Most Unexpected Closing Announcement — Page 4

Randomly came across this thread and I thought it'd be interesting to bring it back for shows over the last eight years. Shuffle Along definitely takes the cake in recent history.

Why did NEWSIES close? IIRC it was still making a profit towards the end of its run. Did it have to do with the theatre no longer being available and if so the cost of moving the set to another theatre being too costly?

 

As far as someone asking about the 42ND STREET revival, I recall reading that although it ran almost four years and still lost money was because it rarely met its weekly nut due to how expensive it was to run. There once was a musical, THE YEARLING, that was so poorly capitalized that even if it sold out every performance it only could've realized a profit of 5K a week. But with its poorly received reviews it was never an issue since it closed after three performances.

Updated On: 8/21/16 at 01:30 PM

Definitely Shuffle Along is the most memorable unexpected closing announcement. American Psycho was also fairly surprising- the grosses didn't look too bad i didn't think.

Shuffle Along for sure, mostly in the way of how they worded it, making it not so subtly sound like it was Audra's fault

I, too, was at the performance of Shuffle Along when it was announced to the press that the show would be closing.

Some shows closing did surprise me a little perhaps but that one just seemed so sudden and sad. I wasn't a HUGE fan of the show as some but it had a very talented cast and deserved a longer run.

Newsies and Shuffle Along were the most surprising, I think.

Mary Poppins should have at least been given a nine month advance

ACL2006 said: "agree that POPPINS closed too early. They closed March 3, 2013 & ALADDIN wasn't arriving until February 2014. POPPINS could have(& should have) run until mid-December."

Didn't they renovate the New Amsterdam Theater between that time? I think Disney seems to be the common thread here- they have this thing about quiting while they are ahead. They close their shows when they are on top. They can do that because unlike other producers, they ALWAYS have a new show in the pipe coming. 

Billy Elliott did come as quite the shock...

Updated On: 8/21/16 at 10:29 PM

Newsies was also never meant to be a long-running Broadway hit. It was written just to have in the Disney catalog to sell to schools, community theatres, etc., and the PaperMill production was done simply to create awareness/hype for the show, since most kids then weren't very familiar with the film. Then it became such a huge hit that they took it to Broadway for a limited run, and it ended up turning into an open run. I think since Disney never intended it to be the next Lion King, they wanted to close while it was still successful, take it across the country (with the Broadway set, as mentioned previously), and then use all that hype to sell the licensing rights.

I guess Wildcat was the most unexpected for me. It was supposed to go on hiatus for the summer and then reopen. I remember the day I opened the paper to read that it wouldn't reopen. I was shocked, and very, very sad. I so loved Lucy. Other unexpected closings that left me sad indeed were  The Gay Life, Sail Away, Hot Spot, Jennie... Then there were so many shows that producers closed after a week or less without even giving them a chance to find an audience. I enjoyed a great many of them. So unfortunate.