Toy Show the Musical - Farce or Triumph

Seems like a farce alright. Absolutely no involvement from Ryan Tubridy which seems odd - thought he was the ‘brains’ behind it.

there is a link to buy tickets on the main RTÉ website, and every time I turn on rte radio there is an add for it on - am sure this is ‘free’ advertising. Seems unfair on the other panto’s - won’t be going in any case

Questions certainly need to be asked of the amount of advertising for this vanity project - if its not taken out of the profits then they have breached competition law I would say?

i bet he's 100% behind it but was clever enough not sign anything that implicates himself

Rte senior dude on CB at the moment; not giving anything away. Won’t say how much it cost to put on

Based on some professional experience with RTE I'd say they'll struggle to be able to fully quantify the cost of this farce if the free advertising it's had on their network is to be included.

It looks patently obvious that the losses are going to be in seven figure territory though.

Half expect rte to come out and say theyre been sabotaged

That doesn’t make any sense. They’d still have to pay for the venue, the crew, the performers, the sets, etc. As well as offering refunds. They cancelled the first show while the audience were actually sitting there.

Question: Do we have any source outside of RTÉ that is confirming that the actual cause of the cancellations is due to sickness ? Surely cast and crew would be all over Social media telling everyone how sick everyone in the cast / crew are?

It is odd either way that, your not seeing anything from cast members or crew. Now RTÉ might have told not to say anything and may have point to their contracts. It is terrible for the kids involved to be stuck in the middle of all of this.

1. The way in which RTÉ carried out the project (surely this year you'd start with a small venue and then grow the show due to demand).
2. The fact that we can suggest that they are not sick at all but that RTÉ are doing all of this due to low ticket sales.

Ticket sales are unlikely to grow over the next 10 days and even before the cancellation sales were probably not going to take off as it is now late in the year.

Or to put it another way - I hope its on the balance sheet

Surely a public broadcaster shouldn't be spending money on such puerile projects. A musical based on the civil war would have been a better idea.

His non-interest in the show would suggest either he knew it was going to be a flop and distanced himself from it, or else there was a row which saw him excluded from any profits, if there are any

That Indo article in the OP finishes with "The musical WAS set to run until December 31 at The Auditorium, Convention Centre, Dublin with tickets priced at €25."

Considering that the rest of the article reads like an RTE press release, I'd say that last line tells us where this is headed

I see Rory Coveney is ‘Director of Strategy’ at RTE. I wonder how much he is on.

I haven't seen a review of the show anywhere.

Very strange, or perhaps not.

RTÉ have no business being in Theatre production. The T stands for Teilifís.

If some private entity wanted to licence the concept from RTÉ and take on all the risk of such a saccharine, puke inducing idea, then good luck to them. In fact a seasoned panto maker likely would have made a far better fist of it.

The losses of this thing must be clearly detailed and the responsible Producers sanctioned.

They should rename this to:

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Or

RTE has a hard on for aping shite British entertainment. The musical.

Not sure how reliable this is but I saw a comment elsewhere claiming if a performance is cancelled due to illness amongst cast/crew.. insurance covers any losses.

However, if a performance is cancelled due to poor ticket sales.. nothing, nada, zero!

No doubt misinformation as I'm sure RTE wouldn't resort to such underhanded tactics.

how could they think this was a good idea.

the toy show is in major decline and watched by adults for nostalgia reasons mostly. kids arnt watching it voluntarily. then its after christamass for some of it.

then ad in that it a musical , they couldnt make it any worse if they tried.

heads should roll for this disaster

Ach, I dunno how true that is either, Annie and Oliver Twist are regular Christmas favourites, don’t get me started on ET and, dare I say it - It’s a Wonderful Life 😬

It could well have been those stories which the producers were hoping to cash in on by what appears to be a common theme relating to Christmas stories… Jesus Christ now I think of it - Pinocchio, Snow White, Cinderella… definitely a theme there 😂

I think ‘twas more just a case of RTE believing in their own hype that caused them to imagine after the last few years of wringing the absolute shyte out of the Late Late Toy Show on social media, they imagined it could translate to bums on seats as a full-on musical theatrical event… they appear to have judged the relationship between social media and reality about as well as the ability of their intended audience.