In the end it may have been too much for Holler if Ya Hear Me to carry. The Tupac musical was supposed to be a bridge between the gritty streets of hip-hop and the highbrow Broadway scene.
Holler opened to lukewarm reviews, struggled to find an audience, and after some 38 performances and 17 previews at the Palace Theatre, the musical will close July 20, the producers have announced, Time magazine reports.
Some argued that hip-hop lovers who followed Tupac’s emotional and personal lyrics in his music were not pleased with the generic storyline that didn’t follow the rapper’s own controversial life. Others believed that the Broadway crowd didn’t know what to make of the brash and bold hip-hop scene.
So, after weeks of sorry ticket sales, producers decided that the musical, which officially opened June 19, had seen enough.
“It saddens me that due to the financial burdens of Broadway, I was unable to sustain this production longer in order to give it time to bloom on Broadway,” producer Eric L. Gold said in a statement viewed by Time. “Tupac’s urgent, socially important insights and the audiences’ nightly rousing standing ovations deserve to be experienced by the world.”
Also on The Root: “Holler If Ya Hear Me: How Tupac’s ‘Thug Life’ Translates to Broadway”
Read more at Time.