What's the Longest and Shortest Broadway Musical?

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This month, the reader question was: What’s the longest and shortest Broadway musical?

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At 80 minutes with no intermission, the current production of Six is one of the shortest musicals in Broadway history. Plenty of Broadway musicals have clocked in at 90 minutes but 80 minutes is a rare occurrence. There are more plays than musicals in Broadway history with run times shorter than 90 minutes.

The original Broadway production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 1982 also ran slightly shorter than 90 minutes. Joseph was originally penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice in 1968 and was their first musical to ever be performed. This performance happened at a boys’ prep school in London and was only 25 minutes long. Webber and Rice expanded the musical in order for it to be performed by schools, and after gaining popularity around the world, it eventually made its Broadway bow at the Royale, where audiences enjoyed the short evening at the theater for 747 performances. Joseph tickets were priced lower than most other Broadway musicals at the time, and family audiences were encouraged to attend.

Another family musical, Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas, was similarly under 90 minutes long when it played Broadway during the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 seasons. First at the Hilton (now Lyric) and then at the St. James Theatre, Grinch played a holiday engagement and got audiences in the Christmas spirit during its 80-minutes-long performances.

On the flip side, when British import Les Misérables originally opened on Broadway in 1987, the epic musical was 3 hours and 12 minutes long, one of the longest Broadway musicals in history. In the year 2000, the run time was cut down by 14 minutes in order to cut down production costs. With the show only 2 hours and 58 minutes long, the production no longer had to pay overtime to crew, musicians, and other team members. Producer Cameron Mackintosh stated that the edit in order to cut weekly running costs was necessary in order to keep the show running successfully.

The similarly epic musical Show Boat, which opened on Broadway in 1927, was over 3 hours long in its original and many of its subsequent productions. The out-of-town tryout of the game-changing musical by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern ran over 4 hours, but the show was trimmed before opening in New York. In order to do justice to the story of Edna Ferber’s sweeping novel on stage, a long run time was necessary.

The 2016 Broadway production of Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, ran over 3 hours during previews but was trimmed down before opening. Fitting the entire history of the landmark musical by Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, Flournoy Miller, and Aubrey Lyles into a 3 hour run time was an understandable challenge. Shuffle Along is not the only recent musical to run over 3 hours during previews but manage to trim to below that number by opening night. Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark was 3 and a half hours long when it started previews in November 2010 but by opening night in June 2011, after many changes, ran 2 hours and 45 minutes.The current revival of Camelot also falls into this category, now running 2 hours and 55 minutes, after playing a longer run time at its first preview.

Contrastingly, the original production of Camelot, like Show Boat, was over 4 hours long during its pre-Broadway run in Toronto 1959. By its opening on Broadway in 1960, the beloved show starring Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, and Robert Goulet might have been over 3 hours long, but it was under 4. In a rare but not unheard-of move (similar to what was done by Les Mis), the creators of Camelot, including librettist Alan Jay Lerner, composer Frederick Loewe and director Moss Hart were able to revise the show after its opening night at the Majestic. A few months after opening, in 1961, Camelot became 12 minutes shorter, with several songs and scenes removed.

The shortest musicals in modern Broadway history have been just slightly shorter than 90 minutes, and the longest just slightly longer than 3 hours.

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