Baby, It's Cold Outside: Holiday Clearance Sees Flurry of Broadway and Off-Broadway Closings
By Robert Simonson
08 Dec 2004
It won't be a happy new year for a half dozen Broadway and Off-Broadway shows which announced their closings on Dec. 7 and 8.
During a 24-hour period beginning late on Tuesday, six New York stage attractions set a closing date in quick succession.
The first domino to fall was Dracula, the panned Frank Wildhorn musical which has struggled to find an audience at the Belasco since beginning previews on July 30. It will end on Jan. 2, 2005. The show's shuttering had long been anticipated, as had that of an even more stubborn survivor, the Bollywood-inspired musical Bombay Dreams. The poorly received London import, which will also depart on Jan. 2, will have played 284 regular performances since opening in April. A national tour will begin during the 2005-2006 season.
On Wednesday morning, meanwhile, came news that Eve Ensler's Broadway debut, The Good Body, will also favor the second day of January as a good date to leave town. The production opened on Nov. 15.
Off-Broadway, Basil Twist's underwater puppet spectacle, Symphonie Fantastique, at Dodger Stages, and Joanna Glass' memory play, Trying, at the Promenade, will both clear out on Jan. 2, while Eve -Olution, the new Off-Broadway Hilary Illick-Jennifer Krier play, will pack up a little earlier: Dec. 12.
Theatre owners wasted no time mourning the dead. The Belasco was quickly announced as the destination of the coming Denzel Washington staging of Julius Caesar. And Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman had previously laid claim to Good Body home, the Booth Theatre.
January is typically a time when producers and theatre owners clean house. Tourist numbers decline and winter-chilled local theatregoers cleave close to their domiciles.
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