David Byrne’s musical ‘Here Lies Love’ to close on Broadway
After 150 performances, David Byrne’s Broadway show Here Lies Love is set to close. The musical about former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos was developed with Fatboy Slim and will have its final performance on November 26th.
In a statement from the production team, they blamed the closing of the show on tight timeframes. They said: “Artistic excellence can be achieved. But the reality is, succeeding on Broadway means not only producing excellent work with artistic merit–it also means creating the audience for it and how much time it takes to find and grow new audiences is out of sync with the tight timeframes for audience-building and awareness.”
The show has been part of an ongoing conflict on Broadway between the show and the American Federation of Musicians. In the weeks leading up to its premiere, the federation’s Local 802 publicly opposed the use of pre-recorded tracks as part of the production’s setup.
However, to Byrne and his team, this was an essential part of the show, designed to give the theatre the feel of a nightclub. Byrne and the producers claimed the use of pre-recorded music rather than live musicians was “part of the karaoke genre inherent to the musical and the production concept.“
Eventually, the union and Here Lies Love reached an agreement before previews began in June. The show went on to receive mixed reviews for Byrne’s signature strange vision, telling a serious story through the means of disco.
The project had been in the pipeline for a long time. Byrne and Fatboy Slim first released the Here Lies Love concept album in 2010 after a brief off-Broadway run at New York’s Public Theatre. After years of planning, it finally opened on Broadway on July 20th in 2023.
Although it’s leaving Broadway, the musical duo are apparently in talks about taking the show on the road. It has been produced in London and Seattle, and the team are in discussions about bringing it to Japan and Australia.
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