Wealth & Money Quote by Hal Price

Broadway sells you a dream, then hands the receipt to the accountants. Hal Price’s line lands because it refuses the romantic myth that musicals are pure art sprung from inspiration; they are capital-intensive machines, and that fact doesn’t sit politely in the background. “It costs a great deal of money” isn’t just budget talk. It’s a thesis about power: whoever fronts the cash gets a vote in what the audience is allowed to feel.

The quote’s bite is in its quiet escalation. Price doesn’t argue that commerce merely coexists with theater; he says the ratio matters. “The more money involved” implies a sliding scale where artistic risk becomes a luxury item, and “big business” isn’t a neutral investor but an active shaper of content. The subtext is that spectacle becomes strategy: recognizable titles, safe emotional arcs, castable stars, brand-friendly politics. When a show must recoup millions, it starts behaving like a product launch. You can hear the unspoken question: how many daring choices can survive a boardroom?

Contextually, Price is pointing at a structural reality of the modern musical: long development cycles, union labor, orchestras (or their cheaper replacements), marketing costs that rival production costs, and a tourist economy that rewards familiarity. The intent isn’t to sneer at success; it’s to name the pressure system that decides which stories reach the stage at all. His warning is simple and sharp: as musicals become more expensive, they risk becoming less alive.