The last time The Book of Mormon was in Melbourne it ran for a year. This time around, the hit musical will run for five months at the most.
Analysis of theatre and musical seasons over the years by The Age shows the days of long blockbuster musical runs have ended.
Once shows such as The Phantom of the Opera, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Hamilton ran for years, but now the season of a theatre show is likely to be measured in weeks or months instead.
Harry Potter holds the record for the longest-running play in Australia, playing for four years at the Princess Theatre. There were interruptions because of the COVID pandemic, but it still sold more than 1 million tickets before it closed in 2023.
More recently, the longest-running show has been Disney franchise Beauty and the Beast, which was at Her Majesty’s theatre for about 43 weeks. Last year, Hadestown ran for only 10 weeks, while Cats lasted six weeks.
Suzanne Jones, the producer and chief executive of Jones Theatrical Productions, which is behind Hadestown and The Book of Mormon’s new season, which is already garnering five-star reviews, is alert to shortening seasons.
“People’s attention spans are not as great right now,” she says. “Now the full world is there in our handset, and you can get everything, so I think it has changed the way we think about entertainment and what we spend our time doing.”
Jones says show lengths have not changed, but theatrical seasons have in effect been halved, and while some theatre lovers will see a show several times, others just want to see the next new thing.
Producers have to carefully calculate the expected runtime of shows, which comes down to how many tickets can be sold by analysing historical data along with “gut instinct”.
“At its core, actually, is how much does the show cost?” Jones says. “If you’ve got an $11.5 million show, you’re not running that for three weeks; it has to be able to run for six months or a year. That’s the big juggling act we are all doing in entertainment right now, as costs are rising but the amount you can sell a ticket for is not rising.”
Andrew Henry, who co-produced Death of a Salesman, starring Anthony LaPaglia, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with Kat Stewart, says the window for most productions has shortened over the years.
“It’s the limited run, the much shorter seasons,” he says. “[It’s] the kind of come in, get out, give the people the opportunity to see it that really have a hunger for it, and not to overstay your welcome … That does make the most business sense at this time.”
John Frost, the producer behind countless shows, including The Book of Mormon’s first run, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera and Priscilla Queen of the Desert, says: “I’ve got this belief in get in, get out quickly, and sell every seat sort of thing. I’d rather get in and get out and get the show moving around. So that’s what you’re seeing now.”
Frost says the pandemic has resulted in a dearth of new blockbusters, so producers are sticking instead to “tried and true musicals”.
“The shows aren’t there, and that’s because no one wrote them,” he says. “Those blockbusters don’t come knocking at the door every day.”
However, theatre producer Michael Cassell says the Melbourne market has been “extremely consistent in season length for our shows”, which include Singin’ in the Rain (2015), Kinky Boots (2016), Beautiful (2018), Priscilla (2018), Mary Poppins (2023), & Juliet (2024) and Beetlejuice The Musical (2025).
Cassell says Hamilton and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child were notable exceptions with extended seasons.
For Jason and Kayley Marriner, who own and operate many of Melbourne’s theatres, including the Princess Theatre, the Comedy Theatre and the Regent Theatre, the question of when a blockbuster musical will come along is a cyclical one.
“Even back in the day it was generational,” Jason Marriner says.
He is optimistic about the future for theatre in Melbourne, even if seasons are shorter.
“As we become more AI dependent and AI leans into every part of our lives, this will be the one opportunity where you are actively encouraged to put your phone and technology away and to engage in the human experience,” Marriner says.
“I think that’s going to become more important in the future, as people value actually thinking for themselves and appreciating human endeavour.”
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