By Barbara & Scott Siegel . . . .
Rarely Commented Upon: The Foundation of Broadway’s Current Success – Mammoth Long Running Shows!
When you consider the ebb & flow of shows that open and close every season – the millions upon millions of dollars lost by investors in shows that crash and burn every Spring — remember that there are a slew of shows that just keep rolling along, keeping the lights on on Broadway.
Sometimes we forget these long-running shows are even there, our attention always fixed on the hot new thing coming from the West End or transferring from Off-Broadway. Yet, quietly, steadily, if you look at the Broadway box office every week, what are the long-running shows that are always playing at, or near, capacity all the time? In no particular order, you’ve got The Lion King (27 years), Wicked (20 years), Aladdin (10 years), Hamilton (9 years), The Book of Mormon (13 years), and Chicago (28 years). There are other shows that have been running for a significant chunk of time, like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Moulin Rouge! But you get the idea.
Imagine if these Broadway show institutions did not exist. The result would be a theater district full of dark houses and a run on ghost lights.
Now, if there was an easy formula for creating these monster hits, everybody would be following it and there would be 34 such shows running all the time on Broadway, one for each theater. One can, however, look at some of the common elements shared by most of these shows. With rare exception, they either won the Tony Award the year they opened for Best Play or Musical, or Best Revival. One notable exception: Wicked, which was beaten by Avenue Q for Best Musical twenty years ago. Some of them (think Disney), also, arrived on Broadway boosted by having been adapted from a famous hit movie.
But you know what ALL of them have in common? Every single one of them is, in their own way, a big splashy tourist-friendly production. Perhaps the only exceptions to that might be Chicago and Hamilton, but then only by comparison to the bigger budget theatrical shows like The Lion King, Aladdin, and Moulin Rouge! And Chicago and Hamilton offer their own, just different, kind of flash.
Oh, and ALL of these shows have one other thing in common: they are exceptionally well done. Whether it’s light froth like Aladdin, incredible production design like The Lion King, sheer writing brilliance of Hamilton, etc. — all of these shows are terrific versions of what a Broadway musical can and should be. In other words, quality does rise to the top.
Of course, plenty of high quality shows also flop. But mediocre shows rarely have long runs (well, Mamma Mia…) But let’s leave some room for disagreement.
Finally, there is one more thing to say on this subject: Broadway needs the injection, every season, of new brilliant plays and musicals, all of them vying to become the next monster hits that run for decades and decades. Because the big shows do close (The Phantom of the Opera, anyone?), and we need new replacements to keep Broadway safe and secure.
And you never know what that next big hit will be. Who would have guessed a rap musical about Alexander Hamilton would be a Broadway game-changer? Or that a scatological musical comedy about Mormons would run well past a decade with no end in sight? So, keep those shows coming every Spring, because out of the inevitable wreckage of the Tony Award sweepstakes, some shows are going to provide the foundation that keeps Broadway standing.
