It’s Time for “The Muppets Christmas Carol” on Broadway
by Chris Peterson
I’ve said it before and I’m more than willing to say it again because hope is renewable and Muppets are eternal. The Muppets Christmas Carol should be on Broadway. Not forever, not as some open-ended juggernaut, but as a recurring holiday run. A December tradition at a real Broadway house.
And yes, I know the ghost of The Rob Lake Magic Debacle still haunts the gossip cycle. But let’s stay grounded. Rob Lake was not a Disney production. It wasn’t Jim Henson. The Muppets were nowhere near it unless they were silently shaking their heads from heaven. Using that flop as a reason to bench the Muppets is like saying Sesame Street doesn’t work because someone once saw a bad card trick in Vegas. The math does not math.
Which is exactly why a limited-engagement holiday run of The Muppets Christmas Carol feels like low-risk, high-delight theatre math. Built-in fanbase? Obviously. A score already functioning as musical theatre? Absolutely. Nostalgia so potent it makes full-grown adults misty when Kermit says “after all, there’s only one more sleep till Christmas”? You bet. Every December the movie resurfaces like clockwork, trending, streaming, being quoted by people who claim they don’t even like musicals. The audience is already here.
And let’s talk quality. This isn’t novelty programming. The songs land. The emotion lands. The humor never punches down. It balances grief and joy better than half of the prestige Broadway slate right now. Plenty of movie-to-stage adaptations cannot say the same with a straight face.
Imagine it. A snow-dusted proscenium. Sobbing our eyes out at “When Love is Gone”. Families singing along to “It Feels Like Christmas”. People returning annually. Merch flying like confetti.
It could be a New York holiday tradition. Not a gimmick. A ritual.
So consider this my annual plea, wrapped in tinsel and mild exasperation. Give The Muppets Christmas Carol a home every December. Limited run. Back each year like the Rockettes and your uncle’s fruitcake, you politely avoid. Let Broadway have joy. Let families have something to return to. Let Kermit take a bow.
Because frankly, if we live in a world where the Muppets can’t get three weeks at the Hirschfeld but yet another IP-musical no one asked for can run six months too long, then we’ve lost the holiday spirit completely.
