How Often Do Musicals Change Their Titles After Broadway?

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This time, the reader question was: How often do Broadway musicals change their titles after Broadway?

In 1978, a new musical called Platinum opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre, which is now the Times Square Church. Platinum was hailed by the New York Daily News as “the first big fat hit” of the Broadway season, although other critics disagreed, and the show wound up closing after only 12 previews and 33 performances. 

Platinum had a book by Will Holt and Bruce Vilanch, lyrics by Holt, and music by Gary William Friedman. Holt and Friedman had previously collaborated on the popular, subversive, and very different musical The Me Nobody Knows which gave voice to homeless youth, in addition to their other credits. Vilanch was in 1978 at the start of his career as a comedy writer and actor on stage and screen. 

The glamorous new musical was set in a Hollywood recording studio and told the story of Lila Halliday, a movie star attempting to make a comeback. The role was played by Alexis Smith in the original production, her final Broadway role after originating Phyllis in Follies earlier in the decade. Smith had been with Platinum since its pre-Broadway world premiere at the Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, when the show was titled Sunset. 

Following the show’s quick closing on Broadway, Platinum received a 1983 off-Broadway revival at the Village Gate. Unfortunately this was also short-lived. The show has not been licensed, but it was seen again in New York in 2010 at the New York Fringe Festival. All of these subsequent stagings of Platinum were done under its original title. 

This month, off-Broadway at the York Theatre, Platinum receives another revival—this time with a new book and additional lyrics by Stevie Holland and a new title: Platinum Dreams. The show, which has always been about artists at different points of their career reaching for new dreams, has re-branded. How often do Broadway shows change their titles after Broadway, the way this current off-Broadway production is?

For the purposes of licensing, new productions, and to indicate an updated version, a handful of shows have gone the route of Platinum Dreams and adjusted their title following a Broadway run. It is more common to stick with the same title, but this re-branding does happen in specific instances—especially when the Broadway run was short-lived.

One reason that musicals have been re-branded following a Broadway bow is that in licensing, it was seen as optimal to assign them with the name of the property they were initially adapted from. The 1963 musical Here’s Love, with book, music, and lyrics by The Music Man scribe Meredith Willson, was renamed Miracle on 34th Street The Musical after its Broadway run. Back in the 1960s, musicals that were adapted from films often changed their names to give the movie and the stage musical two distinct identities. This was seen as ideal for appealing to ticket buyers. (Promises, Promises was, after all, not called The Apartment The Musical!) But that sensibility has evolved over the years, and audience members these days crave name recognizability from properties, making the title Miracle on 34th Street The Musical a more likely success in licensing than Here’s Love. 

Here’s Love did run for over 300 performances on Broadway; several musicals that were renamed directly after their source material in their post-Broadway lives were not as initially successful. The uproarious 1976 musical So Long, 174th Street was an adaptation of the hit Joseph Stein play Enter Laughing. It closed in two weeks on Broadway but was given new life in a 2008 off-Broadway revisal called Enter Laughing: The Musical, which was critically acclaimed. The show is now offered for licensing under the latter title. In the same decade, Comin’ Uptown, a Harlem-set adaptation of A Christmas Carol closed within a month on Broadway. It’s now licensed as Christmas is Comin’ Uptown. 

While not adapted from hit properties, two major cult flop Broadway musicals of the 1970s that also received renaming are 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Rockabye Hamlet. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was the biggest Broadway flop of the titan Leonard Bernstein. With book and lyrics by the also legendary Alan Jay Lerner, the show eked out less than a week on Broadway and was Bernstein’s last original Broadway score. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue told the story of those who lived in the white house over the years, and when it was renamed in its post-Broadway life, its title was appropriately A White House Cantata. However, this version of the show is very different from what was seen on Broadway. 

This classical-sounding musical is worlds away from Rockabye Hamlet, which premiered on Broadway in the same year, and was a wild rock retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Songs included “The Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Boogie” and “He Got It In The Ear”. Uniquely, Rockabye Hamlet has been staged following its Broadway run under its same title and also under the titles Something Rockin’ in Denmark and Kronborg: 1582 (a pre-Broadway title). 

The Mystery of Edwin Drood has also had a unique journey with its title. The show, which won the Best Musical Tony Award in 1986, changed its name to simply Drood during its Broadway run. A marketing tactic, the name Drood stuck and that’s how the show, with its myriad possible endings, was licensed until its 2012 Broadway revival. The Broadway revival brought back the full title The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which is how the show has been licensed ever since. Whew!

Another unique case of title adjustment belongs to the show Sugar, which premiered on Broadway in 1972. Sugar, which was a 500+ performance hit on Broadway, was adapted from the movie Some Like It Hot. The musical’s producer, the infamous David Merrick, could not get the rights to the movie’s title, hence the name Sugar. The show had a book by Peter Stone, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Bob Merrill. When Sugar went on tour in 2002, featuring a performance from the film’s original star Tony Curtis, the rights were obtained, and Sugar went on the road as Some Like It Hot The Musical. In 2022, an entirely new musical based on the movie Some Like It Hot was created and came to Broadway with book by Matthew López and Amber Ruffin, music by Marc Shaiman, and lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman. This one was called Some Like It Hot from the get-go!

Another back-and-forth title identity happened with the musical based on the television show SpongeBob Squarepants. The show co-conceived and directed by Tina Landau with a book by Kyle Jarrow and songs by a variety of acclaimed artists, was called The SpongeBob Musical during its pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago, SpongeBob SquarePants during its 327-performance run on Broadway in 2017, and again flipped back to The SpongeBob Musical during its post-Broadway tour.

Another relatively recent title flip for a show in its post-Broadway tour was that of Summer. The musical featuring Donna Summer’s hits and based on the story of her life was called simply Summer on Broadway in 2018 but is Summer: The Donna Summer Musical on tour.