.

Pretty much- it's a rights issue, otherwise some other producer could potentially have swooped in and given them a short run/theatre run. I do think though more people would have thought 'I'll give it a go' if it was in a theatre. I know I avoid arenas like the plague no matter what is on in them for a start. 

That said, a one off concert for the cast (singing whatever just like a normal MT concert) isn't a bad idea, and there's enough 'profile' in the cast do do a one-nighter of that sort. 

The daft thing is, they were only using about 1/10 of the whole arena anyway. Literally just the bit at the end with the "horseshoe" of seats, and maybe one block on the side sections, with the floor. So they probably didn't have many more seats than they would've had in a theatre, just with the added expense of paying for an arena.