Katie Holmes set for Broadway flop

In two months’ time, Katie Holmes, the wife of Tom Cruise, will make her Broadway stage debut in the Arthur Miller play All My Sons. However, detractors are already saying the production is destined to flop, citing poor advance bookings. Michael Riedel, one of the New York’s most influential theatre critics, has revealed that advance sales for the show, which opens in mid-September, have failed even to reach the $1m mark.

Riedel helpfully points out in the New York Post that that is roughly a third of the expected volume for a Hollywood star's Broadway run, and – just to rub it in – less than a quarter of the $4m that Cruise's ex-wife Nicole Kidman achieved with the play The Blue Room.

Riedel also claims that most of the tickets that have been sold were snapped up months ago by speculative booking agents. With a glut of unsold seats now on the market, top price berths are still fetching the relatively paltry sum of just over $100. “Ticket brokers and group sales agents, who at one point thought Holmes would be this season's Julia Roberts – who pretty much sold out Three Days of Rain in one day of rain – say interest in the Holmes show is nil,” he wrote, quoting a broker complaining: "I bought 1,000 tickets to the show; I still have them."

So what has motivated Riedel, who is famed for his ability to skewer Broadway openings with unflattering reviews? It appears to hinge on her choice of husband and the advantages it has afforded the 29-year-old actress. "These days, Tom is still trying to live down his couch dance on Oprah. Holmes, meanwhile, is in the public eye only because she's Mrs Tom Cruise.”