“Girl From the North Country,” a musical using the songs of Bob Dylan, also closed, with hopes of reopening in the spring, as the surge in virus cases continues to upend the theater industry.
The producers of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a hit play that had been packing in audiences before the pandemic, announced Wednesday that they would shut the show down until June, lay off the cast and crew, downsize the production and then reopen in a smaller theater. At the same time, “ Girl From the North Country,” a heart-tugging musical that uses the songs of Bob Dylan to consider the Depression-era plight of a group of down-on-their-luck Midwesterners in the town where Dylan was born, said it would will end its Broadway run on Jan.23, and would try to reopen in another theater this spring. They became the seventh and eighth Broadway shows to announce temporary or permanent closing dates since early December, when the Omicron variant sent coronavirus cases soaring in New York. Their plans for short-term layoffs follow an example set by the musical “Mrs. Doubtfire,” which recently said it would close for nine weeks. The “Mockingbird” move is dramatic, especially for a show that had been playing to capacity crowds before the pandemic. The show had been contemplating for some time whether a move to a smaller theater could make it more sustainable for a long-term run, and the decision to do so now allows it to avoid a period when attendance on Broadway is soft, and expected to remain so, because of the Omicron surge.
