For Craig Coursey, it feels like a member of the family is saying goodbye.

“It’s literally like having your grandma and grandpa live next door, and then they decide to move to Boca. It’s a little like, where are you going? It has been so reliable and it’s such an icon. It has been terrific for it to be our best neighbor,” Coursey said.

Coursey is the general manager of Theatre Circle, a small gift store that opened its doors 27 years ago and has shared the same street with “The Phantom of the Opera” ever since.

What You Need To Know

  • When a show lasts a few years on Broadway that’s considered a successful run, but with "The Phantom of the Opera" 35 years is unheard of

  • Many of the businesses in and around the Majestic Theater have changed over the years but two have remained a constant: the theater gift shop across the way, now called Theatre Circle and Sardi’s restaurant

  • NY1 checked in with some local business owners who will no longer be able to call the Phantom their neighbor after April 16

 

“It’s been there so long, it’s been a large chunk of my life and working in theater, so I think it will be a little sad. I was sad when ‘Cats’ left. It had been the longest running show and Broadway went on and we found the next thing. Broadway will keep inventing itself,” he said.

Farther down the street, another New York City institution is coming to terms with the show’s final curtain call.

“That has been an anchor for us throughout its run. It’s always something we can count on as this season what’s on the block and again 35 years. These shows have all changed out, but that has always been the rock,” Sean Ricketts, the manager at Sardi’s, said.

Ricketts has worked at Sardi’s since 1991, three years after the Phantom of the Opera opened on Broadway.

“That was cutting edge, with everything going on, the chandelier and the smoke, the music, the score, the story. It was just phenomenal,” he said.

And even though Ricketts, who first saw the musical when he was a teenager, will be sad to see it go. He’s not too worried about the economic impact it might have on Sardi’s and other local businesses.

“When something, not very often, like ‘Phantom’, comes along, that is a new idea, a new concept, something magical. It will stay for years and years. If it doesn’t happen this year, it will happen again,” Ricketts concluded.