West End musical Gone with the Wind will close later this month after only 79 performances, it has been announced.

The production, starring Pop Idol contestant Darius Danesh as Rhett Butler, opened in April and was widely panned by critics for being too long.

Producer Aldo Scrofani said despite the bad reviews the show had received praise from "audience members".

The show, which lasts for three hours and 40 minutes, will complete its run at the New London Theatre on 14 June.

'Critical response'

All patrons with tickets for later show should contact the original point of sale for full refunds.

Jill Paice plays the female lead Scarlett O'Hara in the muscial.

US writer Margaret Martin adapted it for the stage from Margaret Mitchell's epic novel about the American Civil War.

From the beginning of our journey we have all worked hard to achieve the realisation of putting Margaret Mitchell's classic novel on stage Aldo Scrofani, producer

Scrofani said: "From the beginning of our journey we have all worked hard to achieve the realisation of putting Margaret Mitchell's classic novel on stage.

"Despite the critical response the company have enjoyed much praise from audience members during our run and for that we are grateful.

"Nevertheless we have made the difficult decision to close the production."

He added that plans for a New York production of the show were on hold, "but in the meantime we are pursuing various options that have been presented to us from interested parties worldwide".

The show was three years in the making, cost £4.75million and had award-winning director Sir Trevor Nunn at the helm. But, frankly, the audiences didn’t give a damn.

Closing notices have been posted at the New London Theatre and Darius Danesh’s final performance as Rhett Butler opposite Jill Paice’s Scarlett O’Hara is on June 14.

Gone with the wind

Frankly they don't like us: Darius Danesh and Jiill Paice will perform their leading roles for the last time later this month

Bookings were being taken for the next four months up to September and ticket-holders have been told to contact ticket-sellers for a full refund.

The production – billed as a ‘play with music’ – was roundly condemned by critics when it opened in April.

One major criticism was its length, which was initially four hours and was cut several times during the run until audiences were asked to sit through three hours and 15 minutes, including an interval.

The producers had high hopes of taking the musical to Broadway, although that now seems unlikely.

Producer Aldo Scrofani said: ‘Despite the critical response, the company has enjoyed much praise from audience members and for that we are grateful. Nevertheless we have made the difficult decision to close the West End run.

‘Plans for a New York production are on hold and in the meantime we are pursuing various options from interested parties worldwide.’

Sir Trevor Nunn, who was director of the Royal Shakespeare Company for 18 years, spent more than three years working on the show.

He agreed to take it on after novice writer and composer Margaret Martin, a doctor of public health from California, sent him a CD of her songs and a script.

Her adaptation of the 1,000-page Margaret Mitchell novel drew heavily from the classic 1939 film starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, which told the story of Scarlett O’Hara’s survival of the Confederacy defeat in the American Civil War.

But theatre critics were unimpressed. The Mail on Sunday’s Georgina Brown said: ‘It wholly fails to blow one away. It’s less Gone With The Wind than Marooned On A Millpond. Not bad, just tedious.’

London Evening Standard critic ‘nasty’ Nicholas de Jongh wrote: ‘Connoisseurs of big, bad musicals must rush to catch Gone With The Wind in case it’s quickly blown away on gales of ridicule.’

Other reviews said it felt ‘like a hectic, strip-cartoon account of a dated pop classic’ and looked ‘spendthrift and threadbare’.

But producers defended the show, pointing out that some audiences had given it a standing ovation.

Mr Scrofani believed that anyone who did walk out might have had a train to catch. ‘I don’t think they wanted to leave,’ he said.

The closure means financial disaster for the show’s backers, as most musicals require about a year to break even.

Gone With The Wind’s failure is one of the biggest flops in the West End in recent years. The £12.5million production of Lord Of The Rings is set to close in July after a 14-month run, although producers said they were on course to make a profit from runs on Broadway and in Germany.

Ex-Radio One DJ Mike Read’s Oscar Wilde musical, Wilde, closed in 2004 after just one performance. And Behind The Iron Mask announced its closure just two days after its opening night.

But both productions were less lavish than Gone With The Wind.

Darius Danesh (Rhett Butler) and Jill Paice (Scarlett O'Hara) in Gone With the Wind, New London Theatre

A £4m stage adaptation of the classic novel Gone with the Wind is to go down as one of the biggest flops in West End history after closing more than three months early.

The blockbuster 'play with music' had been due to run until at least 27 September, but producers have decided to cut their losses after poor box-office returns. The final curtain will come down on 14 June, with bookings after that date to be refunded. The news is believed to have been broken to a distraught cast at the New London Theatre after Friday night's performance.

Gone with the Wind - starring former Pop Idol contestant Darius Danesh as Rhett Butler and Jill Paice as Scarlett O'Hara - opened with great fanfare but received one of the worst critical maulings in years. It was soon being compared with all-time turkeys such as Carrie, Moby Dick and DJ Mike Read's Oscar Wilde. Nicholas de Jongh, critic of the Evening Standard, wrote prophetically: 'Connoisseurs of big, bad musicals must rush to catch Gone With the Wind in case it's quickly blown away on gales of ridicule.'

The abrupt cancellation is a blow to Sir Trevor Nunn, the director, whose past hits include Cats, which ran for 21 years at the same Covent Garden theatre, and Les Misérables, which after 23 years is the longest-running musical in West End history. Gone with the Wind will have lasted just 79 performances.

Aldo Scrofani, its producer, said in a statement: 'From the beginning of our journey we have all worked hard to achieve the realisation of putting Margaret Mitchell's classic novel, Gone with the Wind, on stage at the New London Theatre. Despite the critical response, the company have enjoyed much praise from audience members during our run and for that we are grateful. Nevertheless we have made the difficult decision to close the production. Plans for a New York production are currently on hold, but in the meantime we are pursuing various options from interested parties worldwide.'

Written by a novice songwriter from Los Angeles, Gone with the Wind struggled from its first preview and was criticised for a running time of four hours 20 minutes. It had been reduced to three hours 40 minutes by the time it was reviewed by critics. Subsequent cuts have brought it closer to three hours.

'I wouldn't want to go through it again', said theatre critic Mark Shenton, who has seen it twice . 'It wasn't an embarrassment or a fiasco, it was just very boring and dull'.

It blew into the West End only weeks ago, in April. Now the musical version of Gone with the Wind, brought to the stage by one of Britain’s preeminent theatre directors, has collapsed amid poor ticket sales and worse reviews.

Setting to music one of the most popular films of all time and hiring Sir Trevor Nunn, former head of the National Theatre, to direct it was considered a sure-fire recipe for success by the £5m show’s backers. They included the Hollywood production company Columbia and Patty Hearst, the actress and heiress.

Rescue efforts, including paring its original four hours to something more tolerable, have finally been abandoned.

Amid worries about a lack of advance bookings, the producers have decided to close on June 14.

The production at the New London Theatre in Covent Garden, particularly its songs, attracted a slew of dire reviews from critics who could not resist punning on the lines of the 1939 film, which starred Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.

“Frankly, I fear, you won’t give a damn,” The Sunday Times declared. Another paper concluded: “Frankly, my dear, they are all ham.”

A third judged that “Rhett Butler kissed Scarlett O’Hara like a frenzied dental hygienist”.

Despite basing the idea on such a famous film – itself derived from a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell about the south in the American civil war – the producers turned to a newcomer for the score and lyrics.

They chose the American writer Margaret Martin, whose background is as a public health doctor in California.

The lead actors, Jill Paice as Scarlett and Darius Danesh as Rhett, were better received than the rest of the production. Paice, however, withdrew from the show because of sickness after just two performances but has since come back.

The greatest obstacle has been the length. In previews Gone with the Wind ran for four hours and 20 minutes.

Even the first night was three hours and 40 minutes long. By the middle of last month it had been cut to a more manageable three hours and 10 minutes, including the interval. This meant excising some songs and narrative, and taking out some of what Aldo Scrofani, the producer, called “political context”. It was too little, too late.

The musical had been due to run until at least September 27, but producers have decided to cut their losses after poor ticket sales, several newspapers reported.

The final performance will be on June 14, with bookings already made for performances after that date to be refunded.

Featuring a former reality TV contestant, Darius Danesh, as Rhett Butler and Jill Paice as Scarlett O'Hara, the four-million-pound (five-million-euro, eight-million-dollar) show opened on April 22 at the New London Theatre amid great fanfare.

But it never recovered from a critical mauling and even a cut in its running time from over four hours to around three failed to save it.

Nicholas de Jongh, critic of London newspaper the Evening Standard, wrote in April: "Connoisseurs of big, bad musicals must rush to catch Gone With the Wind in case it's quickly blown away on gales of ridicule."

The show's producer, Aldo Scrofani, said in a statement quoted by the Observer newspaper: "Despite the critical response, the company have enjoyed much praise from audience members during our run and for that we are grateful. Nevertheless we have made the difficult decision to close the production."

Plans for a New York production are on hold.