Irene
Shows · Irene
By remaining at the Vanderbilt Theatre (then on 48th Street east of 7th Avenue), for one year eight months — and by running 11 performances longer than A Trip to Chinatown — Irene set a Broadway endurance record that it held onto for 18 years. What made it such a hit for its day (at one time it claimed 17 road companies) resulted from what critics hailed as its intelligent book, diverting comedy, brisk pacing, melodi…
- Opened
- 1919
- Performances
- 670
- Type
- Musical
- Era
- Early
Productions3 on Broadway
| 1919 | Vanderbilt Theatre Original. November 18, 1919 · Edward Royce | 670 performances |
| 1923 | Jolsons 59th Street Theatre Revival. April 2, 1923 · Edward Royce | 16 performances |
| 1973 | Minskoff Theatre Revival. March 13, 1973 · Gower Champion | 594 performances |
Every Broadway staging held in broadway-data, sourced to IBDB. West End runs are not yet held.
Recordings 1 album held
Licensing 2 entries
| US | Concord Theatricals Tams-Witmark | available |
| UK | Concord Theatricals Tams-Witmark | available |
Read from the licensor's own pages and catalogues. Rights move, and an empty row means we have not confirmed a publisher, not that the show cannot be licensed.
50 passages naming Irene, found by keyword across 178 books. It's where this show turns up in the literature, not curated trivia about it.
Bobbie Watson in Irene portrayed an actual homosexual character. book:broadway-musicals-show-by-show-green-stanley-green-kay-5th-ed-rev-and-updated-by#p290
The first show to play the theater, Irene (3/13/73, 604 performances), seemed to promise a bright future for the new theater. book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p376
Victor Herbert’s Naughty Marietta (1910), Jerome Kern’s so-called Princess Theatre Shows (1915–1918) with books and lyrics by P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton (especially Very Good Eddie and Leave It to Jane), Harry Tierney and Joseph McCarthy’s Irene (1919), Sigmund Romberg’s The Student Prince in Heidelberg (1924), Vin… book:enchanted-evenings-the-broadway-musical-from-show-boat-block-geoffrey-oxford-new#p29
Both Irene and No, No, Nanette (670 and 321 performances, respectively, in their inaugural runs) enjoyed popular revivals in the early 1970s (No, No, Nanette in 1971 [861 performances] and Irene in 1973 [604 performances]). book:enchanted-evenings-the-broadway-musical-from-show-boat-block-geoffrey-oxford-new#p611
Irene, a Cinderella story about a shop girl who marries an heir, opens at the Vanderbilt Theater and plays for 675 performances, at the time the longest run in Broadway history. book:historical-dictionary-of-the-broadway-musical-volume-22-william-a-everett-paul-r#p18
"But Irene was first and foremost a misconceived, mediocre show with only one mitigating factor. An important factor, though: Debbie Reynolds—in 1973, in Irene—sold tickets." book:more-opening-nights-on-broadway-a-critical-quotebook-of-compiled-by-steven-suski#p503
Something wrong here? Correct a field or report the problem. Every change is recorded in public under the contributor licence.