Longest previews ever?

How about out of town tryouts prior to Broadway or Wendy’s End?

Follies and Company has epic amounts of performances before making it to Broadway

On Broadway Sarava on 1979 (musicalisation of a Brazilian Soap opera with a score by Man of La Mancha’s Mitch Leigh) kept putting any opening back so critics went and reviewed it anyway. Nick and a Nora (husband and wife detective team with a score by Charles ‘Annie’ Strouse) in the early nineties seemed to go on forever as they tried to fix it. Latterly beaten by Spiderman as they tried the same.

Sarava - 38 previews
Nick and Nora - 71 previews
Spiderman - 182 previews

I saw Nick and Nora in autumn 91. Recall it as being ok. Thinking back v cast, Barry Bostwick, Joanna Gleason, Christine Baranski and Chris Sarandon. It clearly had a lot of prbs though.

I don't know any examples, but aren't there some shows which never had a national press performance?

EDIT: Just read Burly Bear's post about Ghost. Any others?

Did Spiderman ever get a press night?

What in God’s name was going on with Spiderman to merit 182 previews? Was it that bad?

Others probably know more, but I think the initial problem was that they weren't happy with Julie Taymor's direction/story and started from scratch in the middle of previews and at one point there was also a serious accident. There were major problems with Spidy "flying" through the theatre too.

The music was by U2's Bono and The Edge who basically just phoned it in with no actual interest in or passion for musical theatre (like Elton John for example).

I did see it and it wasn't that bad really. I just think Taymor's version had been something new and fresh and different that might actually have been of more interest for the theatre-going target group. The actual Spiderman target group, spotty teenagers over-saturated on CGI-filled superheros didn't care and for most theatre-goers it was too naff. 

That said, I had mentioned the show to a few people who aren't into musicals and always got the same "What the hell, is nothing sacred?!" reaction. That's the problem with fleecing big well-known franchises like this, Lord of the Rings or if they'd ever do a Star Wars musical.  IMHO musical adaptations only work when the film is either not terribly well known, so the musical feels like something fresh or when the movie had a lot of music/dance elements so putting it on stage actually ads something.

Bend it like Beckham

Had over 5 weeks of previews
Maybe almost 6

Stand up
Stand up and sing
Stand up
Stand up and sing

Billy Elliot even more than that

Yes but 50-60 years they only used the source material to create something fresh, i.e. Romeo & Juliet was the source for West Side Story, but turned it into a (then) contemporary story of friction in New York with everyone having new names and so it felt different and fresh. Carousel was based on the Hungarian play Liliom and while it's basically the same story, it was again a completely different setting with new names and locations. South Pacific is a mash-up of two short stories from Michener's Tales of the South Pacific and so on. 

If I'd compare this to today's stuff, I'd say Hamilton gets there (by drawing from Alexander Hamilton's biography but giving it a completely fresh contemporary twist) or Great Comet, which draws on War and Peace, but again turns it into something fresh and different. 

Too many of today's move adaptations are just really lame 1:1 copies with a few songs thrown in. For me one of the worst-case examples was Ghost, where everyone was just waiting for the famous movie scenes, like the pottery scene, with a bunch of mediocre songs thrown at it.  Once in a while you get something exceptional like Groundhog Day, where Minchin's songs and lyrics really add something to the story and make it feel fresh, but too many musicals fail there. So for me it works better when the movie is already half forgotten like Kinky Boots was - and this is also a case where the live action on stage (Lola and her Angels mostly) also add a new layer. 

And of this is nothing compared to the MASSIVE franchises that's stuff like Star Wars, Spiderman/anything superhero, Lord of the Rings, etc.  I think Harry Potter would have been ripped to shreds, if they had simply brought the first book onto the stage and not actually created a new story for the stage. Which is what Taymor had tried to do for Spiderman - add something new and different, but it failed.

I think people get more and more tired of the relentless milking of franchises. When the new Lord of the Rings adaptation for Amazon Prime was announced, there seemed to be more of a collective groan than an actual "yay, more LOTR!" reaction from the fandom. And as much as I love Game of Thrones, I wouldn't touch these present stage "spoofs" with a ten foot pole because they just reek of money-grubbing and cashing in to me. 

Harry Potter is basically TWO shows so I guess their preview time should be divided by 2 to count properly the amount of shows they did.