Composer Paul Simon got two standing ovations and addressed the audience at the final performance of his Broadway musical The Capeman. The $11 million show, with lyrics by Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, closed Mar. 28 after a disappointing two-month run . A rumination on crime and forgiveness, the musical told the true-life story of Salvador Agron, a Puerto Rican gang member who killed two teens in a New York playground in 1959, then underwent a jailhouse conversion and became a poet.

Playbill On-Line readers who attended the farewell show said Simon got a standing ovation as he took his seat in the orchestra, then another when he took the stage after the show and draped himself in the Puerto Rican flag.

He was mobbed by the cast members who held him in a group embrace."If this is a failure," Simon was quoted saying, while the audience cheered, "what do you call a success?"