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Disney’s latest megabudget musical spectacular has announced it’s leaving town a little more than a year after it opened: Hercules will close its doors on September 5, just after the school summer holidays are wrapped up.
It’s got to be viewed as a small disappointment for Disney, whose stage version of The Lion King is the most successful musical in history and still going strong on the West End and Broadway. Hercules has lasted notably less time than Frozen, which preceded it in the gargantuan Theatre Royal Drury Lane.
That said, a year-and-a-bit at Drury Lane is nothing to sniff at and it’s so big that there’s rarely the expectation that a show will run and run there. Hercules didn’t do as well as Frozen, but it would be kind of nuts if it did given how much more popular the movie version of Frozen was than the relatively culty Hercules. And it’s hardly leaving in disarray, with its closing date over seven months away.
Speculation will inevitably turn to what replaces it in the West End’s biggest theatre. Disney has hogged Drury Lane in recent years and is having a tryout of its much anticipated Greatest Showman musical in Bristol this spring – rumours abound that it’ll be next up in Drury Lane if all goes well.
But there are other possibilities, with several larger Broadway musicals hovering in the wings waiting for a suitably large London theatre to move into. There’s also the possibility that there may be another gap between musicals during which plays are staged, a la Jamie Lloyd’s two-show Shakespeare season post-Frozen.
Any which way, if you’re in the market for a family-friendly Greek myth musical romp, you still have plenty of time to catch Hercules.
Hercules is at Theatre Royal Drury Land until Sep 5. Buy tickets here.
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