Going To War With The Critics

Composer Joseph Brooks’s newest musical, In My Life, has been running on Broadway for three weeks now, and judging from the terrible reviews and lackluster box office it has attracted, you might expect that it would shortly be folding up its tent and disappearing into the ether. But Brooks is apparently quite a determined sort, and he has taken the unique step of mounting a dizzying blitz of advertising designed to counteract the bad press and build buzz for a show which, to this point, has generated none on its own. Is the massive ad buy working? Well, that depends. Ticket sales are undeniably up, but the show is still losing money hand over fist.