July 8, 2026: Theatre Yesterday and Today, by Ron Fassler

With this week’s official passing of the torch from one to another, the Belasco Theatre can now boast Will Aronson and Hue Park’s Maybe Happy Ending as the longest running show in its 119-year history. With 687 performances, it surpassed the number that Sidney Kingsey’s Dead End held for the previous 86 years, which is a hell of a long time and surprised me. Then again, the Belasco was once thought to be one of the least desirable theaters due to its being the closest one to 6th Avenue than any other. But since the number of available theaters has dwindled due to runs of more than ten years at a time (here’s looking at you Lion King, Wicked, Chicago, etc.), producers now consider themselves lucky to book a beautiful theater like the Belasco, which has proven conclusively it can house sell-outs. Three examples have been the recent Goodnight, Oscar, 2018’s Network, and the 2014 revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. And Maybe Happy Ending also broke the curse of the Belasco, in which no prior show that ever opened there had won the Tony for Best Play or Musical.

All of which got me to thinking about the 40 other theaters and their record holding runs. Starting with the easiest, most fans in the know would be able to tell you that Phantom of the Opera, at 13,981 performances, spent its entire run at the Majestic—a hard one to top (certainly not in my lifetime). But do you know what show it leaped past four years into its thirty-five-year-run as the theater’s longest running tenant? If you immediately thought of The Wiz, that’s a good guess. But the answer is South Pacific.

Of the 41 theaters on Broadway, Maybe Happy Ending is now the tenth title to bear the distinction of having given the most performances in its current home. So, without further ado, here are the other nine and what shows they had to beat to get there (none of which took 86 years the way Maybe Happy Ending did).

* On West 42nd Street at the New Amsterdam, Aladdin has now amassed more than 4,470 performances. The previous record holder had been The Lion King, which reopened the theatre after decades of vacancy. After 8 years, Disney moved it to the Minskoff to make way for their next film adaptation-to-Broadway venture, Mary Poppins. Impressively, it ran up 2,619 performances there, before Aladdin took its place.

* On West 45th Street, where the Minskoff currently houses The Lion King, there’s been no other show to even come close to the number of performances its tallied since moving there from the New Amsterdam twenty years ago. ‘Nuff said.

* On West 49th Street at the Ambassador Theatre, the 1996 revival of Chicago has been running since it moved from the Shubert Theatre (it first opened at the Richard Rodgers in 1996, played there a year, then moved to the Shubert). It’s 23 ½ years at the Ambassador was an easy record to break since my research indicates that its previous title older was just over a year, attributed to the 1978 musical revue Eubie!, which starred Gregory and Maurice Hines.

* On West 51st is the Gershwin Theatre where Wicked indicates no sign of leaving anytime soon (as of this week, it’s had 8,845 performances). When it first opened in 1972 as the Uris (named for the builder), it was the first new Broadway theater built since 1928. Sadly, it hardly triumphed with Via Galactica, an immediate flop which ran one week and folded as the costliest ever—nearly a million dollars to produce (insert laughter here). The second-place finisher, with 947 performances, is the 1994 revival of Show Boat, not to be confused with the 1980 revival, which also played the Gershwin.

* Jack Thorne’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, based on the characters created by J.K. Rowling, now at the Lyric on West 42nd Street, may soon break a record many thought never to be shattered: the longest run of a non-musical. The distinction has been held by Life with Father, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse adaptation of Clarence Day’s novel, since in closed in 1947. Father has two runners-up as plays it surpassed to reach 3,224 performances. Tobacco Road, which folded prior to the start of World War II in 1941, and Abie’s Irish Rose, which closed in 1927, two years before the Great Depression. That should give you an idea of how long it’s been since plays have delivered runs of many years. Since it opened in 2018, Harry Potter has leapfrogged over long-running plays like Albert Innaurato’s Gemini, Ira Levin’s Deathtrap, and Mary Chase’s Harvey (it passed Abie’s Irish Rose, written by the long forgotten Anne Nichols in September 2025), only Tobacco Road and Life with Father now stand in its way, which will take more than another year to achieve.

It feels all but certain that Harry Potter will achieve its record-breaking goal though it may come with an asterisk. That’s because when it opened, presented as Part One and Part Two. When it reopened on Broadway after the Covid shutdown, the two parts were streamlined as one. From then on, all other productions have been presented this way save for the original West End production, though that is set to change with the two-part play closing this September and re-opening as one part in October.

* The Book of Mormon, currently at 5,667 performances has played its entire 15-year-run so far at the Eugene O’Neill, thankfully saved from a freak fire in May. The theater’s prior long run was the first revival of Grease in 1994, which played 1,500 performances. 

* Six was to have opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre (now the Lena Horne since 2022) on March 12, 2020, now infamous for the date the Covid shutdown that ended all performances for nearly a year and a half. Six resumed performances in September of 2021 and officially opened on October 3. It surpassed the run of Waitress, the previous record holder at the Atkinson, a year ago last June.

* Hadestown, which opened at the Walter Kerr in 2019, recently passed the 1998 Broadway revival of Cabaret and the original production of Annie to become the 31st longest-running show in Broadway history. It certainly is the Kerr’s longest tenant, a theater that until it was fixed up in 1990 with a name change from the Ritz, was a bit of a sorry affair. The original production of David Auburn’s Proof, which opened in 2000 and ran for 917 performances, is the one Hadestown overtook at the Kerr and, at a comfortable 2,380 as of this week, is looking good to swing past Beautiful, the next in its path and the current champ as the longest run ever at the Stephen Sondheim (its present tenant, & Juliet, still has a ways to go before catching up to the Carole King musical).

* Finally, there’s Hamilton, which will celebrate 11 years on Broadway (next month), which has been at the Richard Rodgers Theatre its entire run. A very popular house, it’s had many long running musicals and plays, but it might surprise you to learn which was the one Hamilton had to beat: Not How to Succeed, Damn Yankees, or Guys and Dolls, but The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which also had its entire run at the Rodgers (when it was the 46th Street) for 1,584 performances. Hamilton, now up to 3,909 and counting, won’t be departing anytime soon.

Ron Fassler is the author of The Show Goes On: Broadway Hirings, Firings and Replacements. For news and “Theatre Yesterday and Today" columns when they break, please subscribe.