Tootsie , the Broadway musical adapted from the 1982 movie about a struggling actor whose career takes off when he plays a woman, will close on Jan. 5, the production announced tonight.
Capitalized at $20 million, Tootsie requires weekly gross sales of $858,000 to pay operating expenses, according to a pre-production estimate circulated to investors. Published grosses ranged from $718,000 to $1 million in recent weeks. Struggling shows often close after the holidays.
The musical opened at the Marquis in April and was nominated for a best musical Tony Award. It lost to Hadestown, which earlier today announced the recoupment of its $11.5 million capitalization. Tootsie won Tonys for Robert Horn’s book and for Santino Fontana in the leading role of Michael Dorsey and Dorothy Michaels.
The show was heralded by many critics as a crowd pleaser, but also got flak for its all-male creative team and retro story of a man dressing as a woman and gaining insight about himself and the opposite sex. Sara Holdren, New York magazine’s reviewer at the time, wrote that David Yazbek’s score “and witty, pattery lyrics are its crowning delight, exuberant and actually memorable,” but the show is “also two and a half hours of just failing to read the room.”
It will have played 293 regular performances. A national tour is scheduled to begin in October 2020.
Note: This story was updated with the production’s official closing notice.
