David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s musical Here Lies Love to close on Broadway

Here Lies Love — a disco musical created by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim about the life of former Filipino first lady Imelda Marcos — will close on Broadway on November 26, the show’s producers announced this morning (November 7). An ambitious, $22 million affair, the production took over Manhattan’s Broadway Theatre, renovating the space to accommodate spinning stages and a state-of-the-art audio system that created a club atmosphere. The show’s 150th and final public performance on Broadway is scheduled to take place November 26.

The Broadway Theatre’s production of Here Lies Love opened to the public on July 20 after nearly a month of previews and a decade of on-and-off productions across the country (the first being an off-Broadway stint at New York’s Public Theater). The play puts an unconventional spin on Marcos’ story — one involving corruption and oppression at the highest level during the dictatorial reign of her husband, Ferdinand Marcos. The new production opened roughly a year after Imelda and Ferdinand’s son, Bongbong Marcos, succeeded Rodrigo Duterte as president of the Philippines.

He remains in power, and his mother is still alive today at 94. Read Next: The Weeknd, David Byrne, and Taylor Swift invited to join Oscars voting According to Deadline, the play’s short run places it “among Broadway’s priciest flops in recent years.” The publication sites numbers from last week — in which the musical reportedly filled 79 percent of seats at the Broadway, grossing $768,244 — to illustrate the point. “Artistic excellence can be achieved,” Here Lies Love’s producers wrote in a statement on its closing.

“But the reality is, succeeding on Broadway means not only producing excellent work with artistic merit––it also means creating the audience for it. And how much time it takes to find and grow new audiences is out of sync with the tight timeframes for audience-building and awareness.” Read their full statement below. The FADER has reached out to a publicist for the production for further comment.