Palace Theatre, Manchester notable shows to have played successful seasons at the Palace Theatre include, amongst others, the regional premiere of "Les Misérables" which ran for 13 months from 1992–93, regional premiere of "Miss Saigon" in 2001, "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" in 2006 and "Mamma Mia!" over the 2006/07 Christmas season. Broadway musical "The Wedding Singer" had its UK premiere at the theatre in 2008 and in December 2008 to March 2009 the theatre hosted a season of the UK tour of "Mary Poppins", one of only six theatres in the country to accommodate the tour, both events further cementing the theatre's reputation
Musical theatre forms. As transportation improved, poverty in London and New York diminished, and street lighting made for safer travel at night, the number of patrons for the growing number of theatres increased enormously. Plays ran longer, leading to better profits and improved production values, and men began to bring their families to the theatre. The first musical theatre piece to exceed 500 consecutive performances was the French operetta "The Chimes of Normandy" in 1878. English comic opera adopted many of the successful ideas of European operetta, none more successfully than the series of more than a dozen long-running Gilbert and Sullivan