Smashes and duds taking the stage on Broadway

NEW YORK -- To paraphrase (sort of) from Charles Dickens: It was the best of shows, it was the worst of shows. \nTwo big, expensive musicals arrived this week on Broadway within a day of one another, and their receptions couldn't have been more different. \n"La Boheme," Australian director Baz Luhrmann's takes on the beloved Puccini opera, received the best reviews since "Hairspray" opened last August. But "Dance of the Vampires," starring Michael Crawford, had most critics out for blood and tossing around such adjectives as "mindless," "vapid," "amateurish" and "mortifying." \nFor "La Boheme," the rapturous notices have paid off at the box office. Monday's take, the day after the opening, was close to a million dollars, "in the high six figures" according to producer Jeffrey Seller, and sales continued to be strong Tuesday. \n"It could easily have been a very different story," Luhrmann said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "In the end, it's Italian opera on Broadway. We could have been sitting here going, "What idiot let him do that?" We always get good and bad reviews — very passionate for and against. I think it helped that many of the critics went three times and really had time to think about the piece."\nLa Boheme" opened Sunday with a $3 million advance, good but not great for a lavish musical. Its producers already are unspooling a lush 30-second television commercial that will remind viewers of "Moulin Rouge," Luhrmann's recent film musical. \n"That TV commercial is on in a very heavy rotation this week in the New York area, and Baz is already changing it to reflect the fact that we are now an open New York show," Seller said Tuesday. "We are working really hard to get out the message that this is a popular entertainment, that this is fun." \nFun is not what the critics had at "Vampires," and even Crawford, one of the theater's most popular performers because of his appearances in "The Phantom of Opera" in London, New York and Los Angeles, came in for some catty sniping. \n"Vampires" originally was scheduled to open last month but was postponed for two weeks after director John Rando left to visit his mother, who underwent emergency open heart surgery in Texas. \nThanks to Crawford, "Vampires" has a hefty advance and has done surprisingly well at the box office. Last week, it grossed more than $734,000 and played to 90 percent capacity at the Minskoff Theatre, which has more than 1,700 seats. \nThe Broadway Theatre, which houses "La Boheme," is even bigger, so the show, with tickets now on sale through March, has plenty of seats left to sell. The $6.5 million musical also has three rotating sets of leads because of the show's heavy vocal demands. It started posting at the box office who will sing at each performance. \n"If we don't post, people won't know so that they can come back a second and third time," Seller said. \n"The opera audiences were the first people to come and say, 'Oh, this is for me.' We have won them over," the producer added. "Now we want to win over people who never go to the opera but who do go to musicals -- the pop audience." \nLuhrmann leaves next Friday for Jordan to begin work on a film about Alexander the Great, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. And his next stage project? \n"We have been developing 'Strictly Ballroom' over the last several years," the director said. By the end of next year, Luhrmann may have some idea where he stands with the project, which is based on "t look for it on stage before 2005 -- at the earliest, he said.