What happened to HIM @ Soho Playhouse?

[followspot]

Entire production vanished after last Saturday's performance, full run cancelled, three days after opening. No announcement, no explanation. Just Poof! Gone! Friends have tickets for later in the week (which is why I'm asking), and it's still up on the Playhouse website and for sale on TDF. Anyone have the scoop?

[Lefou]

I'm one of the few that can tell you what happened.

It was a god damn disaster. Soho was quite wise to close this mess...the show wasn't awful, but the acting was atrocious.

[newintown]

The press did make it sound like a low-budget re-hash of Little Dog Laughed (no brilliant piece of writing itself...).

[followspot]

But still, reviews were fair, and this was a transfer from a successful run at Cherry Lane. Whatever happened, a closing notice would be expected. Bizarre.

[newintown]

It ran briefly at the Cherry Lane Studio, not the main theatre (the Studio being a miniscule room, productions in which are generally attended mostly by friends and family of the actors and creative team).

This is a good example of the necessity of reading between the lines of press releases, which are, at best, highly exaggerated versions of reality. (At worst, they're just a bunch of bald-faced lies.)

[After Eight]

I saw it at the Cherry Lane Studio, and it was definitely not ready for prime time.

I'm surprised it was deemed worthy of a transfer.

[whatever2]

i mentioned in an earlier thread on this play (i can't even find it myself anymore) that the playwright at one point had aspirations of expanding the work presented at the cherry lane studio into a full-length work. there was even some sense in whatever i'd read that this was to occur as part of the transfer ... maybe the additional bits never got writ?

(or -- worse -- maybe they did???)

[WOSQ]

Whenever I hear of this abrupt of a closing, I always assume that they ran out of money. The show could have been under-capitalized and there was no reserve. With the downbeat reviews there were probably no advance sales either.

No money = no show.

[egghumor]

A close friend of mine who's a published and produced playwright -- and who is generally more lenient in his opinions of productions than I -- saw HIM and it was "THE WORST!"

[LizzieCurry]

Strangely, it appears they only put out a press release today: http://www.talkinbroadway.com/allthatchat/d.php?id=2057778

[followspot]

It's not the closing that's strange, it's the fact that for nearly a week ticket holders, ticket sellers, and even apparently the theatre itself were unaware that the entire production was gone.