Bring Back Birdie (1981)

Broadway has never been very good at sequels. For every rare success, you'll find a long line of flops: beloved shows that tried to relive their own glory and ended up forgotten instead. But no attempt tells that story quite like Bring Back Birdie.

Its predecessor in 1960 was the Tony-winning Bye Bye Birdie, an Elvis-inspired satire that became a genuine phenomenon, launching Dick Van Dyke and Gower Champion into stardom, and giving Chita Rivera one of the defining roles of her career. For the next two decades, it became one of the most beloved shows in the country, a staple of every high school auditorium from coast to coast.

For this sequel, the original creative team reunited after 20 years, and Rivera returned alongside screen legend Donald O'Connor, in what would be his Broadway debut. What happened next remains one of the most spectacular collapses in Broadway history, a show undone by its own ambition, and gone from the stage almost as quickly as it arrived.

Transcript with photos, videos, and a list of sources used

Annie 2 episode (listen on your podcast app)

Learn more about Chita Rivera in The Rink episode

Closing Night is produced by Patrick Oliver Jones and WINMI Media with Dan Delgado as co-producer and editor. Theme music created by Blake Stadnik.

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