Mean Girls won’t return to Broadway after virus eases
The coronavirus pandemic has felled another Broadway show: Mean Girls.
The musical’s producers, led by Lorne Michaels of Saturday Night Live, announced recently that they would not seek to reopen in New York once the pandemic eases. However, the producers do plan to restart the show’s national tour.
The show is the fourth Broadway closing prompted by the pandemic. Disney announced in the spring that it would not reopen Frozen and the producers of two plays that had been in previews, Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen and a revival of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, decided not to wait at all.
The Mean Girls closing was prompted by production costs while theatres are still dark. Broadway has been closed since March and it seems likely that most shows will not return until the fall or later.
The musical, adapted from a 2004 film, features a book by Tina Fey; music by Jeff Richmond, who is married to Fey; lyrics by Nell Benjamin; and direction provided by Casey Nicholaw.
It opened in 2018 and was a hit, recouping its US$17 million (510.5 million baht) capitalisation costs and grossing $124 million over 834 performances, according to the production. But it won none of the 12 Tony Awards for which it was nominated and its weekly box office had softened over time.
The Mean Girls national tour began in Buffalo, New York, in 2019, and a London production, which was in the works before the pandemic, is still planned, according to Michaels. Paramount Pictures announced last January that it would make a film version of the stage musical, produced by Michaels and Fey.