Bookends / Theatre

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• This is a staple of Theater of the Absurd, especially Eugene Ionesco.
• The musical version of Aida begins in a modern-day Egyptian museum with various people milling about (including the two leads.) The bulk of the story then takes place in Ancient Egypt. Near the end of the show, Aida and Radames are imprisoned in a tomb together and they promise to find each other again. The scene then changes back to the museum and their reincarnations meet.
• Amaluna begins and ends with a magic ceremony, set to the song "Come Together". The first celebrates Miranda's transition to womanhood, while the last consummates the marriage of Miranda and Romeo.
• Anastasia begins and ends with Anastasia and the Dowager Empress parting ways and uncertain when they will see each other again.
• Similarly, Avenue Q begins with Princeton singing "What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?" as he looks for a place to live, finding an apartment on Avenue Q. At the end, another recent college grad enters, singing the same song and looking for a place to live, bringing him to Avenue Q. This makes Princeton realize his purpose.
• Aria da Capo, a one-act play by poet Edna St. Vincent Millay is interesting in having only three scenes, the first and last of which are nearly identical. In music "Da Capo (al Fine)" means "return to the start and play again until the "Fine" (an indicator in the music where it should end).
• A Very Potter Musical opens with the song "Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts" and A Very Potter Sequel ends with a reprise of the same song. The sequel is actually a prequel, so when they're singing "Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts," it's like putting the two ends right in the middle.
• Cabaret has a reprise of "Willkommen" in its closing scene, with the M.C. doing the same spiel. The difference is more Nazis.
• Orff's Carmina Burana begins and ends with "O Fortuna."
• ACT's seasonal play of A Christmas Carol begins and ends with the company singing "God Rest You Merry Gentlemen".
• Leos Janacek's opera The Cunning Little Vixen opens with a frog leaping into the lap of a dozing forester, and ends with the forester returning to the same spot, with a frog — the grandson of the original frog — leaping into his lap.
• Dear Evan Hansen:
  • The first and last lines begin with the play's name itself, as Evan writes a letter to himself in the hopes of making himself better. In his first letter, he writes that it will be an amazing day because he'll be himself, before descending into a tangent regarding his social anxiety. At the end, he reassures himself that today day will be good as he has finally learned to accept who he is.
  • Evan's first and last discussion with Connor, whether it's the real person or an imaginary version, contains the tree accident that caused Evan break his arm. Imaginary!Connor forces Evan to admit that he tried to kill himself by letting go rather than accidentally falling off.
• The overture to Mozart's Don Giovanni begins with a short, somber song fragment that is actually rather boring. The end repeats this song, but with the Don, Leoporello, and the Commander all singing, in such a way that sounds much more awesome.
• The Drowsy Chaperone has the show's narrator, the Man in the Chair giving a monologue about theater at both the beginning and end of the show. The opening monologue is the Man in the Chair explaining why he hates theater (but secretly loves it), while the closing monologue is a very similar speech about why he loves theater so much.
  • Also, the shows begin and end with darkness. In the beginning, the entire stage is in darkness, as the Man in the Chair hasn't yet turned on the light and addresses the audience in total darkness. Near the end, the Man in the Chair's power goes out just before the final note of the finale, plunging the entire theater into darkness.
• In Duke Bluebeard's Castle, the opera begins with Bluebeard alone in the darkness, and ends on the same note as Judith joins his other wives.
• Fiddler on the Roof: In the final scene, as Tevye and the other villagers set out from Anatevka, never to return, the orchestra plays motifs from "Tradition" in quiet march time as was done under Tevye's Opening Monologue. Finally the Fiddler takes up the same melody he was heard playing at the very beginning, but stops when Tevye motions for him to depart as well. This concludes the show.
• Footloose both begins and ends with the song Footloose, albeit with modified lyrics in the reprise. In the beginning, it's sung by a group of students (in the original version, it's Ren and his friends, while in the revival, it's Rusty, Wendy Jo, and Urleen) complaining about how they can't cut loose and have fun. The reprise is mostly the same, but instead celebrating how they can finally cut loose and have fun, having convinced Reverend Moore to repeal the ban on dancing and let them hold a dance.
• God (A Play) by Woody Allen ends with a closed loop — the dialog is the same as the beginning, it is suggested that the play could go on forever (like The Song that Doesn't End).
• Grey Gardens: The Musical concludes with the same scene as the In Medias Res prologue, where Big and Little Edie are listening to the record of "The Girl who Has Everything".
• The final scene of If/Then closely mirrors the opening scene, including a reprise of the opening number; it's particularly noticeable when Beth meets Josh for the first time; it's nearly an exact replay of Liz and Josh's first meeting.
• The first and last words in Into the Woods are "I wish", sung on the exact same notes. The play opens with the Narrator saying, "Once upon a time, in a far-off land..." And the last words spoken (not sung) is the Baker saying those same words to his own son.
• La Bohème: Act I opens with Marcello and Rodolfo chatting together in their garret, then having fun with Colline and Schaunard when they arrive, and ends with Rodolfo and Mimí meeting and falling in love. Act IV opens with Marcello and Rodolfo chatting together in their garret, then having fun with Colline and Schaunard when they arrive, and ends with Mimí dying and Rodolfo grieving over her body.
• At the end of A Little Night Music, with the Love Dodecahedron finally sorted out, all the couples dance to the same waltz featured in the Opening Ballet. When the music dies away, the final chord is played on the piano by the Greek Chorus's Mr. Lindquist, who also played the very first note of the overture.
• The Man Who Came to Dinner begins and ends with Sheridan Whiteside yelling just off-stage.
• The 1981 Broadway production of Merrily We Roll Along was framed by high school graduation scenes (omitted from future productions of the musical). In the 1980 opening, "The Hills of Tomorrow" is heard in part, then its composer, Franklin Shepard, steps forward to make a speech on how compromising youthful ideals is the only way to get ahead, which is gradually obscured as the title song picks up. In the 1955 closing scene (similar to the 1916 scene of the original play), a younger Frank makes an idealistic speech quoting Polonius's words from Hamlet ("This above all: to thine own self be true"), his composition "The Hills of Tomorrow" is heard in full, and the two Franks finally reconcile as the vamp from the title song plays.
• The first and last scenes of The Moon is Blue have Don and Patty meeting on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, introducing themselves in the first scene, proposing marriage in the last.
• No Strings begins with "The Sweetest Sounds" to show that the Official Couple has not met up yet, and ends with the same song after they've agreed to break up and forget that they ever met.
• Oklahoma! begins and ends with "Oh, what a Beautiful Morning."
• In Parade, the finale reprises "The Old Red Hills of Home". In the intro, a young man sings about going off to fight in the American Civil War, and in the finale, a young man sings about going off to fight in the "Great War", showing nothing has changed for the next generation.
• Pinocchio: The Musical begins and ends with musical numbers where Pinocchio pleads the moon to change his current status and the Blue fairy appears to grant his wish: in the opening he's a dead tree who wants to live again, at the end he's a puppet who wants to Become a Real Boy.
• The play "Porches" begins and ends with the song "On My Porch". Set in the working class railroad city of Altoona, Pennsylvania during its heyday, it chronicles the lives of people in four different houses. The happy sounding "On My Porch" is a bit jarring at the end and a bit bittersweet after the death of one main character, a Slap-Slap-Kiss romance forms, and a boy you keep seeing finds his long lost mother. The message changes from "it's a nice day to watch it from my porch" to "our lives may change but we still have our sense of community", even though the lyrics remain exactly the same and the only difference with the song at the end is that the main character who dies is not participating in the song.
• RENT begins and ends with Mark and Roger in their apartment, the former narrating as the latter tunes his guitar, right before Collins comes home after some time away. The Film of the Play shows this by having him call from a payphone outside asking for the key. Mark even lampshades this by yelling, "Don't get your ass kicked this time!" as he tosses it from the balcony (Collins was mugged in the beginning). An alternate ending included on the movie's DVD shows that it was originally going to have Bookends: the movie begins with the lead characters singing "Seasons of Love" on a bare stage, and the alternate ending depicts them singing "Finale B" on the same stage. However, even though that opening still appears in the final film, the ending was replaced because the director felt that seeing Angel return would ruin the emotional impact of his death about 15 minutes earlier.
• Shucked begins and ends with Beau and Maizy's wedding. Both times, Peanut asks for a Bible, and almost everyone on stage pulls out out of a pocket to offer to him.
• The Skin of Our Teeth ends with Sabina starting her first scene of the play over again. She stops midway through to tell the audience the end hasn't been written yet. The play ends.
• The Solid Gold Cadillac begins with a meeting of the board of directors of the General Products Corporation, and ends with another General Products board meeting, except that McKeever and Mrs. Partridge have replaced the Corrupt Corporate Executives. A little old lady tries to ask a question, but Mrs. Partridge says, "Oh, no! That's how I got my start!" and bangs the gavel to conclude the meeting and the play.
• "Dites Moi" points out what has changed since it was first sung in South Pacific.
• Sunday in the Park with George begins with an artist musing about the blank piece of paper on which he is about to start sketching: "White. A blank page, or canvas." A hundred years later, his great-grandson sets out to create a new piece of art, and ends the musical with the exact same words.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has a Bookends trope, both beginning and ending with the "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd".
• The Tender Land begins and ends with Beth dancing by herself.
• 13 has Evan start and begin with pretty much the same line, but much more optimistic at the end.
• Thoroughly Modern Millie begins with Millie as a hopeful modern girl hoping to make it big in New York. During the finale, another girl, suitcase in hand, walks on stage, hoping to make it big in New York.
• The musical revival of Vanities introduced a fourth act, set at least 10 years after the previous (which makes it 20+ years after the first act), with the women reuniting in the town they grew up in. "Looking Good", one of the closing songs, reprises the title of "Hey There Beautiful", the opening number of the Theatre Works version. The characters also remove their makeup at the beginning of the final act/scene, mirroring the opening scene. The off-Broadway version of "Looking Good" also adds a reprise of the scat-singing intro of "Setting Your Sights".
• A Very Potter Musical:
  • It begins with the musical number "Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts". Fast forward to the end of the sequel, when Harry finishes a moving speech and the whole cast breaks into song. Guess what they sing?
  • A Very Potter Senior Year uses a slower, more sentimental version of the song for its final scene.
• The Wedding Singer begins and ends with the song "It's You're Wedding Day" being sung at a wedding. At the beginning, it's sung by Robbie at an unnamed couple's wedding. At the end, it's the cast (mostly Sammy, George, and Robbie's grandma) singing it at Robbie and Julia's wedding.
• Wicked begins and ends with mostly the same scene ("Good news! She's dead!"), but the tone is very different.
• Both the Lachiusa and Lippa adaptations of The Wild Party begin and end with the number "Queenie Was A Blonde".

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