After two years on Broadway, Disney’s Broadway rendition of The Little Mermaid is, um, skating off broadway, heelies, butt-tails and all. While sales haven’t slowed yet, Disney is closing the show down to try to avoid the slowdown that their shows usually experience coming into September – after everyone goes back to school, but before the holiday vacations. Considering TLM hasn’t yet hit the two year mark (and won’t, thanks to its August 30 closing night), this makes it the second shortest running Disney musical so far. Tarzan comes in at the shortest run (and rightfully so) at only fifteen months.

I can’t say this comes as a terrible surprise to me. I’ve been pretty much waiting for Disney to close the show since it opened. The music is trite and the staging, while creative, leaves much to be desired. Disney is playing the odds, trying to strike gold again with another long running show (Beauty and the Beast ran for thirteen years, and The Lion King has been running for almost twelve), and this time it failed to pan out for them.

With all the schlock that started on Broadway this past season, the only way I can see for shows to go is up, and if Disney can find something truly interesting and possibly inventive, then I could see opportunity for another long-running show to put down its roots in the coming season or two. As of right now, however, there appear to be some… interesting possibilities in the works, including a High School Musical stage adaptation, and versions of Newsies and Peter and the Star-Catchers. (The Addams Family is also a possibility for the theater.) If it must be one of those, I would be most interested in seeing a stage version of Newsies, but given that I was a downright fangirl for the 1992 movie musical, that only makes sense. I guess we’ll find out soon enough what Disney decides to put into that space. Hopefully The Little Mermaid‘s replacement will fare better.

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