Big Productions.

After lackluster performances in the 1970s, Broadway rebounded in the 1980s with bigger shows and bigger stars than it had boasted in years. Production budgets and ticket prices were also bigger. In 1980 the typical cost for mounting a big show was about $1 million. By the end of the decade the cost had mushroomed to four or five times that amount. The $4 million production cost for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats in 1982 set a Broadway record; only six years later his Phantom of the Opera cost $8 million. Theatergoers, who paid about ten dollars for a seat in the mid 1970s, found themselves spending between twenty-five and forty-five dollars a ticket for a comparable show by 1983. Because it was shrewdly marketed as a theatrical "event," the nine-hour, two-part staging of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1981), David Edgar's adaptation of Charles...