What Are Broadway’s Longest Running Plays?

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This time, the reader question was: What are Broadway’s longest running straight plays?

Four of Broadway’s ten longest running musicals are currently on the boards: Chicago, The Lion King, Wicked, and The Book of Mormon. One, The Phantom of the Opera, closed in 2023 after attaining the title of longest running Broadway show of all time. 

But what about Broadway’s longest running plays? One of Broadway’s ten longest running plays is currently in performances (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child)- but the others all opened more than 40 years ago. Six of the ten longest running plays opened back in the first half of the 20th century! While Broadway’s longest running musicals are recent triumphs, Broadway’s longest running plays became hits farther back in history. What’s their story? 

The longest running play of all time is Life With Father, which spent seven-and-a-half years on the boards from 1939 to 1947. Two of the three houses that the work by Howard Lindsey and Russel Crouse played are long-demolished (the Empire and the Bijou) and one has a different name (the Alvin, which has since been renamed the Neil Simon). Lindsey and Crouse, who also penned the original books for Anything Goes and The Sound of Music, wrote Life With Father based on the novel of the same name by Clarence Day. Day’s novel started out as a series of short stories for the New Yorker about a put-upon dad and his family hi-jinx. (Sadly, Day passed away before seeing what a hit his story collection in novel form—or the subsequent Broadway adaptation—became.) A decade before the real advent of the television sitcom, Life With Father was the 1930s answer to an audience desire for low stakes, heartwarming family comedy. During World War II, Life With Father was exactly what Broadway theatergoers craved. It has never been revived on Broadway and is generally understood to have been an of-its-time hit. 

Coming up behind Life With Father as the second longest-running Broadway play is Tobacco Road. The earthy play that is name-checked in “Come Up To My Place” from On The Town was written by Jack Kirkland. While Tobacco Road spent the majority of its time on Broadway at the Forrest Theatre (now the Eugene O’Neill), it actually opened at the Theatre Masque (now the Golden). The lore of Tobacco Road’s start is a fascinating entry in theatre history. According to press agent Richard Maney, the production opened ignominiously, with low ticket sales and mediocre reviews. There was soil all over the stage as part of the set, and this dirt also seeped into the auditorium. The production needed to pay $800 to have this cleaned at the time that they closed. Tobacco Road wanted to close after two weeks of performances, but the producers didn’t have enough money to afford the $800 cleaning fee so they had to keep the show running. In its third week, Tobacco Road caught on based on word-of-mouth and it went on to run 3,182 performances. 

In third place is Broadway’s current hit, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The theatrical adaptation of the popular brand has been running at the Lyric Theatre since 2018, not including the pandemic interruption from 2020 to 2021. It was written by Jack Thorne, based on a story by Thorne, director John Tiffany, and original Harry Potter scribe J.K. Rowling. When the spectacular show, which originated on the West End reopened in 2021, it had condensed two parts into one. Harry Potter was originally two separate plays but since 2021 has been presented as one 3-hour show. Prior to Harry Potter, the most recent Broadway play to hit 1,000 performances was Brighton Beach Memoirs, which opened in 1983. 

Like Life With Father, Abie’s Irish Rose was a wholesome family comedy with religious underpinnings. While Life With Father dominated Broadway in the 1940s and Tobacco Road in the 1930s, Abie’s Irish Rose was the mega-hit of the 1920s. Even the character of Carlotta from Follies has been through it, according to Stephen Sondheim’s lyric. One of three of the top ten longest running Broadway plays written by women, Abie’s Irish Rose was penned by Anne Nichols who also produced. Her plays often had combined Jewish and Irish themes and this one was no exception. The play that for a time held the title of longest running Broadway production of all time was about a star-crossed love affair between a Jewish man and an Irish woman. The play spent most of its 5+ years at the Theatre Republic, which is these days known as the New Victory, an off-Broadway house. 

The 1970s brought the fifth and sixth of Broadway’s ten longest running plays to the stage. Gemini (1977) and Deathtrap (1978) each played about 1,800 performances in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Gemini was an early entry at the fledgling new off-Broadway theatre company Playwrights Horizons, which transferred to the Little Theatre (now the Hayes) and became an unexpected smash. The folksy Albert Innaurato play about a young man turning 21 amidst his dysfunctional family and neighbors counted among its actors future Tony Award winner Reed Birney, who was 22 years old when the play opened. In contrast, Deathtrap was a thriller by Ira Levin that is remembered for the valiant performance record of Marian Seldes, who never missed a show during the mystery's 4+ year run.  

Our seventh longest-running Broadway play is a very popular stock and amateur title: Harvey. With its whimsical treatment of a man and his invisible giant rabbit friend, Harvey also has the distinction of being the only long-running play to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. (Life With Father was short-listed but did not win the award.) Mary Chase’s examination of the meaning of sanity was directed by Antoinette Perry, namesake of the Tony Award. Like many of the entries on this list, Harvey achieved its Broadway record while playing at a theater that is no longer. The entire 1944-1949 run was held at the 48th Street Theatre, which used to stand on the same block as the James Earl Jones, just across the street. 

The James Earl Jones Theatre is where the most recent Broadway revival of the eighth-longest running play, Born Yesterday, was produced. The original version of the Garson Kanin play opened in 1946 and featured Judy Holliday in a star-making turn. Born Yesterday still holds the record for the longest running production at the Lyceum, having racked up two years and seven months at Broadway’s oldest continually operating theater. (If Oh, Mary! continues to run on 45th Street through at least February 2027, it could beat this record.) Born Yesterday was a comedy with a political background, emblematic of the kind of intelligent farces that became popular on Broadway around the middle of the 20th century. It closed on New Year’s Eve in 1949.

Jean Kerr was known for her writing of both drama and prose; she was also known as the wife of the New York Times theatre critic, Walter Kerr. She penned the 1960s’ longest-running Broadway play, Mary, Mary, a thoughtful comedy about marriage and divorce. The play spent its 1,572 performances at two of the theaters later demolished to build the Marriott Marquis, the original Helen Hayes and the Morosco. Like several of Broadway’s other long-running plays, Mary, Mary was adapted into a screen version that was not as popular as its original play. 

Number ten on Broadway’s longest running play list kept Life With Father, Harvey, and Born Yesterday company on Broadway during the 1940s. The Voice of the Turtle was a three hander about a modern 1940s new York romance, written and directed by John Van Druten, whose credits also include I Am A Camera, later adapted into the musical Cabaret. The Voice of the Turtle’s eventual film adaptation was notable because it starred future American President Ronald Reagan. The original stage version spent 1,557 performances on Broadway during the years where long-running plays still took the summer off due to the heat and lack of modern air conditioning in theaters.