“Once Upon a One More Time,” a pop musical using the songs of Britney Spears, will close on Broadway on Sept. 3 after opening to mixed reviews and failing to find an audience.
The musical was a costly misfire, capitalized for $20 million at a time when many Broadway shows have been struggling with rising costs and diminished attendance after a pandemic shutdown that made an always challenging industry even more difficult.
“Once Upon a One More Time” is about a group of fairy tale heroines whose outlook on their familiar stories is shaken when the book club to which they belong encounters a feminist classic, “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan.
The musical features some of Spears’s biggest hits, including “Baby One More Time,” “Toxic” and “Circus.” The songs have several writers but were originally performed and recorded by Spears; the musical’s book is by Jon Hartmere and it was directed and choreographed by Keone and Mari Madrid.
The musical was first announced in 2019, with plans for an initial production in Chicago, but that production was delayed until the following spring and then canceled by the pandemic. Ultimately, the show started its first run in late 2021 at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, D.C., where reviews were weak but sales were strong.
Spears’s relationship to the show was never clear. The show repeatedly described itself as “fully authorized and licensed post-conservatorship by Britney Spears,” and she wished the cast and crew well on Instagram in June, writing, “I’ve seen the show and it is so funny, smart and brilliant 🤩 !!!”
But Spears did not attend a public performance, and her fan base never fully mobilized to see the production. The show’s grosses were soft from the get-go, peaking at $701,425 during the week of its opening, which is not nearly enough to sustain a musical of this scale. During the week that ended Aug. 13, the show played to houses that were only 47 percent full, and grossed just $512,008.
The show began previews on May 13 and opened on June 22 at the Marquis Theater. At the time of its closing it will have played 123 performances.
The lead producers are James L. Nederlander and Hunter Arnold; they said in a statement on Monday that they were planning a national tour as well as “multiple international productions.”
The closing announcement comes at a difficult time for Spears. Last week her husband, Sam Asghari, filed for divorce just over a year after they got married.