55 YEARS

From the NYT :

“The Fantasticks,” the long-running Off-Broadway staple, will close (again) next month, succumbing to weak ticket sales in an increasingly competitive theater market.

The current production of the musical has been running since 2006, and had been a favorite for tourists; the original production ran from 1960 until 2002. The revival will close May 3 – the 55th anniversary of the show’s opening – after 3,510 performances at the Snapple Theater Center and 17,162 performances in the original run, at the Sullivan Street Playhouse.

“There just are not enough ticket sales to carry the show any more,” Daniel DeMello, a spokesman for the show, said. “We can’t keep taking the hit.”

The show, with music by Harvey Schmidt and a book and lyrics by Tom Jones, is a love story about two neighboring fathers who scheme to make their children fall for each other, and is based on “Les Romanesques,” a play by Edmond Rostand. It opened to tepid reviews – Brooks Atkinson, writing in The New York Times, said “two acts are one too many to sustain the delightful tone of the first.” 

But it was entertaining, with several songs that have become show-tune standards, and inexpensive to produce, and for years it was a highly profitable hit. It has been widely produced by schools and professional theaters.