‘High Fidelity’ Breaks Up With Broadway

News came late yesterday that High Fidelity, the unloved Broadway musical adapted from the loved John Cusack movie based on the loved Nick Hornby book, will be closing Sunday, after opening just last Thursday (“The score consisted of the vague Broadway-rock wash that sounds authentic only next to other pop musicals!” —New York’s Jeremy McCarter). That’s a total of only 14 performances, outdoing even this season’s painful Bob Dylan–Twyla Tharp musical, which lasted a whopping 28, and the spring’s David Schwimmer–led Caine Mutiny Court-Martial revival, which kept itself revived for 17 shows.

A quick spin through the Internet Broadway Database — yes, we’ve also lost track of how many different kinds of geeky we are — proves that Fidelity is not, in fact, the shortest-running Broadway show of the young 21st century. A Macbeth starring Kelsey Grammer ran for 13 performances in 2000, Martha Plimpton’s Broadway debut, Sixteen Wounded, did a dozen in 2004, and the Suzanne Somers vehicle The Blonde in the Convertible stalled after just 9 last year. And then there’s Ellen Burstyn’s one-woman The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. It closed after opening night in 2003.

Now It’s Die, Fidelity [NYP]