Lawrence.com

New York — Try to remember a time when "The Fantasticks" wasn't running at the tiny Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village. After nearly 42 years and 17,162 performances, that time has come.

The off-Broadway musical by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt celebrated its last two performances Sunday after weeks of enthusiastic, sold-out houses and heaps of publicity. It's a fitting end for a theatrical legend that opened May 3, 1960, to mixed reviews, no advance sale and with a pugnacious producer determined to succeed.

"My job as producer was to try to keep the show running," Lore Noto says simply. He did � using word-of-mouth, aggressively getting items placed with newspaper columnists and even corralling people off the streets near the theater to see the musical.

As the years went by, Noto dreamed of one day catching up with "The Mousetrap," the Agatha Christie murder mystery that has been playing in London since 1952. But it was not to be. Four decades later, rising costs, dwindling audiences and a new theater owner forced him to reconsider.

"I still called the shots but it was getting harder and harder," said Noto, homebound because of a heart condition and several bouts with cancer. "We weren't getting the groups of school kids, and people didn't want to pay the $40 top ticket price."

Yet Noto speaks with pride when he describes the four decades of "roller-coaster" existence that went into keeping the show alive, an existence that has been reconfirmed by thousands of stock and amateur productions around the globe.

"The Fantasticks" billed itself as "the world's longest running musical," and it was right. By comparison, "Cats," Broadway's long-run champ, notched only 7,485 performances by the time it closed in September 2000.

Based on an obscure play by Edmund Rostand, author of "Cyrano de Bergerac," "The Fantasticks" tells of young love tested over time by adversity. Produced for $16,500, the show has paid its 44 investors a 19,465 percent return on their investment.

The musical's hit songs include "Try to Remember" and "Soon It's Gonna Rain," recorded by scores of artists from Barbra Streisand to Ed Ames to Tony Bennett to Harry Belafonte. There was a celebrated television adaptation in 1964 and a flop movie version that quickly went to video.

With the closing of "The Fantasticks," an area of Greenwich Village south of Washington Square Park loses another theatrical landmark.

Already gone is Circle in the Square, the in-the-round theater that many consider the birthplace of the off-Broadway movement. The Village Gate, the clubby basement space where such revues as "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris" and "One Mo' Time" held forth, has also disappeared. It was reborn as the Village Theater, but it is not quite the same.

No one knows what will become of the shabby Sullivan Street Playhouse, but renovations are expected to begin soon. There are 42 years of memories to put away.