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Why is WHY AM I SO SINGLE? closing in the West End? | The reasons the new musical struggled to find love
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Oh my God. Hey. This morning news has sadly broken that the West End musical why Am I so Single, written by Toby Marlowe and Lucy Moss, the creators of the international hit Six, will be closing earlier than planned at the Garrick Theatre in the West End. The show was due to run through mid February 2025, but has recently announced it is going to be closing in January instead. And inevitably it ultimately would have been hoping, presumably for an open ended run that would have gone past February through the Olivier Awards and you know, long into the future, much like Six has been able to do. This obviously is extremely sad news and as a priority I want to express my sympathy for the cast, everyone at the theatre who will be affected by this, the crew, everyone working on the show, both in and outside the Garrick Theatre, as well as the creatives, the writers, the producers. Theatre as we know is enduringly this very challenging thing and specifically new musical theatre and new musical theatre with not based on any existing intellectual property and new musical theatre that is not celebrity led is this enduringly hard thing to produce. And that's why, you know, it's relevant for us to still be having this conversation and for me to be talking here today about why this show is closing, what this tells us about the state of the industry, what can be learned from this by other producers as well as, you know, this same team, and what this means for the future of the show, the future of the Garrick Theatre and everyone else involved. So today I hope to answer the question why is. Why am I so single? Closing early in the West End? If you have any other thoughts about this, any other insights to share, please let us all know in the comments section down below. And if you want to stay up to date with West End news as well as what's happening on Broadway and plenty of reviews, interviews and theatre going vlog style content, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel and hit the notifications button down below. I just kicked a ring light. Excuse me. So let's talk about this then. Why is why am I so single? Closing early in the West End. And I'm going to read from the statement that has been emailed out this morning when the news officially broke, if I can find it. Here we go. This riotously life affirming, all singing, all dancing musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss has captured the hearts of audience members and critics alike receiving 22, 5 star and 44 star reviews. Can I say immediately I'm not particularly enamored with this trend of quantity over quality with the reviews. And that's not to say like some reviews are more important than others, some reviews are inherently better than others. But this numbers game of like, how many reviews can we get? If we invite 100 people, will we get enough? Five stars and four stars, like, well, we got loads of these and Operation Mincemeat kind of kickstarted this with their like most five star reviewed show, a West End history. It just means that, you know, more people came to see it. There are plenty of shows that got entirely five star reviews but didn't get as many because they just didn't have it reviewed as many times. And you know, I'm all about more critical perspectives and a wider array of critical perspectives. So I guess I should be celebrating this. I just don't like when it's used that way as a marketing tool without any nuance, simply by saying we got dozens and dozens and dozens of five star reviews when the actual critical picture is a little bit different. Because if we look at the major outlets, and again, not to discount the theatre bloggers and, you know, content creators like myself, bringing different perspectives, bringing alternative perspectives, bringing younger perspectives, bringing queer perspectives, very important, particularly to this show and possibly a show that resonated more with a younger audience. But if we, you know, take a look back at some of the other reviews, it did get a five star from what's on stage. It got four stars from the stage and the Eye and the Standard, I think, and the Times, which are all great, which are really impressive and brilliant for the show. It also got three stars from Time out and I think the Guardian and the Independent. And it did not get a great write up from Variety. I think it got a two star from the Sunday Times and I think Variety called it fatally slack. Now we know from theatrical history that great reviews are not a necessity for the lifespan of a show. Shows like Wicked on Broadway, shows like Les Mis in the West End did not receive unanimous critical praise when they first opened, but they resonated with audiences. That's something we're going to come back to in terms of the life cycle of why am I so single? But per their statement, what did they say? 22, five star and 44 star review. How many, how many stars is that? 44. 165, 22s. 110. That's a lot of reviews. 272 stars across those reviews. Like, good. Despite the nightly standing ovations and tremendous word of mouth. Okay, this is what I don't. You have a great show. This was a great show that has something really special to it and some of the writing was brilliant. If you want to know my thoughts on the show, you can go and watch my review video. I gave it a four star review with a decent amount of constructive criticism in there and still the insistence that I really, really liked it and the writing is really, really good and the performances are really, really good. There was just a lot in its way. We're going to talk about that later in this video. But everything kind of gets nightly standing ovations. Believe in your show enough to say we know this was a good show. We believe in this piece. We believe in the story we were telling, which I think they're going to get to later in the statement. But you don't have to hide that behind, well, 22 five star reviews and nightly standing ovations. So we ought to have run longer because you don't, you don't need to do that. You don't need to use that anyway. It has proved difficult to make a brand new musical commercially sustainable in the current economic climate. There is truth to that. There are more qualifications to that as well because, you know, other brand new musicals are opening and running. Operation Mincemeat is an example, I mean six from just a few years ago. Yes, the economic climate has shifted slightly. Hadestown is doing pretty well, as you know, technically. A new musical. It's not a brand new musical because it was in London for a short time and then went to Broadway and then has come back over. But again, no one, no one told why Meister single. They had to open Cold in the West End. But we will get to it. I'm going to try and finish reading this statement. The producers have said, this is Kenny Wax and company. We are extremely proud of the production, as they should be, and thank all the cast, musicians, creatives and backstage team. Nice to see all of those getting a mention who have worked together to bring something daring and original to the West End. It is that we are not discounting the possibility of bringing the show back into London in the future. And with discussions about potential productions in the US and around the world already underway. Hello. We are confident it is just the beginning for this extraordinary show. And truly I think this material is incredibly relatable, is incredibly resonant for multiple generations. In fact, it doesn't just skew towards younger audiences. I see no reason why this wouldn't be commercially viable in the US if produced. Right. I'm going to explain what I mean by that. And also around the world. And they have a Lot of capital to to capitalize on with the success of six Carrying on authors Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss have said. We are so grateful to our truly remarkable cast who have brought this work to life at every performance with such passion, talent and commitment. It does have a really remarkable, wonderful cast who we will talk more about in this video. We are so grateful to our wonderful company and creatives who have put all their humor and heart into our show. We are so grateful to everyone who has worked hard behind the scenes to bring why Am I so Single to the West End. Lovely to express that gratitude at the top of this statement. We are so very grateful to the producers for taking such a risk on an original, ambitious musical like this and making our wildest dreams come true. Acknowledging there the inherent risk of producing something original, something ambitious, I. E. It's not Moulin rouge. It's not Mrs. Doubtfire. It's not the Devil Wears Prada. It's not based on a film. And finally, we're so grateful to everyone who has seen the show so far and we hope more of you will be able to come and see it in the coming months. This is the other thing to remind you of here. It gets very doom and gloom when we talk about a show closing prematurely. It's closing in January, that's what has been announced. There are still months for you to catch this. If you're able to get to London between now and then, and I hope you are, and I hope people give this show a chance and don't equate it's closing early with it, therefore must be bad. There's a lot of stuff that I think is bad that has run for considerably longer. That is still running, in fact. We are of course pretty sad that it's coming to an end earlier than we'd hoped. But we are very proud of the show and are super excited to see what the potential future journey looks like. We cannot wait for you to all listen to more of the music. That means we are getting more of the music because they've just been like drip, releasing some of the songs, which is a conversation in and of itself, actually, which we're working away at right now. And not to boast, but we think it's going to be pretty great. That's B in capitals with two E's. If you. If you know, then you know the actual date. Yeah, 19th of January, 2025. Surprisingly late in January for the show to be closing. Usually January ticket sales are not good for almost anything and so you often see a lot of shows closing in very early January, around like the 5th, the 6th, the 7th. They will wait till the Christmas holidays are over, the tourism begins to die down, people go back to school, people go back to work, people get depressed. It's not Christmas anymore, People stop spending money. And then the shows close. But 19th of January, really only about a month earlier than originally planned. That's auspicious. We're going to talk about why, but I've already said a bunch of things we're going to circle back to. So let's talk a little bit about my thoughts as to why this show is closing early. And it really has very little, staggeringly little, to do with the quality of the piece. Like I said in my review, there are things about it I think could have been improved. But when I got to see this in the open workshop that they did last year, I believe, at Sadler's Wells, I thought it was sensational. I thought this was going to be a hit. I thought it was going to be critically adored. I thought it was so smart. I thought it was stronger than 6 because I thought they took that same sensibility, that same brilliant songwriting, that same contemporary, youthful feel and energy that very few other people are doing successfully on stage right now. And they married it to this really smart structure, this self aware, meta thing. And I thought it was a shade more sophisticated than Six. And it really worked brilliantly well in that very bare rehearsal space, just with, you know, no costuming, no lighting, just with this ensemble playing furniture and these two fantastic lead performers somewhere between there and the West End. And I said this in my review as well. I think the show became overproduced and it became this slightly different thing. The sensibility of it changed a little bit. And you had a set design and you had all of this marketing and it, you know, it became sort of faux lavish with the glitteriness and with the whole big fancy musical of it all, which, whether intended ironically or not, kind of took away from like the fun of the ensemble playing furniture and the kind of scrappy, coming together nature of it. Like a musical being created right there and then in that space because it's a musical about them writing a musical about themselves. And it materializes that the musical that they're writing is based on the evening of them trying to write a musical. The whole thing has many layers of self awareness. It's not unlike a strange loop in that way, but kind of like a strange loop for the TikTok generation and this sort of level of production and this level of prestige and expectation was afforded to it because of Six. This is the reality here is that when these two wrote Six, they were university students that had created this student show to take to the Edinburgh Fringe. Producers became interested and they went back subsequently in a more produced capacity. But it was still at the Edinburgh Fringe and it didn't go directly into an open ended West End run. From that it went down to the Arts Theatre in London for a little stint. It then did a UK tour, returned to the Arts Theatre and then around the time of the Pandemic, moved from the Arts to the Lyric, at which point a lot of people were naysayers and they said, six is not going to work in a bigger venue and it's not going to be financially viable. They ended up going from the Lyric to the Vaudeville, which is now being called their forever home, where Six is still running, has recently celebrated its sixth anniversary in the West End. And evidently it can sell that house. It can sell that house comfortably. In fact, it works in the larger space and it has enough interest to sustain a really successful open ended run at the same time as a UK tourist going around the country, which is a big deal for a show to be able to sell out like big touring, big regional theaters, FYI and also the West End at the same time. Only a few years ago, this was something only the most popular shows could achieve because there aren't enough people in London to keep a show open ongoingly. You need people to come into London to go see it and if it's touring at the same time, then they're less likely to do that because they'll just wait until it comes to a theatre near them. But such is the popularity of 6. People are doing both or people are seeing it multiple times, or they are also getting all of the tourists. Now, Marlow and Moss were exceedingly clever when they wrote Six. They're exceedingly clever people. They are, they are brilliantly smart and I think among the most exciting contemporary musical theatre songwriters creating work right now. But their mindset, when they were creating Six, and they've said this is they were trying to think of something that would be easily marketable at the Edinburgh Fringe. What will Fringe audiences want to go and see? What a super recognizable the Six Wives of Henry VIII as a pop concert is the easiest thing in the world to market. They made such a smart choice. Writing this show and its ongoing success is both due to the quality of the thing translating into a great word of mouth. People go see it like I did for the first time at the Fringe and Tell their friends, oh, my God, this is actually great. But I do sort of think that the easiest way to get great word of mouth is to write a show that can be explained in one easy sentence. And that's good for marketing as well. What is this show? It's the Six Wives of Henry VIII as a pop concert. That's exactly what it is. And people understand what that is. And that invites curiosity to say, oh, that's an interesting concept. But something like, why am I so single? Is harder to explain in a single sentence. Like, well, it's these two friends hanging out for an evening, talking about why they're both single. First of all, that doesn't sound interesting. So then you have to kind of explain it. It's like, no, but it. Like, it references a lot of other musicals and they're also musical writers and they're like, kind of based on the writers. Like, it's semi autobiographical. This is too many sentences. This is too many sentences to convey. So you end up just saying to people, I just really liked it, and it's just really good. Which I think is less powerful. Word of mouth. It can work for certain shows. Come From Away is one that has always defied description, but people are so emotionally moved by it that. That also got the. You just have to see it. You just have to see it. And Operation Mincemeat, so brilliant, so funny and so moving, unexpectedly so that people, again, said, like, you just have to see it. That's. That's a hard one to explain in a single sentence as well. So they don't all need to have that. But Six did, which was a huge part of its success. The other huge part of its success was the music. People heard this music. The music became available shortly after the Edinburgh Fringe run. I think certainly by the time it was running in the West End, it went kind of semi viral on TikTok. People heard these songs. People got super into these songs. They resonated hugely with young women, and this made people want to go and see the show. And this is something that new musicals do not utilize enough. And it's hard. As hard as it is getting a show produced, it is also hard getting a show recorded. And I respect and understand and acknowledge that. However, I do think why Am I so Single? Has a great score. That's one of its big selling points. And there's been a great response to the music that they have been releasing, but it's still not fully released. And some of the best songs in the show, like the song Disco Ball, still haven't been made publicly available. While the show is, like, at this point, more than a month into its West End run, which seems unfathomable, and with the greatest of respect to Kenny Wax and Toby Marlowe and Lucy Moss, all of whom I have met and all of whom are lovely people who I wish extraordinary success for, it does, from an outside perspective, seem as though these were young writers who were desperate to get it right with Six, and so wrote something super marketable that people would want to buy tickets for, and kept working on it and kept developing it. It was successful in the West End and then it opened in the US and they continued to rewrite and tweak and redevelop, to kind of polish that product, to try and make it the best thing it could be, they kept improving it. So when you have something like why am I so single? Opening immediately at a multi tier West End venue like the Garrick, it hasn't had that same gestational period in front of an audience. It's had workshops and it had this one workshop, which seemed as much about generating hype as anything else. But presumably they didn't really have the same need to interest investors and producers at that stage, given that because of Six, Kenny Wax, who also produces Six, was already on board. Kenny Wax already has this relationship with nymax as the theater owners because he produces Six as well as the Play that Goes Wrong. So a lot of doors were sort of available and open to them already, and the workshop was more about generating enthusiasm because they weren't going to do a pre West End run. I don't know if they knew that at this point, but that was the only pre West End version of the show, was this workshop. And so, like I said, from this outside perspective, it seems like they were nervous about Six and they really worked on it. And then with why Am I so Single? They were perhaps a little bit more emboldened by their prior success and able to say, well, 6 has become this huge hit, it runs in the West End, it's great enough for people to come and see it and fill this theatre. So this next show we've written that we think is even better, that can do the same thing. And it can, and it could, I think, but not immediately. And Six is one of the really great new musical success stories of the last few years. So is Operation Mincemeat, in fact, that is also selling out its admittedly very small West End theatre. The thing that both of them have in common is humble, small fringe origins and a slowly forged Path to West End success Operation Mincemeat began at the tiny new Diorama Theatre in London, went to Southwark Playhouse, went to a larger space at Southwark Playhouse, went to Riverside Studios, then went to the Fortune. A slow and careful path, slowly getting bigger each time, but beginning very small and again working on the material. In those runs, it changed wildly. Six started at the Edinburgh Fringe, went to the Arts, which is tiny, toured around small theatres in the uk. I saw it in Southampton at a theatre I don't think exists anymore, which was the Nuffield. Was that the Nuffield or is that Mast? Is that the theatre that still exists? I started a very small theatre when Six later became successful and has returned to Southampton multiple times. It's played at the Southampton Mayflower, which is huge, which is vast, but it wasn't going to be able to at that point in its life. It then goes back to the Arts Theatre in the West End. It runs at the Arts for a considerable amount of time, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It then goes to the Lyric and the Vaudeville, but it's scaling up this entire time and again they are working on the show this whole time. So if why Am I so Single? Had done the same thing, had started somewhere smaller and then worked its way up, I think this would have been formative for the show, both because it would have built word of mouth and it would have given people a chance to find out about it while it was in performances and become interested in it. It would have given them a chance to get the recording out so people could get interested in the music before they had seen the show. More people would buy tickets to go and see the show because of the music. And it also, I think, would have given the show a chance to have more performances in front of an audience and they could have tweaked it, they could have tailored it so that when they get to the West End, the response is even better, the show is even better, the reviews are even better, the word of mouth is even better. Everything is better. Because if the Year One version of Six had opened at the Vaudeville Theatre, where Six currently is, I don't think it would have run. If the Year one version of Operation Mincemeat had opened at the Fortune, it might have run, but it's hard to say. And what I think would have made the most sense for why Am I so Single is to go to the Edinburgh Fringe. There was a show after Six at the Edinburgh Fringe called hello Kitty Must Die, and on the poster it said from the Producers of Six. Not even the writers of Six, not the cast of Six. The material bore little resemblance to Six from the Producers of Six. It sold out its Edinburgh Fringe run on that really just on the hype of Six. Six is well remembered at the Fringe as this big musical hit, the likes of which have not really been seen since. There have been a couple other successful shows. Rob Madge's My Sons Are Queer, but what can you do? Unfortunate. The untold story of Ursula the sea witch, but nothing to the level of Six. Not even close. And had they gone back to the Fringe, even if they didn't think they needed to, but just returned as these reigning, pardon the pun, champions, it would have been huge. The show would have sold out maybe before the Edinburgh Fringe even started, because it was like the next musical from the Six People. Remember how much you all loved Six. Remember how huge that became. This is your chance to see it before everyone else. This is your chance to say, I saw that first version of it would have sold out at the Edinburgh Fringe. And they have this section, Lycan6 smart marketing, where you can film the end of the show and they sing a little bit of a curtain call song, where they're like, why are you still here? Why are we still on stage? It's cute. If they'd done that at the Edinburgh Fringe, people would have been filming it all summer. It would have gone all over socials and everyone in London would have gone, ugh, I really want to see this. I'm annoyed. I can't see it yet. When it came to London, they would have bought tickets. They'd have been like, right, it's finally here. I've been seeing this all over my Instagram and all over my TikTok. Now I'm going to book tickets in advance because the show has been pushing TikTok and Instagram really hard. And I'm going to. I'll address this. We'll talk more about the marketing and to try and push that hard on social platforms when the show is already running and that's kind of your main focus, really feels like a bit of a losing battle. And the other thing about an Edinburgh Fringe run is not only do I think it would have benefited, the show's word of mouth and interest and ticket sales is they inevitably would have had to have reduced it to a smaller version. And I think the act of cutting it down to 75 minutes even would have been really rewarding for the show. They'd have learned a lot about the material. And there's things they probably wouldn't have necessarily reinstated because it doesn't need everything that's in it. I still defend the show being a two act show, but there's certainly stuff that could be trimmed and I think it would have helped to discern the show's identity as well. Because like I said, I do think the version currently running in the West End is a little overproduced in terms of its aesthetics, in terms of its design. And they wouldn't have had that at the Fringe and they'd have been able to see it in front of an audience for what it is. They'd have found the heart and the soul of the piece and then they can focus on that. They could say, we don't actually need this, we don't actually need this. This is what it is. It's not about spending more, it's not about having these fancy sets, it's not about any of those visual elements. It's about the story that we are telling. That's what Six discovered. Six doesn't have a bunch of different set changes. Six has iconic costumes, great songs and brilliant performances. However, why Am I so Single? Did not go to the Edinburgh Fringe. They went straight to the Garrick Theatre. And we have to have a conversation about the way the show has been marketed. And I don't want to just entirely criticize and blame an individual team for the show not running as long as people had hoped that it might. It is curious that on the back of the success of Six, with them using this to market the show, saying from the writers of Six, you know, Six, this is their new show, that it wasn't the same team working on why Am I so Single? It definitely wasn't the same PR team that originally worked on Six or that currently work on Six. And I think the marketing may have changed hands and the social team may have changed hands as well, which is a little bit of a puzzling choice. And it's not even that they just went to bigger agencies necessarily, they just went to different ones. And, you know, it's not exclusive to the people who work on Six to be able to say from the writers of Six, but it would have allowed them to work more collaboratively with the show. They're produced by the same people, they're written by the same people, so they still have that. But it is a little bit unusual. Now, the reason I don't want to criticize the marketing team here too much is because they had a very hard task. When I saw this show, even as a workshop, I said this is a great show. It's going to be really hard to market because it's not based on a familiar story. It references a lot of familiar things. It references musical theater, it references the TV show Friends a lot. But it's a hard one, like I said, to explain. The title is long and possibly makes people think that it's a different kind of show than what it is or that it's a show like about being single. That doesn't sound like the most appealing thing. Thing. I don't know if from an outside perspective it's ever really been well understood. I've heard a lot of discourse around like why would people want to go and see that show? Or it's just a show about like two people sat at home complaining. And that's not something people want to leave their homes and go to the theater to go and see. I actually think the show is brilliant on many levels. But whether it conveys that is another question. The other reason why the show is always going to be hard to market is because of the casting. Now the casting is kind of everything we've been asking for in casts for the last few years, specifically like the musical theater communities I see online have been advocating and pushing for this kind of casting. It is diverse, it is authentically queer, it is super talented individuals. It's a large number of super talented individuals. Possibly the cast is bigger than it really needed to be. It's a much more exciting cast than you see on many other stages. In the West End you have non binary performers playing non binary roles. Just the other night I was walking with Friends and we were talking about how great it is that there are now multiple canonical non binary roles in different musicals. But what that casting doesn't include is star names. And I don't just mean celebrity names here, but I mean really, even in the musical theatre world of that sort of echelon of recognizable talent, your Rachel Tucker's, your ZZ Stralins, your Romin Karimloos, your Aaron Tveitz, even if not household names like the big theatre names. And I just pulled together a really random array of people there. But even like the original six queens going into a show, even a Grace Moatt, even a Amy Atkinson, this show was cast in a very genuine, authentic way with cast members that people were going to get really excited who were on their way to becoming stars. Joe Foster, for a while now in multiple shows has really been like this exciting, talented rising star, but they don't have extraordinary name recognition in the musical theatre community at least before they opened. And why am I so single? So at this point, the show is not a name, the cast are not names, and it's opening cold with no prior run at a West End theater. At which point I do want to articulate the issue I have had with the marketing because, you know, as challenging as it is to market this show, all of the imagery that was released as we were leading up to this West End run made it look like a cheap Channel 3 or Channel 4 dating show, like a. Like a naked attraction, like a married at first sight. That was what it looked like with these two together. It had their faces, it still does. But they are not celebrities, nor are they particularly recognizable characters. Like they are not the six wives of Henry VIII, they are not Mrs. Doubtfire, they are not characters we recognize from a film, and they are not individuals we recognize from fame in their own right. So to put their faces on a poster leads to a little bit of curiosity. And there were some campaigns that had all these ensemble faces over the poster as well. And I just think the identity of the show wasn't really being conveyed. And I think that goes back to the show not really having discerned what its identity is. And you know, they did West End Live and they pushed in every way they could think to and they brought people in, they did media calls and they did a big launch event and they worked really hard on trying to get stuff out there about this show and get stuff on socials. We were hearing eight dates for the longest time from the media call from the West End Live performance. I think we probably needed to have more music. I loved the logo designed by Chris Clegg. I thought that was great. And even with the reviews, they didn't get five stars across the board, but they got enough to fill a wall on the side of that theater with a lot of great looking reviews. At a glance, they got a brilliant write up from what's on stage and they were connecting successfully with many younger fans. A lot of people knew about this show because of six, and they did Musical Con this weekend, but none of it was fast enough. None of it came in early enough to give good advance sales because it has been struggling with ticket sales kind of since it arrived in the West End. And all of that is indicative of perhaps they needed to do a pre West End run. Kenny Wax actually gave an interview in the lead up to the show's opening night saying, maybe we should have gone to the fringe. Maybe we should have done something prior to this. And that I think is the takeaway for other producers. It's important to have off West End regional fringe runs of these shows, both to develop the material itself, but also to build the brand and the recognition with the audience, to build that word of mouth. That's what Operation Mincemeat has done so successfully. It's worth saying. We also need more mid size London theatres because the Garrick is a challenging capacity. Something like the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, having just opened at the Ambassadors, hopefully will do very well because that is among the smallest West End theaters. They have also had previous runs at the Southwark Playhouse where they have built a little bit of word of mouth. People now know about that show and can talk about that show. They still have an uphill battle because it's a new musical, it's an original musical opening in the West End, but if we had a bunch more theaters the size of the other palace, that potentially would have been a good place for why Am I so Single? To premiere, basically, rather than trying to go straight into the West End. So, like I said, the show is still running until mid January. There is plenty of time for you to go and see it if you haven't seen it already. Please don't write this show off as a failure just because it's closing a few weeks prior to when it had originally planned. Please go and support this show. I'm gonna go see it at least once more, possibly a couple times more. I'd like to see the alternate performers, but I would also like to see the principals again. I think everyone in this cast is brilliantly talented. I think it's a fun show, it's got great writing. I mentioned that the date of its closing was auspicious because it's not closing right at the beginning of January. You might say, why could it not just finish its run? What I think might be happening here is that the theatre owners would prefer to be able to bring something else in before the cutoff for Olivier Awards eligibility. So the way that this works is there is a certain date, mid February. I don't know exactly when it is this year. It's usually in the early double figure dates of the month, like around the 10th. And as long as shows have their official opening night before, then, they are considered eligible for that year's upcoming Olivier Awards. And so right at the end of the window of eligibility is a good time to open because you're one of the most recent openings people remember you well. Can we infer, therefore, that we might be getting a brand new show at that theatre? Either a play or a musical trying to make it in before the Olivier Awards cut off to try and be part of this Olivier season, the field is still quite open for new musicals, and because of that, we could still see why. Meister Single doing pretty well with Olivier Award nominations. I think it's going to get at least some. I don't think it's going to be forgotten just because it will be closed by the time the nominations come out and the awards themselves happen. But equally, this could see a new challenger enter the mix, or it could be a play that's already eligible elsewhere, but just wants to maintain its buzz and wants to continue to sell well and be a commercial success. I'm thinking of the play, specifically Giant, that's currently running at the Royal Court. This has West End transfer written all over it, but there has been a scarcity of theatres. So with something like the Garrick suddenly opening up, wouldn't surprise me if John Lithgow and the cast of Giant, headed from the Royal Court, got on the District Line and came over to the Garrick. What might be next for why Am I so Single meanwhile? Well, hopefully they are recognized in the Olivier Awards, in the Watson Stage Awards this year as well. I think that might be a forum where they really get recognition from the audience that they had been developing. We have newly released music to look forward to, and they've talked about these runs happening in the US and worldwide and also the possibility of coming back to London. And I really hope that happens. I don't want us to live in a theatrical ecosystem where something gets one chance and then that's it, its fate is sealed. We have seen other shows sort of be rehabilitated from that. We have seen other shows come back and make changes. Amelie from Broadway to the West End. Interestingly enough, why Meister Single was, I think, originally developed at Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut, who do a lot of brilliant work in developing new musicals and new musical theatre writers. And so it'd be very interesting for it to have what might be considered an American return. I'm super intrigued to see how this show is received and to see how it can go on to become the best version of. Of itself. And I think more of that comes from stripping back and refining than sort of pushing harder and glowing up further, if that makes sense. But those have been my thoughts on the closure of why Meister Single. Like I said, enormous condolences for the cast, for the crew, for the creatives, for everyone working at the Garrick Theatre as well as beyond the Garrick Theatre who tried to make this show happen. And like I said, it hasn't been a failure. This brilliant piece of art was created. It gave a platform to these fantastic, talented performers and it will have had what, like a, like a four month run in the West End? Four months plus. That is nothing to frown about. That is something that a lot of new musical theatre writers would find sensational. And it's the length of a run that other shows would call a limited run and then, you know, would be interpreted as a success. So hopefully, fingers crossed this is not the last we have seen of why am I so Single? Like I said, please, please, please book tickets to go and see the show between now and and the end of its run. I think it's pretty wonderful. You can go and watch my review video to find out a little bit more about it. But in the meantime, let me know your thoughts on this, the end of its first West End life comment down below with all of your feelings. I hope that you've enjoyed today's video. I will be making another one very soon where I talk about the recent closures announced on Broadway and what this kind of says about the state of Broadway and the current New York theatre industry for new musicals. Losing shows like Back to the Future, Suffs and Water for Elephants in pretty quick succession, as well as the Notebook, of course. So make sure you're subscribed with the notifications turned on so you don't miss any of my upcoming videos. And in the meantime, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For ten more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.