Still selling an average of more than 95 percent of its tickets nearly ten months into its run, Simon Stephens' drama about a young man who sets out to solve a mystery has already run longer than eight of the 16 Tony-winning Best Plays of the past decade.
A production spokesperson told Playbill.com that the show is playing an open-ended engagement and will continue after the departure of its Tony-winning star Alex Sharp, who will play his final performance Sept. 13. A replacement is being sought.
Here is a comparison of the shows that won the Tony Award for Best Play each year since the beginning of the 21st century, along with the number of Broadway performances they played:
2015 – Curious Incident: 329 as of July 19, 2015, and counting
2014 – All the Way: 131
2013 – Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike: 189
2012 – Clybourne Park: 157
2011 – War Horse: 718
2010 – Red: 101
2009 – God of Carnage: 452
2008 – August: Osage County: 648
2007 – The Coast of Utopia: (combined total of three parts) 121
2006 – The History Boys: 185
2005 – Doubt: 525
2004 – I Am My Own Wife: 360
2003 – Take Me Out: 355
2002 – The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? 309
2001 – Proof: 917
2000 – Copenhagen: 326
The last non-musical play to run more than 1,000 performances on Broadway opened more than 30 years ago now: Neil Simon's 1983 Brighton Beach Memoirs, which stayed for 1,299 performances. It's been decades since non-musical "straight plays" routinely outran musicals. Life with Father opened in 1939 and ran 3,224 performances; Tobacco Road opened in 1933 and stayed for 3,182; Abie's Irish Rose bowed in 1922 and kept bowing 2,327 times. The two longest runs since 1970 were Gemini (1977) 1,819 performances, and Deathtrap (1978) 1,793 performances.