In Mel Brooks’s classic 1967 satire The Producers - later adapted into a wildly successful Broadway show itself - the scheming Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom plot to get rich quick by overselling shares in their next musical and then purposefully staging a flop. They deliberately seek out what Bialystock calls: “a disaster, a catastrophe, an outrage! A guaranteed-to-close-in-one-night beauty!”
In reality, of course, inadvertently staging a flop on Broadway is a good way to lose a lot of money fast. Elton John found that out the hard way in November, when his televangelist musical Tammy Faye announced its closure just five days after opening. According to reports, the show is set to lose the entirety of the $25m it cost to stage it. That’s still not enough to make it the biggest flop in New York theatre history. Here are some of the biggest disasters, catastrophes and outrages ever to hit Broadway:
