History DownerEnding / Theatre

** In ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' the hero manages to kill his father's murderer, but by that time the deaths of everybody else in the play have already happened.

* ''Theatre/{{Parade|1998}}'': Despite making up with his wife and being moved to a different prison, Leo Frank is lynched. Worse still, his death marks a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. Meanwhile, Jim Conley, the real murderer, is never brought to justice, and Tom Watson and Hugh Dorsey get exactly what they want- Watson continues to write for his newspaper and even helps the Klan, and Dorsey becomes Governor of Georgia.

* ''Theatre/{{Parade}}'': Despite making up with his wife and being moved to a different prison, Leo Frank is lynched. Worse still, his death marks a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. Meanwhile, Jim Conley, the real murderer, is never brought to justice, and Tom Watson and Hugh Dorsey get exactly what they want- Watson continues to write for his newspaper and even helps the Klan, and Dorsey becomes Governor of Georgia.

* ''Theatre/TheCrucible'': John, Martha, and Rebecca are all hanged, Tituba, Sarah Good, and Mary are all driven to insanity, Hale fails to save a single life [[ItsAllMyFault and blames himself for it]], and Abigail (the person [[BigBad responsible for all of the chaos]]) [[KarmaHoudini gets away]] [[TheBadGuyWins with everything]]. However, the ending is slightly less bleak when you read the "Echoes Down the Corridor" epilogue, which reveals that after the events of the play, Abigail [[KarmaHoudiniWarranty turned to prostitution and died at 18]].

* ''Theatre/TheYeomenOfTheGuard'': Yes, a jolly Gilbert and Sullivan opera. In which the jester Jack Point, the main character, a classic tenor G and S hero collapses (it is left to the audience to decide if he is dead, the libretto says 'falls insensible', but Gilbert originally planned to kill him) with a broken heart when he finally realises the Ingenue is lost to him forever. All the harsher for the audience as throughout the last act, EVERYTHING works like any other operetta, and you expect all of the romantic loose ends to be tied up cleanly as per usual. In this case they are, with the hero the sole exception...

* ''Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'', though not exactly a happy plot to begin with, has its funny and entertaining moments in its morbidity. However, the ending pretty much takes the cake in what's also a bit of a KillEmAll as Sweeney Todd, after murdering the Beadle and a crazy old woman before finally taking vengeance upon Judge Turpin, threatens and nearly kills his disguised daughter Johanna, then tries to find Toby (to eliminate him as well), realizes that the crazy woman he just killed was actually his wife, then kills Mrs. Lovett (by tossing her into her oven and burning her alive, no less) for not telling him that his wife was alive. The show ends with Sweeney, blindly grieving over his wife, getting ''his'' throat slit by Toby, who had just undergone a seriously horrific BreakTheCutie ordeal which consisted of him learning exactly what Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett had been up to down in that bake room and then being stalked by the two in the sewers in the attempt to kill him. And then it takes the whole thing one step further by having Toby (who usually had [[LockedIntoStrangeness genuinely white hair at this point]]) then immediately going back to working the giant meat grinder humming an IronicNurseryTune, showing that he has been driven ''completely insane'' by said ordeal.

* ''Theatre/BatBoyTheMusical'': Bat Boy/Edgar has a psychological breakdown and flies into a murderous/suicidal rage after it is revealed to him that Meredith is his mother and Shelley is [[IncestIsRelative his twin sister]], Mrs. Taylor burns her last surviving child alive because she mistook him for the Bat Boy, and Dr. Parker kills Edgar, Meredith, and himself, leaving Shelley and the few surviving townspeople to tell the story to the man who was coming to take Edgar away to a mental institute.

* ''Theatre/{{Parade}}'': Despite making up with his wife and being moved to a different prison, Leo Frank is lynched. Worse still, his death marks a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. Meanwhile, Jim Conley, the real murderer, is never brought to justice, and Tom Watson and Hugh Dorsey get exactly what they want- Tom continues to write for his newspaper and even helps the Klan, and Dorsey becomes Governor of Georgia.

* ''Theatre/{{Parade}}'': Despite making up with his wife and being moved to a different prison, Leo Frank is lynched. Worse still, his death marks a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.

* One playwright who seemed to specialize in this Trope was Eugene O'Neil; angst and evil deeds, leading to {{Heel Realization}}s and self-inflicted penance for the guilty part seemed to be the theme of most of his plays. Well known works on that subject included ''Theatre/MourningBecomesElektra'', ''Theatre/DesireUnderTheElms'', and ''Theatre/StrangeInterlude''. The only play he wrote that had a somewhat pleasant ending was ''Theatre/AhWildreness'', a wistful re-imagining of his youth as he wished it had been.

'''WARNING:''' Nearly every example is a spoiler. Read at your own risk!

* ''Theatre/LittleShopOfHorrors''. Audrey II eats Audrey and Seymour, and as Crystal, Ronette and Chiffon explain "Subsequent to the events you have just witnessed/Similar events in cities across America/Events which bore a striking resemblance/To the ones you have just seen began occurring/Subsequent to the events you have just witnessed/Unsuspecting jerks from Maine to California/Made the acquaintance of a new breed of flytrap/And got sweet-talked into feeding it blood... [[PlantAliens Thus the plants worked their terrible will]], [[DealwiththeDevil finding jerks who would feed them their fill]], [[OneWingedAngel and the plants proceeded to grow and grow]], [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou and began what they came here to do, which was essentially to eat Cleveland, and Des Moines, and Peoria, and New York, AND THIS THEATRE!]]" -- whereupon the plant begins to eat THE AUDIENCE! (The movie was supposed to have much the same ending, but test audiences found it too much of a downer and the resultant FocusGroupEnding is a happier TheEndOrIsIt one.)

* The original ''Vanities'' ended at the third act with the three characters' friendship apparently being irreparably broken in a drunken catfight between Joanne and Mary after an ill-fated reunion. The musical [[RevisedEnding fixed this]] with a DistantFinale where the characters reunite and make up.

* ''Theatre/OedipusRex'' and its sequels.
** When Oedipus is born it is prophesied that he will kill his father and marry his mother. So, Oedipus is abandoned in the wilderness to die, [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim but of course]] [[GenreBlind this doesn't work]] and he is eventually adopted by the rulers of another state whom he believes to be his birth parents. In possibly the earliest documentation of road rage, Oedipus unknowingly kills his biological father. He solves the riddle of the Sphinx and unknowingly marries his biological mother and has children with her, which causes a plague to descend on his kingdom because nature/the gods/whatever are so not cool with this. His wife/mother commits suicide when she realizes what has happened. Once Oedipus realizes what has happened shortly afterward he finds the dead body of his wife/mother and [[EyeScream uses the broaches in her clothing to gouge his eyes out.]] And then the sequels just get worse and worse for Oedipus and his children.
** The sequels also make everything worse for the whole city of Thebes, as well as Argos, Colonus, and for that matter most of Greece. Oedipus's two sons go to war over the city, leading one to betray the city and to lead an army of 7 champions (the Seven Against Thebes) to Thebes, where both brothers and the champions of both cities are slaughtered. Oedipus dies at Colonus after basically refusing to back either son, Antigone commits suicide to protest Creon's treatment of her brother, and Creon's son--who was engaged to marry Antigone--kills himself. Creon's wife blames him and ALSO kills herself, leaving Creon as a broken king of a broken city as another army of champions marches on Thebes.
* ''Theatre/{{Medea}}'' in particular in that no one learns anything from the whole business.

* ''Bousille et les justes''. You know what happens? The main character, the only good character in the story, is forced to testify for a guy, knowing that it's wrong. AND, he's incredibly morally opposed to lying. In the end, he feels so guilty about his actions that he hangs himself in his garage. Ouch.
* ''Theatre/WestSideStory'', but seeing as it's based off ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'', it's not hard to see ''that'' coming. Maria survives the show, unlike Juliet, but Juliet didn't have to live with the crippling grief of losing her love for long.
* ''Theatre/SpringAwakening'': Wendla dies from an abortion her mother forces her to have after indirectly getting her knocked up by sheltering her from sexual education at the beginning of the play. Moritz kills himself rather than face the shame of confronting his parents after flunking out of high school. Authority is deadly and free will has its price and needs control or else.
** Let's not forget the fact that Melchior found out that Wendla was dead when he went to meet her in the cemetery and saw her name on a tombstone.
* ''Theatre/{{Oliver}}'', considering the only one who has a happy ending is Oliver himself. And that's ''after'' watching Nancy killed by Bill Sykes, who is then shot (or in the film version, as in the original book, accidentally hangs himself) trying to escape with Oliver. Must've been pretty traumatic to be a part of...
* ''Theatre/{{Hair}}''. "Let The Sunshine In." We could use it now that Claude has died in Vietnam.
* ''Theatre/LittleShopOfHorrors''. Audrey II eats Audrey and Seymour, and as Crystal, Ronette and Chiffon explain "Subsequent to the events you have just witnessed/Similar events in cities across America/Events which bore a striking resemblance/To the ones you have just seen began occurring/Subsequent to the events you have just witnessed/Unsuspecting jerks from Maine to California/Made the acquaintance of a new breed of flytrap/And got sweet-talked into feeding it blood... [[PlantAliens Thus the plants worked their terrible will]], [[DealwiththeDevil finding jerks who would feed them their fill]], [[OneWingedAngel and the plants proceeded to grow and grow]], [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou and began what they came here to do, which was essentially to eat Cleveland, and Des Moines, and Peoria, and New York, AND THIS THEATRE!]]" -- whereupon the plant begins to eat THE AUDIENCE! (The movie was supposed to have much the same ending, but test audiences found it too much of a downer and the resultant FocusGroupEnding is a happier TheEndOrIsIt one.)

* ''Theatre/{{Urinetown}}'' ends with the uplifting victory of the rebel poor [[NiceJobBreakingItHero who quickly die of dehydration.]]
* ''Theatre/MissSaigon''. Unable to convince the father of her child and his new wife to take her son back to America with them, the titular character shoots herself in order to force their hand. (As a half-Vietnamese child, he would have been an outcast in Asia.) The father is left with the dead woman in his arms, [[BigNo lets out a gut-wrenching cry of anguish]]... Curtain.

* ''Theatre/{{A Streetcar Named Desire}}''. Sure, everyone knows Blanche's famous last line "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers." In the play, these are her final words as she is led to an insane asylum. After being raped by her sister's husband. And her sister blames her. And the sister and husband stay together. The kindness of strangers indeed...
** Not even Blanche can be called a sympathetic character in this one. She drove her family's estate into foreclosure, made off with several expensive clothes like a bankrupt company's CEO and his golden parachute, stayed in a bordello after that, then comes to New Orleans to mooch off her sister, immediately accusing Stella of abandoning the family and calling Stanley racial epithets ''before'' she even meets him. While Stanley's ultimate actions can't be justified, they do come from the very real belief that Blanche will drive his family and his best friend into the same pit of ruin. Tennessee Williams seemed to have a thing for plays with Downer Endings and few sympathetic characters. See below...
** The film version ended on a slightly more hopeful note, at least regarding Stella's relationship with Stanley. While in the play, Stella is broken over the whole affair and is sobbing at the end while Stanley unbuttons her blouse and prepares to have his way with her, the movie ends with Stella finally telling Stanley off, taking her baby and leaving the apartment, saying that she'll never go back to him again. Even though the audience knows she probably will go back, it still makes for a nice "You go, girl!" moment.

* ''Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'', though not exactly a happy plot to begin with, has its funny and entertaining moments in its morbidity. However, the ending pretty much takes the cake in what's also a bit of a KillEmAll as Sweeney Todd, after murdering the Beadle and a crazy old woman before finally taking vengeance upon Judge Turpin, threatens and nearly kills his disguised daughter Johanna, then tries to find Toby (to eliminate him as well), realizes that the crazy woman he just killed was actually his wife, then kills Mrs. Lovett (by tossing her into her oven and burning her alive, no less) for not telling him that his wife was alive. The show ends with Sweeney, blindly grieving over his wife, getting ''his'' throat slit by Toby, who had just undergone a seriously horrific BreakTheCutie ordeal which consisted of him learning exactly what Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett had been up to down in that bake room and then being stalked by the two in the sewers in the attempt to kill him. And then it takes the whole thing one step further by having Toby (who usually had [[LockedIntoStrangeness genuinely white hair at this point]]) then immediately going back to working the giant meat grinder humming an IronicNurseryTune, showing that he has been driven ''completely insane'' by said ordeal.
** [[WordOfGod Stephen Sondheim]] has gone on record confirming that Anthony and Johanna are the only two to receive a "happy" ending. As happy as it could be, anyway.

* The musical ''{{Theatre/Assassins}}'' ends with the various Presidential assassins and would-be assassins winning the battle for Lee Harvey Oswald's soul, resulting (in the strange universe of the play) in the death of John F. Kennedy. Guess who wrote the music and lyrics.
* ''The Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny'' ends with the protagonist executed and Mahagonny in the midst of collapse. The protagonist's body is carried across the stage alongside various political banners calling for such futile things as the restoration of the golden age, while the ensemble sings, "Can't do anything to help a dead man."
* ''Theatre/DeathOfASalesman''. Hate to break it to you, but [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the salesman dies]].
** More to the point: he kills himself thinking the best thing he can do for his family is get them his life insurance. His suicide invalidates the policy.
* ''Theatre/BatBoyTheMusical'': Bat Boy/Edgar has a psychological breakdown and flies into a murderous/suicidal rage after it is revealed to him that Meredith is his mother and Shelley is [[IncestIsRelative his twin sister]], Mrs. Taylor burns her last surviving child alive because she mistook him for the Bat Boy, and Dr. Parker kills Edgar, Meredith, and himself, leaving Shelley and the few surviving townspeople to tell the story to the man who was coming to take Edgar away to a mental institute.
* The original ending of ''The Bad Seed'' sadly ended with the the mother committing suicide and the evil daughter surviving.
* The original ''Vanities'' ended at the third act with the three characters' friendship apparently being irreparably broken in a drunken catfight between Joanne and Mary after an ill-fated reunion. The musical [[RevisedEnding fixed this]] with a DistantFinale where the characters reunite and make up.

* ''[[Creator/MartinMcDonagh The Cripple of Inishmaan]]'' is a deeply black BlackComedy and a {{Deconstruction}} of BuryYourDisabled. There's more specific details on that page, but after the audience has seen Cripple Billy survive so much, the final moments of his [[YourDaysAreNumbered realization that he really is going to die soon]] are devastating.
* ''Theatre/TheLastFiveYears'', an off-Broadway musical by Jason Robert Brown, has a severe downer ending. Jamie has cheated on his wife, Cathy and left her. What makes this even worse is that we knew this was going to happen from the beginning. Cathy's story starts at the end of their relationship, while Jamie's starts at the beginning. The last song contrasts Jamie's remorse over their failed marriage with Cathy's excitement at having gone on their first date. Ouch...
* ''Theatre/TheYeomenOfTheGuard'': Yes, a jolly Gilbert and Sullivan opera. In which the jester Jack Point, the main character, a classic tenor G and S hero collapses (it is left to the audience to decide if he is dead, the libretto says 'falls insensible', but Gilbert originally planned to kill him) with a broken heart when he finally realises the Ingenue is lost to him forever. All the harsher for the audience as throughout the last act, EVERYTHING works like any other operetta, and you expect all of the romantic loose ends to be tied up cleanly as per usual. In this case they are, with the hero the sole exception...
** The songs throughout the opera all suggest a happy ending through adversity, e.g. http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/yeomen/web_opera/yeomen_07.html

* One playwright who seemed to specialize in this Trope was Eugene O'Neil; angst and evil deeds, leading to {{Heel Realization}}s and self-inflicted penance for the guilty part seemed to be the theme of most of his plays. Well known works on that subject included ''Theatre/MourningBecomesElektra'', ''Theatre/DesireUnderTheElms'', and ''Theatre/StrangeInterlude''. The only play he wrote that had a somewhat pleasant ending was ''Theatre/AhWildreness'', a wistful re-imagining of his youth as he wished it had been.
* ''Theatre/AnTriail'' ("The Trial") is an Irish play from the 1960s with a downer plot. The play intercuts between a court where a woman called Máire is on trial and flashbacks of the tragic circumstances that lead her there - she's seduced, impregnated and abandoned by a married man, shunned by her family, left unemployable and socially ostracised as an unmarried mother. In the end, it is revealed that the trial is a posthumous trial for a murder-suicide - spurned one final time by the father of her child, Máire kills herself and her baby with natural gas from an oven. To complete the downer ending, the various characters who treated her badly during the play all testify at the trial, and refuse to acknowledge that they did anything wrong or bear any responsibility for her death.

* Friedrich Dürrenmatt gave us this quote: ''"A story is not finished, until it has taken the worst turn"''.
* ''Theatre/TheMisanthrope'': Célimène is revealed to have been playing all her suitors, Alceste rejects her offer of marriage and is determined to become a hermit. The BetaCouple expresses their intent to talk him down, but then the play [[NoEnding just ends]].
* ''Theatre/TheSnowMaiden'' ends with the heroine melting (like, literally, dissolving into water) on the morning of her wedding, her disconsolate bridegroom drowning himself, and everyone else (including the girl's foster parents, her friends, and another young man who had previously loved her) quickly shrugging it off and singing a hymn to the sun and summer.
* ''Theatre/{{Finale}}'' ends with the world ending, everyone dying, and life as we know it ceasing to exist. Yep.
* ''Theatre/{{Ebenezer}}'' is a prequel to ''Literature/AChristmasCarol'' and ends with Jacob Marley dead and doomed, and Scrooge rejecting everyone and everything with a "Bah, humbug."
* ''Theatre/{{Elisabeth}}'': Rudolf has shot and killed himself. Franz Joseph and Sisi's fairytale marriage is irreparably broken. Many of Sisi's family members are dead or have gone mad. Sisi herself is assassinated suddenly and tragically. Some productions choose to play Sisi's reunion with Death as a true love's reunion (the majority of Takarazuka productions) to offset this a little, others have Death consuming her soul as nothing but a trophy (Hungary and some German Deaths), or regretting it with a final WhamShot of his MyGodWhatHaveIDone expression (Toho).
* ''Theatre/{{Parade}}'': Despite making up with his wife and being moved to a different prison, Leo Frank is lynched. Worse still, his death marks a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.