Broadway’s usual post-holiday shakeout has arrived early this year.
Producers of the new musical “The Queen of Versailles” have moved its closing date up to this Sunday, December 21, accelerating what had previously been announced as an early-January closing for an open-ended, high-budget star vehicle. “Little Bear Ridge Road” will also end performances this weekend, though that decision carries a different weight: the play had been announced as a limited run through mid-February, even if its earlier-than-planned exit reflects the same unforgiving box-office climate.
The more consequential closing is unquestionably “The Queen of Versailles.” Adapted from Lauren Greenfield’s documentary about billionaire excess and financial collapse, the musical arrived with nearly every ingredient Broadway typically banks on, including a new score by Stephen Schwartz (“Wicked”), direction by Michael Arden (“Parade”), and a marquee turn by Kristin Chenoweth as Jackie Siegel opposite F. Murray Abraham as her husband, David.
Despite its pedigree and star wattage, “Versailles” struggled to gain traction almost immediately. The musical was met with mixed reviews, dampening momentum for a production whose scale and capitalization required sustained enthusiasm to justify its weekly operating costs. That its closing has now been pulled forward to before New Year’s—traditionally the point when struggling shows reassess—underscores how little patience the current market affords even marquee musicals.
The show’s fate also reflects a broader seasonal pattern. This Broadway year has featured notably fewer new musicals than many recent post-pandemic seasons, a slowdown widely seen as the cumulative result of multiple financially unsuccessful new titles in recent years. With capitalization costs rising and recoupment increasingly elusive, producers have grown more cautious, favoring revivals, transfers, and limited engagements over open-ended bets on original material.
“Little Bear Ridge Road,” by contrast, was conceived with clearly defined parameters. The new play by Samuel D. Hunter (“The Whale”), directed by Joe Mantello, stars Laurie Metcalf in a spare, unsettled story set in rural Idaho. Commercial expectations were modest, but the production drew outsized industry attention for another reason: it marked the return of producer Scott Rudin to Broadway after several years away following public allegations about his workplace behavior, which led him to step back from theatrical production in 2021. Rudin is slated to return later this season with a revival of “Death of a Salesman,” again with Mantello and Metcalf, who will be joined by Nathan Lane.
What makes this weekend’s pair of closings especially notable is timing. Broadway producers have long treated the stretch between Christmas and New Year’s as a holding pattern, banking on holiday crowds before making hard decisions in January. Ending runs before that window closes—particularly an open-ended, capital-intensive musical—suggests a harsher calculus now governs the season, with rising weekly costs and uneven demand leaving little incentive to wait things out.
The contrast is striking when set against recent starry limited-run revivals like “Waiting for Godot”—which paired Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter in a high-profile reunion—and “Art,” led by a trio that included James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris, and Bobby Cannavale. Both productions recouped by pairing major-name casts with clearly defined engagements and carefully calibrated expectations, demonstrating that limited runs can still succeed when scope, demand, and capitalization are aligned.
The St. James Theatre, home of “Versailles,” will not stay dark for long. It has already been announced that the Off-Broadway hit “Titanique” will transfer to the venue for a limited Broadway run this spring. The “Titanic” and Céline Dion–infused parody is a far smaller show than “Versailles,” making it significantly less expensive to operate and a lower-risk proposition in the current climate. Whether its deliberately intimate, joke-driven staging will translate effectively to one of Broadway’s largest houses remains an open question.
In a similar move, the Majestic Theatre, which has been dark since the closing of Gypsy, will become the Broadway home of “Beaches,” a new musical based on Iris Rainer Dart’s bestselling novel and its film adaptation. Starring Jessica Vosk and Kelli Barrett as lifelong friends Cee Cee and Bertie, the production will open this spring for a limited engagement, launching a national tour. In a more crowded season, a tour-launching musical of this scale and profile might have struggled to find a vacancy in a prime theater.
Taken together, the early exits of “The Queen of Versailles” and “Little Bear Ridge Road,” alongside the incoming slate of lower-risk productions, offer a clear snapshot of a season defined less by ambition than by caution. In a Broadway economy where even star-driven musicals struggle to buy time, decisions are being made earlier, houses are opening up faster, and opportunities are emerging for shows that might not have landed on Broadway quite so easily in other years.
