Toy Show the Musical: Behind the curtain of RTÉ ‘flop’ that left children in tears over cancelled shows

The day before the opening night of Toy Show the Musical last December, a production that represented a big gamble financially for RTÉ, the broadcaster’s executives sat down for a routine meeting.

When the discussion turned to the musical, the mood was optimistic. “Hoping all will go well,” minutes of the executive team meeting stated.

Rory Coveney, then-RTÉ director of strategy, who is a brother of the Fine Gael TD and Minister for Enterprise Simon Coveney, had been overseeing the project. A meeting of the senior RTÉ managers the month before heard how production of the show was in “full swing”.

Mr Coveney, who recently resigned from RTÉ, told the meeting a promotion of the musical for the media, where the cast performed two songs, “was very well-received”.

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But by the time senior RTÉ executives met on December 20th, it was clear all was not going well. A large number of the cast had fallen ill, forcing the cancellation of five shows over the previous weekend, in some cases when attendees were already sitting in their seats.

The meeting of the executive team, since overhauled by new director general Kevin Bakhurst, heard there were “lots of options” to run extra shows in January. However, this did not materialise. Former RTÉ director general Dee Forbes told the meeting that, despite the setbacks, the show was “now back on track”.

[ Feelings about fate of Ryan Tubridy ‘running high’ among RTÉ staff, says DG ]

[ Fintan O’Toole: In the end, Ryan Tubridy resorted to the Father Ted defence ]

In the ongoing controversy currently gripping the national broadcaster, which started over revelations of secret top-up payments to Ryan Tubridy, it emerged that the musical ended up making a loss of more than €2 million. The production cost €2.7 million, including nearly €340,000 marketing the show which ran until December 31st.

The producers pitched the business case for the musical based on 84 per cent of the seats filled across 54 shows, which would have required 90,200 tickets being sold at €46.50 each. Breaking even would have required 70 per cent of the tickets being sold across the show’s planned run, some 75,400 tickets.

In the end, just 11,044 tickets were sold, with another 9,000 given away in competitions or promotions, meaning the audience across the 27 shows was less than half of the available capacity. There were a further 6,743 tickets bought that RTÉ had to refund due to shows being cancelled, at a cost of €250,000.

The budget for the creative team went €92,000 over expectation as more people were brought in, while an additional €183,000 beyond what was forecast was spent promoting and marketing the show, despite the heavy free promotion on RTÉ's airwaves.

The loss on the production after its first year was €2.2 million, according to documents supplied by RTÉ to the Oireachtas media committee as part of a wider examination of spending at the broadcaster.

The genesis of the show lay in plans drawn up by RTÉ in late 2019 to develop more “live events”, with Toy Show the Musical to be the first of these. The musical was created and produced by Late Late Show producers Katherine Drohan and Jane Murphy, who is to head up the production of The Late Late Show under new host Patrick Kielty.

The producers had a vision that the musical, which they considered (according to pre-show media promotion) a passion project, would become a Christmas tradition with families returning year after year. “We have had this silly dream and now it’s a reality,” said Murphy in a publicity interview last November ahead of the show’s opening.

Moya Doherty, the then chair of the RTÉ board, and a co-creator of international dance show Riverdance, met the producers of the musical to give advice, given her expertise in the area.

The creators of the show met a number of other people in the live events industry, some who advised against the idea.

“I told them it was too crowded a market,” one promoter said.

One industry figure said staging a show on the scale of the musical was a very risky venture, with the broadcaster straying into terrain where many projects fail to break even, sometimes losing a lot of money.

“We’ve all had flops. There’s not a promoter worth their salt who hasn’t had a loss like that… The difference is this was public money,” the source said.

How Toy Show: The Musical went wrong for RTÉ

Listen | 30:53

The decision by RTÉ to push ahead with a musical based on a brand new idea, rather than something tried and tested, was “foolhardy”, the source said.

This person was not alone. There were outside warnings from those whose views were canvassed – the show was too ambitious, the budget was not right and that it should be delayed to get the idea right.

[ Toy Show the Musical: How did RTÉ end up wasting €2.2 million on such a risky bet? ]

[ RTÉ was looking for a warehouse for the Toy Show musical set while TG4 was at the Oscars ]

After a week-long theatrical workshop in the summer of 2021, the bones of the story for the musical based on The Late Late Toy Show began to take shape. The green light for the project to proceed was given the following March by the RTÉ board’s audit and programme committees.

Of those who worked on the project for RTÉ, nobody was interested in speaking publicly when contacted. “I have no interest in talking to anybody,” one said when asked to discuss the musical.

However, the show’s playwright, Lisa Tierney Keogh, described the musical on Twitter as “the worst working experience of my professional career”.

In a recent post on LinkedIn, Ms Murphy defended the production, stating that the musical had “mightily thrilled” audiences.

The show’s producer paid tribute to the “hard-working” freelance artists and “superbly talented cast” of child and adult actors. She also thanked the “accomplished industry players who warmly welcomed us into their world, who offered advice, encouragement and consolation”.

While there were talks about having some involvement from Tubridy in the show, this did not materialise. “He was just not interested in it,” Mr Coveney told an Oireachtas committee on July 5th.

On Tuesday, Tubridy told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the musical – tied to RTÉ's flagshow TV programme that he then presented – was “something I have nothing to do with”. He rejected suggestions that there had been any tensions or animosity over his decision not to get involved.

“Given the nature of my job there was no way I was going to be in a position to get involved,” he said.

Asked if staff from the Late Late Show were seconded to work on the musical, Tubridy told the committee that people may have been working in parallel but that seconded was “probably too strong a word”.

Central to the commercial failure of the musical was the decision to put the show on in the 1,995 seat-capacity Convention Centre in Dublin city centre. Sources in the arts world viewed that as a crucial mistake, given the likely high costs and the fact the venue, mostly used for conferences, was not a natural theatre, creating significant practical and logistical challenges.

One source in the sector said to successfully pull off a big musical would take years of planning.

“It was a tricky ask from the beginning to make a show of that size that quickly,” they said. “It felt exploitative of the idea of the Toy Show; it felt a bit cynical.”

Several parents wrote to RTÉ to complain about the manner and short notice in which some of the shows were cancelled, according to internal records released by RTÉ. One said they had travelled to Dublin for the December 17th show, spending €380 on transport, parking and accommodation, as well as €210 on tickets.

“We arrived at the Convention Centre on time as advised. We were seated for 3.45pm for the start time of 4pm. However, at approximately 4.10pm a woman came out onto the stage to announce the show wouldn’t go ahead,” the complaint said.

The parent said their daughters cried all the way home from Dublin with “pure disappointment”.

In another complaint, a parent said the decision to cancel an hour before the show started, when many families were at the venue, was “absolutely disgraceful”.

[ Toy Show the Musical costs and Tubridy’s contract among documents demanded from RTÉ by PAC ]

[ Toy Show the Musical staff paid ‘below industry standard’, playwright says ]

Another parent with two children said they had spent €623 booking into a hotel and showed up at the doors “to be told the show was cancelled”. They complained that an earlier matinee show was cancelled, but those with tickets for the later show were not told at that point.

“Where do I get my REFUND,” they wrote.

The complaints were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Irish Times.

The hope was the significant investment made to stage the musical could be recouped by running the show over several years, according to a January 11th briefing document prepared for the Public Accounts Committee.

The document said “the budgeting and financial management of the project was managed by the producers and the RTÉ finance team”.

The production was on the radar of politicians who feared it would turn into a waste of public funds before the curtain was raised on the first show.

Amid reports of under-performing ticket sales ahead of the musical’s run, Catherine Murphy, Social Democrats TD, raised the matter with fellow PAC members in a December 9th email, as a possible area to investigate.

“This appeared to be a high-risk venture; it looked like it was going to spectacularly backfire,” she told The Irish Times.

Ms Murphy said that when TDs tried to get information from RTÉ initially they were blocked and told it was commercially sensitive. Trying to get details out of RTÉ about the finances of the project had been “like pulling fingernails”, she added.

[ Fintan O’Toole: RTÉ bureaucrats fantasised they could turn themselves into Broadway impresarios ]

[ RTÉ pay crisis: Kevin Bakhurst signals need for ‘interim funding’ from State to meet broadcast costs ]

The Kildare North TD said “flop is a generous description financially” for the production. “I don’t know what oversight was brought to it; I think there is still some questions to be asked,” she said.

Other politicians have spoken in more forceful terms about the cost of the musical as RTÉ grapples with the crisis triggered by the Tubridy payments controversy.

Labour’s media spokeswoman Senator Marie Sherlock, a member of the Oireachtas media committee, which has examined the spending on the show, described the musical as “more than a flop”, saying that it was “an absolute disaster in terms of the planning that went into the show”.

Expressing his shock at the €2.2 million loss on the show, Fine Gael TD Brendan Griffin branded the lack of financial oversight around the musical as a “disgrace” and “scandal”.

This week Mr Bakhurst said that rather than being put on ice for a year, the musical would be scrapped entirely.

“No, gone,” he said when asked if it would be revived.

The director general said RTÉ would even try to sell the show’s set, which is costing the broadcaster €8,000 a year to keep in storage.

Minister for Media Catherine Martin and RTÉ board chair Siún Ní Raghallaigh have ordered a further investigation of the musical by Grant Thornton, the outside accountancy firm called in to investigate the payments to Tubridy.

The Oireachtas media committee has also asked Ms Martin to widen the scope of the investigations by the expert advisory committees and forensic accountant appointed to look into the Tubridy payments into a wider range of areas, including the advertising slots given by RTÉ to Toy Show the Musical and the esimated value of this publicity.

The curtain may have fallen on the musical but the show is far from over.