I have a passing fascination with the mantle of "longest-running Broadway show" — or rather, I did. There was a time when that honor passed from show to show as one production would surpass the previous title holder and claim the mantle. That may not happen again in our lifetimes as The Phantom of the Opera now has the lead and ain't looking back.
This past weekend, Phantom played its 9,881st performance. Now, that wasn't the last one. The show is still running and shows no sign of closing. It's still running at over 80% capacity and since it has long since paid off its costs, it can probably turn a profit at anything over 50%. But if it had been the last, the next show in line for the "longest-running" title is the revival of Chicago, which as of the same date had played 6,210 performances. How could Chicago snatch the lead away from Phantom? Easy: Chicago has to run as long as Phantom does…and then run close to nine more years after that.
Probably not gonna happen.
So since there's no more ball game to watch there, let's look back on a show which once was the longest-running Broadway show of all time. The original production of A Chorus Line ran 6,137 performances but it claimed Numero Uno position on September 29, 1983 when it had performance #3,389. That bested the previous leader, which was the original production of Grease.
For the 9/29/83 performance, director Michael Bennett decided to throw the biggest extravaganza he could muster. He assembled more than 300 former and current cast members and they all participated, doing tag-team jobs in many of the roles and gathering for the finale. This was not easy and it was not cheap. In addition to restaging the show for that one night, choreographing much of it anew and rehearsing and dressing all those extra folks, it was necessary to reinforce the stage of the theater.
Want to see a few minutes from the finale? I can't embed the video but you can view it at this link. Folks who were there that evening are still raving about it and I think you can see why.