If you’ve walked past the Palace Theatre lately and seen David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross on the marquee, you’re not imagining things — yes, a play is taking over one of Broadway’s most famous musical houses. And not just for a quick run — this revival, scheduled to run for over three months, marks a real Broadway milestone: the longest-running play ever at the Palace.
That’s a bold statement for a theater as legendary as the Palace. Since opening its doors in 1913, the Palace has welcomed the biggest showbiz stars, from vaudeville legends Judy Garland and Fanny Brice to countless blockbuster musicals. Some of Broadway’s biggest musical spectacles — La Cage aux Folles, Beauty and the Beast, Aida, and An American in Paris, to name but a few — have taken up residence in the storied house.
But plays have popped up here and there — although they didn’t stay long. In 1975, The First Breeze of Summer, a moving family drama first produced by the Negro Ensemble Company, made a move to the Palace but ran for only a month. In 1977, George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar & Cleopatra, starring Rex Harrison, ran a relatively longer 38 performances — although still a blink by Palace standards.
Next was a near-unbelievable string of one-night-only performances. In 1979, Break a Leg, a backstage farce by Ira Levin (of Deathtrap renown) and featuring the great Julie Harris, opened and closed in one night. The next year, A Meeting by the River, a stage adaptation by Christopher Isherwood of his own novel, played only one performance. And in 1981, Frankenstein, Victor Gialanella’s stage version of the classic, starring great John Glover, closed on opening night — the third straight play at the Palace to last for a single performance.
Even before that series of short-lived shows, Shaw’s London Assurance — revived in 1974 and starring Donald Sinden and Roger Rees — fared no better than a month of performances, meanwhile having the idol cast to spare. Therefore, while the Palace has dabbled every now and then in straight plays, they’ve been rare visitors to a theatre more famous for showstoppers and overtures rather than snappy dialogue and tempered tension.
Some of that’s just the nature of the venue. The Palace is a big house, and musicals — with their spectacle, dance numbers, and big sound — traditionally have been the obvious choice to fill that room with energy. But Glengarry Glen Ross is defying that trend now, demonstrating that a quick-paced, verbally dexterous play can hold its own in a venue built to accommodate Broadway’s biggest spectacles.
It’s happening at a fascinating moment in the life of the theater. Having been closed for nearly six years for a thorough makeover — including the now-notorious mission of raising the entire theater 30 feet off the ground to make way for new construction beneath it — the Palace reopened in 2024 with a Ben Platt concert residency and Elton John and Jake Shears’ Tammy Faye.
And yet now, Glengarry Glen Ross is bringing a whole new kind of drama to that stage — and making history with it. With its all-star cast led by Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, and Michael McKean, this revival of Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play is bringing incisive dialogue and life-and-death suspense that can pack the Palace in a whole different way than crowds are used to.
So you don’t often see a play take over one of Broadway’s biggest musical houses, but Glengarry Glen Ross is here to remind us that there’s room for any kind of theater at the Palace—and sometimes, a good well-timed insult can hurt as much as a high note.
