Shortest runtime?

I was pretty surprised by the short and sweet run time of The Lifespan of a Fact a few weeks ago - I was on the street by 9:22 after an 8:00 p.m. show, and they started a couple of minutes late.

The shortest run time I can remember attending was 'For Colored Girls...', which lasted 70 minutes the night I saw it, but was said to run 73 minutes. I was not annoyed, to be honest, because I was bored by much of it, despite the great reviews. Living in NJ but working in NYC, I would only see a show that short on a work night; I felt it was too short to spend hours traveling to and from Manhattan. Although I no longer live in NJ, I still have an issue paying Broadway prices for short plays. My solution is to pair a short play with a longer play on a two show day, and get the cheapest seats I can get for the short play.

I admit that I have already thoroughly enjoyed Lifespan and American Son (I paired the latter with Torch Song); however, I still feel that these short plays -- and i include Doubt and especially ADHP2 in this categorization -- lack 'texture' because they either don't take the time to let us know much about the characters (if familiar with ADH, that was not an issue) and / or their focus was too narrow, even if it was a substantial topic.

For example, wouldn't you like to know more about Daniel Radcliffe's background in Lifespan (OCD, ADHD, Genius, all three? or more about the the parents in American Son? or have met the character of the son? I would. Oh, well, just the ramblings of a madman.

I remember timing THE ANARCHIST because I had read on here prior to going that it was remarkably short. IIRC it clocked in at 64 minutes.

It was never on Broadway, but Sarah Ruhl's Melancholy Play is very short (the production I saw ran 65 minutes). The musical adaptation lasts a little longer, though.

Whenever I see it, I am always surprised by how short Joseph... is. When performed without an intermission, the show runs barely over an hour. I suppose the endless megamix adds substantially to that run-time, though. Many of Lloyd-Weber's works are actually rather short for musicals--Superstar and Evita each around 100 minutes, plus intermission. This is because they are sung-through shows based on concept albums where each act was written for one disc.

quizking101 said: "...I’m interested in how you would employ the device of meeting the son in American Son considering that would entirely disrupt the real-time setting of the play."

One possibility would be flashback; but who says that the entire show has to be real-time?

This isn't Broadway related, but I watched a parody called Fleetwood Macbeth that had a 45 minute first act. A 20 minute intermission. Followed by a 7 minute second act.

Old Times

Speed the Plow was listed a 80 minutes but it was barely 70.



Mamet has quite a few very short shows