"Any other show that ran a whopping 16 performances on Broadway would never see the light of day again."
You mean like Little Murders, which ran 7 performances on Broadway in 1967 and ran 400 performances Off-Broadway in 1969 after having been a hit for the Royal Shakespeare Company in London? And then it was made into a movie.
And what about Threepenny Opera, which ran 12 performances in 1933?
I could make a list of shows that played 16 performances or less in their original productions and later came back to critical praise and longer runs, even if many of those later runs were for nonprofit companies.
And the list of shows that were real flops, even if running more than 16 performances, in their original productions and are now considered classics or near-classics is a pretty long one. We could start with A Moon for the Misbegotten, which ran 68 performances in 1957 and has been back a number of times, most successfully in 1973 when it ran 313 performances, and that production only closed in order to tour. Tough show to do eight times a week for a long run. It could easily have run another nine months if not even another year on Broadway in that 1973 production. It was a huge success. |
