With Wicked recently surpassing A Chorus Line to become the sixth-longest running show, and Kinky Boots moving up past Oklahoma!, check out the latest list of long runs on Broadway.
Flip through the 31 longest running shows on Broadway 5 of which are still running today:
Click here to see all Broadway shows that ran 1,000 performances or more.
In the music video above, stage favorites from New York and London—including Christina Bianco, Sophia Anne Caruso (Beetlejuice), Kerry Ellis (Wicked) James Monroe Iglehart, (Hamilton, Aladdin), Charlie Stemp (Hello, Dolly!, the upcoming Mary Poppins revival), and Marisha Wallace (Dreamgirls)—sing their gratitude toward the Armed Forces. The original song “The Hero” was written by the husband-and-wife songwriting duo of Daniel and Laura Curtis.
In addition to the music video, stars such as recent Olivier winner Bryan Cranston (soon to be on Broadway in Network), Whoopi Goldberg, Alan Menken, Matthew Morrison, Paul McCartney, and Stephen Fry recorded words of thanks.
Proceeds from the tribute, released in conjunction with the centennial anniversary of the end of World War I, will go to the U.K. charity Help for Heroes.
“It became quickly clear that people really engaged with the song, which is about a female recruit and her journey,” Daniel Curtis explains. Soon, we had artists from Broadway signing on—we even had to change the name from ‘A West End Tribute’ to ‘A West End and Friends Tribute.’”
For more information and to donate to Help for Heroes, click here.
The complete cast is set for the national tour of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, which begins November 8 in Paducah, Kentucky.
Reprising their roles from the previous tour are Sean Montgomery as Bob Wallace, Jeremy Benton as Phil Davis, Kerry Conte as Betty Haynes, Kelly Sheehan as Judy Haynes, Conrad John Schuck as General Waverly, Tony winner Karen Ziemba as Martha Watson, Brad Frenette as Ralph Sheldrake, Aaron Galligan-Stierle as Mike Nulty, and Cliff Bemis as Ezekiel Foster. Emma Grace Berardelli and Kyla Carter are new to the cast in the role of Susan Waverly.
Rounding out the company of returning cast members are Kelly Black, Stephanie Brooks, Darien Crago, Laurie DiFilippo, Sarah Fagan, Drew Humphrey, Brianna Latrash, Ann-Ngaire Martin, Danny McHugh, Chris McNiff, Sean Quinn, and Chelsea Williams. Additional new cast members include Drew King, Daniel Plimpton, Karilyn Ashley Surrat, and Richard Riaz Yoder.
Directed and choreographed by Randy Skinner, the limited tour will also play engagements in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Nashville, Tennessee; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Atlanta, Georgia; Denver, Colorado; Orlando, Florida; and Miami, Florida.
CLICK HERE TO SEE A FULL LIST OF ANNOUNCED AND UPCOMING NATIONAL TOURS
Based on the classic film of the same name, the musical has a score full of Irving Berlin classics and a book by David Ives and Paul Blake. The production tells the story of two showbiz buddies putting on a show in a Vermont inn, and finding their perfect mates in the bargain.
The creative team also includes set designer Anna Louizos with set adaptation by Kenneth Foy, lighting designer Ken Billington, sound designer Keith Caggiano, orchestrator Larry Blank, vocal and dance arranger Bruce Pomahac, and associate director and choreographer Mary Giattino.
The original Broadway production was directed by Walter Bobbie and choreographed by Skinner.
Irving Berlin’s White Christmas is produced by Work Light Productions.
Visit IrvingBerlinsWhiteChristmas.com for more information.
The national tour of Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s Wicked welcomes the return of Jackie Burns and Kara Lindsay beginning October 31 at San Diego Civic Theatre.
Burns again plays the green-skinned Elphaba with Lindsay as her popular roommate Glinda. The two actors are scheduled to continue with the tour in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.
Burns and Lindsay are joined by Michael Wartella, who returns to Oz as Boq—a role he has played both on Broadway and in the national tour. The current cast also includes Jason Graae as The Wizard, Jody Gelb as Madame Morrible, Mili Diaz as Nessarose, Jon Robert Hall as Fiyero, and Chad Jennings as Doctor Dillamond.
CLICK HERE TO SEE A FULL LIST OF ANNOUNCED AND UPCOMING NATIONAL TOURS
Burns, who is Broadway’s longest-running Elphaba, also starred in the national tour of If/Then. Lindsay previously performed the role of Glinda in the Broadway company and national tour. She has also appeared on Broadway in Newsies and Beautiful. Their return to the Wicked national tour coincides with the musical’s 15th anniversary on Broadway, which was recently celebrated by NBC with A Very Wicked Halloween. Watch performances from the TV special, including those by Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, here.
(Updated October 31, 2018)
A month after Lin-Manuel Miranda hits the big screen in Mary Poppins Returns and just days after he wraps up his return to the title role in Hamilton for a run in Puerto Rico, the multi-hyphenate will present, along with Hamilton director Thomas Kail, improv hip-hop troupe Freestyle Love Supreme to Off-Broadway audiences beginning January 30, 2019.
READ: Everything We Know So Far About Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton in Puerto Rico
For 32 performances (the run will last through March 2) at Ars Nova’s Greenwich House Theatre, Andrew Bancroft, Arthur Lewis, Bill Sherman, Chris Sullivan, Anthony Veneziale, and Utkarsh Ambudkar will create one-night-only shows; cell phones will be required to be checked at the door. Miranda produces and may be a guest performer.
Conceived of by Kail, Miranda, and Anthony Veneziale, Freestyle Love Supreme begins previews January 30 before opening February 12 at the Greenwich House Theater, 27 Barrow Street. Tickets on sale now at freestylelovesupreme.com.
“When Lin and I were developing In the Heights, our friend Anthony kept grabbing Lin during breaks from rehearsal and freestyling. When I heard them, I knew they were on to something special,” said Kail in a statement. “We spent years crafting the show after that, and many of our favorite, and most hilarious memories, are from Freestyle Love Supreme shows. We’ve been waiting for just the right moment to bring the show back to New York. It’s time!”
“Freestyle Love Supreme is the most exciting thing I’ve ever been a part of in my life. There is nothing like a live hip-hop show that is improvised from the first moment til the final curtain, and the skill set required to pull it off has introduced me to this deep bench of multi-hyphenate genius musician emcees,” added Miranda. “No two shows are the same, each show its own experience. I’m so thrilled to get the band back together; and even though I’m a co-producer this time around, I selfishly hope they let me jump onstage a couple of times over the course of the run. FLS for life.”
Each show will find the performers crafting an 80-minute musical based on suggestions from the audience. The name comes from the John Coltrane suite A Love Supreme.
1928 Six-time Tony-winning costume designer Florence Klotz is born. Her designs are worn by the original casts of Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, On the Twentieth Century, Rags, City of Angels, Kiss of the Spider Woman, and dozens more Broadway shows.
1954 N. Richard Nash‘s play about a con-man’s visit to a small Western town, The Rainmaker, opens at the Cort Theatre. Geraldine Page stars in the 125-performance Broadway run and then goes on to do the London production in 1956. The critically-acclaimed play is made into a movie in 1956 and is the basis for the 1963 stage musical, 110 in the Shade. Woody Harrelson and Jayne Atkinson star in a 1999 revival of the show for the Roundabout Theatre Company.
1979 Arnold Soboloff, who is playing Smee, the sidekick to Captain Hook, in Peter Pan at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, dies of a heart attack. He finishes a song in Act II of the show, goes off into the wings, and then collapses. He is 48 years old.
1985 Wallace Shawn‘s Aunt Dan and Lemon opens at the Public Theater, with Shawn and Linda Hunt in the cast. It runs 191 shows, even though Variety portrays it as “stupifyingly dull … Another whatsit with no plot, flabby writing, no scene structure, arbitrary and unmotivated characterizations and extraneous graphic sex. In short, zero dramatic craftsmanship.”
2001 Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn‘s revised musical confection, By Jeeves, opens at Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre, some 27 years after it opened in Great Britain as simply Jeeves. Broadway audiences don’t take to this musical version of P.G. Wodehouse‘s Bertie Wooster stories, however, and it closes after just 73 performances, the shortest run ever for a Lloyd Webber show in its Broadway debut.
2003 Kevin Kline plays Falstaff in Lincoln Center Theater‘s production of William Shakespeare‘s Henry IV. Also in the cast are Ethan Hawke, Michael Hayden, Audra McDonald, Dana Ivey, Byron Jennings, and Richard Easton. The production wins the 2004 Tony Award as Best Revival of a Play.
2010 The first New York City revival of Tony Kushner‘s ambitious two-part, six-and-a-half-hour Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes opens Off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre. Directed by Michael Greif, the groundbreaking Reagan-era-set epic about fictional and historical characters commingling in the time of AIDS features Robin Bartlett, Christian Borle, Bill Heck, Zoe Kazan, Billy Porter, Zachary Quinto, Robin Weigert, and Frank Wood.
2012 All Broadway shows are canceled as New York prepares for the arrival of Hurricane Sandy. In the wake of the widespread flooding and blackouts caused by the storm, performances do not resume until October 31.
2013 Wallace Shawn stars in the American premiere of his Grasses of a Thousand Colors, opening Off-Broadway at the Public Theater. The play is about a doctor who tries to solve world hunger by rejiggering the metabolisms of animals to tolerate eating their own kind. It also stars Julie Hagerty, Emily Cass McDonnell, Kristina Mueller, and Jennifer Tilly.
More of Today’s Birthdays: Elsa Lanchester 1902. Dody Goodman 1915. Cleo Laine 1927. Joan Plowright 1929. Jane Alexander 1939. Ivo van Hove 1958. Ayad Akhtar 1970. Justin Guarini 1978.
Watch highlights from the 2015 Encores! production of Paint Your Wagon, featuring Justin Guarini: