Longest Shows in Broadway History?

Guys & Dolls is (I believe) 3 hours.

'Xanadu'!
90 mins was looooong!

Laramie Project is about 3 and a half hours too. At least it was when I saw it at a Highschool.

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The Kentucky Cycle was like 6 hrs, right? 2 Parts, I think, but on the same day...

well look at what has happened to americas attention span.. lol
now musicals run from 90 to 2.5 hours... and we cant watch anything longer? shame

I don't think it has to do with attention span, could you really squeeze another half hour into Xanadu or Drowsy, and keep it interesting? Could you do it with A Chorus Line?

Some material and stories can pull off 3 hours, some cannot.

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Saying shows run "from 90 minutes to 2.5 hours" isn't exactly accurate, as it makes it sound like 2.5 hours is the outside. Actually, the average runtime of shows currently on Broadway (including those in previews, but not the ones starting later this week) is 147 minutes. (I just calculated it, I'm a dork, yes.) So, it stands to reason that theatregoers still have plenty of an attention span, at least a half-hour more than your average moviegoer (movies average about two hours) or 90 minutes more than your average tv watcher (and that number grows if you count TiVo!)

I was just curious how often we see these three-and-a-half-hour-two-intermission type deals. Not very, seems to be the answer, but there have been some.

And, man, reading Long Day's Journey Into Night was like slogging through a novel. Good stuff, though.

Updated On: 11/11/08 at 06:03 PM

adding an intermission to A Chorus Line totally ruins the claustrophobic feeling the creators were going for.

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I believe that "Les Mis" ran 3 hours and 15 minutes for the first several years of its run. Cameron Mackintosh trimmed enough so that it went under three hours, in order to avoid union overtime payments and "extend the profitable run" of the show.

Before the 1970s most musicals did run close to three hours, if not more. Almost all of them ran longer in tryouts or previews than when they opened, but in my mind "My Fair Lady" and "Fiddler on the Roof" are especially long as presented on their original opening nights, but this was in an era when the scene changes of a usual musical took place behind a closed curtain, etc.

And this is with only one intermission!

Older shows could run even longer, I think. "The New Moon" and other American operettas were three hours and counting, I believe.

The original "A Chorus Line"'s running time of two hours and ten minutes with no intermission was pretty revolutionary for its time, both for the lack of intermission and for the shortness of the full span.

Updated On: 11/11/08 at 06:14 PM

Strange Interlude (original version) started at 4:00 p.m., broke for dinner at 7:30 p.m., resumed at 8:30 p.m. and didn't get out until around 11:00 p.m. Mourning Becomes Electra (original) ran somewhat longer, again with a dinner break. Neither was written to be done separately -- they were considered one play and there wasn't an option to see part of it one night and part of it another.

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Updated On: 11/11/08 at 06:32 PM

I think the longest I saw was "A Long Days Journey Into Night" with Vanessa Redgrave and Brian Dennehy in 2003. It ran over 4 hours and had 2 intermissions.

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The Lord of the Rings musical, when it was in previews in Toronto, was something like five hours long.

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