The production subsequently failed.

The production subsequently failed 
after record-setting runs packing houses
and parking lots full of those eager just 
to be near enough
to say they went. Then ambitions unsated,
come back again
and again for more. For
twenty unbreakable seasons 
it ran as the critics mused in wonder, first: 
over the unique - and what's best, novel
features of the play, then:
drawing depths forth and from
and between the characters and relations
and the actors reflected in them, dimly 
(who soaked up such praise as theirs 
by right, birthright even) - while 
the run rolled on increasingly 
like direction on speed. The critics
would play upon new directors
and passing casts picked apart
for contrasts to enrich the compost
and sewage art of this never-ending,
ever-rending banquet. This critics' feast.

And of course, all through: themes.
Significance. They could harp like angels
with demons driving them, o glory hallelujah
goddamn! Every sliver of sly curse struck
a tittering chorus of amen, cistern brethren - but

The general refrain of praise ran "yay" and
"huzzah" and "one for the ages" and "this 
is our defining," cuing endless and echoing 
blah. They dissected all they had to say, plus
oh! The play: What this says, why it strikes
such deep chords all through, what it says
about who it strikes them in. Finally, what
it says about us all, to begin with for a start!
How about the fact that our culture, that we
still, still, keep returning to this tired and gnawed
-off flat, stale feast of picked bone, cold grease
and fat? Isn't that - you'll forgive us - either 
kind of pathetic, or telling of some damn thing?
And if so: don't look in the mirror to answer this! 
What?

Eventually in some quarters it was seen to have
gone past a joke, already. Many years past that
point those quarters had shrunk to dimes, all
the dearer for deflation, and they were sure. 

The production subsequently failed. The public
(who'd never really "got" the appeal) joined in 
with a segment of the critics who disdained
such support and convened an abrupt, long
-overdue by some accounts inquest for sport
on this still-twitching, once immortal corpse. 

You can only be immortal once. That's the deal. 
As the sayers of nay reared nigh and stamped
their sparking hooves, tossed flaming manes
at apocalypse skies and loosed their gifted
teeth, the production gave up the ghost. Its veins

held only water. Its meat tastes of wafer. Its reins
were never as long as they seemed, and its reign
was brief.