The coronavirus pandemic dropped another Broadway show: “Mean Girls.”
The producers of the musical, led by Lorne Michaels of ‘Saturday Night Live’, announced on Thursday that they will not try to reopen in New York once the pandemic eases. However, the producers plan to start the national tour of the show again.
The show is the fourth Broadway closure caused by the pandemic: Disney announced last spring that it would not reopen Frozen, and the producers of two plays that had previews, Martin McDonagh’s “Hangmen” and a revival of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Bang for Virginia Woolf?” Decided not to wait for the closing.
The cost of keeping the production intact while the theaters are dark has led to the closure of the “average girls”. Broadway has been closed since March last year, and it looks likely that most shows will only return in 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 directed by Casey Nicholaw.
It opened in 2018 and was a hit, according to the production, it earned the capitalization cost of $ 17 million and earned $ 124 million. But it did not win any of the 12 Tony Awards for which it was nominated, and its weekly box office softened over time.
The ‘Mean Girls’ national tour began in Buffalo in 2019, and a London production, which was underway before the pandemic, was still planned, according to Michaels. Paramount Pictures announced in January last year that it would be making a film version of the stage musical, produced by Michaels and Fey.