A History of Three-Handers on Broadway

Do you have a burning Broadway question? Dying to know more about an obscure Broadway fact? Broadway historian and self-proclaimed theatre nerd Jennifer Ashley Tepper is here to help with Broadway Deep Dive. BroadwayWorld is accepting questions from theatre fans like you. If you're lucky, your question might be selected as the topic of her next column!

Submit your Broadway question here!

This time, the reader question was: What is the history of three hander plays, like Art, on Broadway?

While a lot has been written about two handers, a term for two-person shows, less has been penned about three-handers. Yet, three-person plays are just as common a genre on Broadway as pieces with only two players. Currently, Art, by Yasmina Reza, is receiving an all-star revival at the Music Box. Neil Patrick Harris, James Corden, and Bobby Cannavale are starring in the remake of Reza’s 1998 play about art and friendship which won the Tony Award for Best Play and originally ran for 600 performances. 

On Broadway, where plays with small casts are the norm, a three-person cast does not seem out of the ordinary. Three hander musicals, on the other hand, are typically relegated to off-Broadway, from Starting Here, Starting Now (1976) to Three Guys Naked From the Waist Down (1985) to Vanities (2009). There are very rare exceptions of three hander musicals on Broadway like the lost 1963 Bock and Harnick show Man in the Moon, but none that have opened recently. 

And yet, some of the most prestigious and successful plays on Broadway have been three handers. The triangulated casting provides ample opportunity for conflict, and hundreds of playwrights have tried their hand at the three-person play on Broadway over the years, including Art.

Broadway’s first mega-hit three hander play opened in 1943. This was The Voice of the Turtle. The comedy about a single woman finding her way in World War II-era New York City was written by John Van Druten, While The Voice of the Turtle, which he also directed, was his longest Broadway run at 1,557 performances, Van Druten is also known for penning Old Acquaintance (1940), I Remember Mama (1944), and I Am a Camera (1951). The latter two plays were later adapted into the musicals I Remember Mama and Cabaret. Despite its contemporary-sounding subject matter, The Voice of the Turtle is rarely revived today. But from 1943 to 1948 on Broadway, audiences ate up this comedy, with the three actors playing the central woman Sally, an aspiring actress, her cosmopolitan friend Olive, and her love interest, army sergeant Bill. Incidentally, future president Ronald Reagan played Bill in the show’s 1947 film adaptation. 

The 1960s on Broadway included several major three handers. The Pulitzer Prize as well as the Tony Award for Best Play went to the 1964 piece The Subject Was Roses. Like The Voice of the Turtle, Roses also involved life at home in the wake of World War II. This time the story was a drama about a son and his parents. Martin Sheen originated the role of the son, with Dustin Hoffman later standing by for the role. While Roses won the 1965 Tony for Best Play, its competition, Luv, also a three hander, eked out a slightly longer run. Luv starred Alan Arkin, Anne Jackson, and Eli Wallach in a story about old college friends and their sexual antics. Before the decade was out, the master of Broadway comedy at mid-century, Neil Simon, would also take a crack at a three hander. The Star-Spangled Girl opened in 1966 and while it might not be one of Simon’s blockbusters—in fact, it’s never been revived on Broadway—the play about a hippie love triangle pleased audiences for 261 performances. The Star-Spangled Girl wasn’t Simon’s only three hander to hit Broadway. In 1980, his I Ought To Be in Pictures was a father-daughter story with a show business background. 

Of course, not all three handers are mega-hits or even modest successes like the plays previously discussed. The 1970s gave Broadway several of its most infamous trio-starring flops. The Castro Complex, which kicked off the decade in 1970, is worth mentioning mostly for its personnel. The play about a woman obsessed with Fidel Castro starred Raul Julia. It was Julia’s third Broadway show, and it ran for 14 performances which was 13 more than his Broadway debut production, The Cuban Thing, which closed on opening night. Luckily, the future star of stage and screen didn’t give up after these disappointing runs. Neither did The Castro Complex’s director, James Burrows, who went on to become one of television’s most celebrated directors. The 1970s were bookended by infamous three handers involving future luminaries; in 1979, Murder at the Howard Johnson’s closed up shop after four performances. The farce about a love triangle where participants trade off who is scheming to murder who starred Tony Roberts, Bob Dishy, and Joyce Van Patten. There were also several successful and prestigious plays featuring trios in the 1970s, from Harold Pinter’s Old Times (1971) to the oft-revived American Buffalo (1977) to the intense Faith Healer (1979).

While the majority of plays listed above have not been revived on Broadway, American Buffalo has received three revivals, including a recent revival-in-the-round starring Darren Criss, Laurence Fishburne, and Sam Rockwell in 2022. When a play provides three meaty roles like Mamet’s American Buffalo does, stars often want to take a crack at them and the piece is trotted out more often. This is similarly true of Mamet’s 1988 three hander Speed-The Plow as well as three-person plays like Driving Miss Daisy which premiered off-Broadway in 1987 and on Broadway in 2010 and This Is Our Youth which premiered off-Broadway in 1996 and on Broadway in 2014. Three handers are equally popular off-Broadway, so many intimate plays premiere there; these two are among those that became so culturally significant that their star revivals made more sense on Broadway. 

Last season, Roundabout presented the first Broadway revival of Samm-Art Williams’ Home (1980). The original production originated off-Broadway with the Negro Ensemble Company and immediately transferred to the James Earl Jones, telling the story of a young Black man making his way from the rural south to the urban north. Racial themes were also at the forefront of 1982’s Master Harold and the Boys, which explored the evils of apartheid in South Africa; Athol Fugard’s semi-autobiographical play was revived on Broadway two decades later. The 1980s also brought Broadway audiences a David Merrick three hander that closed on opening night. In 1981, I Won’t Dance told the tale of a paraplegic man solving the murder of his brother. Luckily, Merrick’s 42nd Street had recently opened and was still dancing and paying his bills. 

One of the most talked-about plays of the 1980s was the hit drama Agnes of God. A rarity for a three hander, Agnes of God provided three roles for women. John Pielmeier’s heightened piece about a nun who gives birth played a year and a half at the Music Box, where the three hander Art is currently playing.   

While Art won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1998 and The Subject Was Roses picked up the prize in 1965, not many three handers have received up the award. Art and Roses were joined, however, in 2000 by Copenhagen, a deeply intellectual rumination on a 1941 meeting that led to the creation of the atomic bomb. That year Broadway also gave us the very different three hander Dirty Blonde, a hit play by Claudia Shear about fans of Mae West and fandom in general. 

Like Driving Miss Daisy and This Is Our Youth, Three Days of Rain originated off-Broadway in 1997 and didn’t receive a Broadway production until years later. But when the Richard Greenberg three hander appeared on Broadway, it was with Julia Roberts, Paul Rudd, and Bradley Cooper, making a gigantic splash on 45th Street nightly. The production played the Jacobs Theatre, continuing the legacy of Speed-The-Plow, a three hander that had also played there; both Roberts and Madonna, who had starred in the earlier play, utilized the theater’s secret exits. 

Also starry was the 2013 Broadway revival of Orphans, newsworthy since Shia LaBeouf left the show during rehearsals, replaced by Ben Foster. Alec Baldwin and Tom Sturridge also starred in the play, which had originally premiered off-Broadway in 1985. Since three handers are seen by Broadway producers as increasingly viable entities with solid opportunities for multiple star performances, a good amount of intimate plays originally seen as more ideal for off-Broadway have made the leap to Broadway in recent years. 

Of course, there are also new three hander plays that have premiered on Broadway in recent years for similar reasons. 2015’s An Act of God may be the first Broadway play that originated as comedy tweets. David Javerbaum’s take on the world and its interaction with a greater power was even revived the following year. Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children (2017) was a more serious take on morality and mortality, this time a British play involving nuclear disaster. The Lifespan of a Fact (2018) had the unique distinction of being adapted from a book written in the same decade; Daniel Radcliffe, Cherry Jones, and Bobby Cannavale delved into the nuances of fact versus fiction. Also related to the written word and relevant to our modern struggles, What the Constitution Means to Me opened the following year and gained massive praise. Heidi Schreck’s personal examination of the United States Constitution hit home for audience members. 

Buy Tickets to Art