For 45 years, the team at “Beach Blanket Babylon” has donned enormous hats and skewered politics and pop culture in a campy musical revue in a snug North Beach theater. The beloved show has become so ingrained in San Francisco culture that many rank it alongside the Golden Gate Bridge and cable cars.

Though seemingly tireless, the decades-long production will finally come to an end this year, taking its last two curtain calls on New Year’s Eve.

Producer Jo Schuman Silver announced the news to her staff of 85 before curtain on Wednesday, April 17. The show’s ending not for financial reasons, but because Schuman Silver felt that it was time and didn’t feel comfortable handing it off to a successor. She’s run “Beach Blanket” since the 1995 death of Steve Silver, the show’s creator and her husband.

“There was no reason — I just started thinking, ‘Wow, how much longer do we go?’ ” she said. She’s fond of saying that Steve Silver thought the show would last just six weeks. The show’s first review in The Chronicle, from 1974, notes that it was “scheduled for two more weekends.” Now it’s the longest-running musical revue on the planet.

As of this month, “Beach Blanket” has reached 6.5 million patrons, operating with army-grade precision from the moment people walk in the doors and a phalanx of ushers whisks them to their seats, all with the grace of a ballet danseur who can make the clumsiest partner look professional by virtue of his capable lifts and carries. The production itself unfolds with similar pacing and grace, the sliding upstage doors parting again and again to reveal still another costume, wig and hat, each more outrageous than the last, each accompanied by a bring-it-on-home verse and chorus of a pop song that in any other show would be the finale. At “Beach Blanket,” every number could be the finale.

It’s toured to Las Vegas and London; it’s opened the Academy Awards; and it’s counted Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, David Bowie, Liza Minnelli and Robin Williams among its audience members. Its caricatures target the left and right — from Michelle Obama to Sarah Huckabee Sanders — and pop-culture figures from Barbra Streisand to Ariana Grande. Lines change nightly, responding to current events, but as filtered through a dancing Mr. Peanut or a towering Tina Turner wig that looks like Cousin Itt. Schuman Silver still brings in fresh headlines and political cartoons each day as inspiration. (Mad magazine is one favorite source.)

A ‘Beach Blanket Babylon’ Timeline: From street art to British Royalty

Jonathan Moscone says the show “took the wild, gay, drag, fabulous energy of San Francisco and turned that into a celebration of the city writ large.” He said it made visitors think, “not only do I get San Francisco; I get it, and I love it,” adding that when he was a child, the show was his “favorite birthday place.” And Moscone, Chief of Engagement at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, former California Shakespeare Theater artistic director and multiple-time panelist for Beach Blanket’s scholarship program, had a huge crush on Nancy Bleiweiss as Snow White. “She was my first gay icon” — before he even knew what a gay icon was.

Prior to the announcement, in an interview at the Pacific Heights home of her friends Ann and Gordon Getty, Schuman Silver said she’s been considering the move for about three years.

A Florida vacation with her family prompted first thoughts about an exit. “One of my cousins said, ‘How much longer are you going to have that show?’ I said, ‘Why, you want me to leave it to you?’ And they all said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I can’t. It has to be run like it was left to me, and you didn’t know Steve, unfortunately, and it has to be run like Steve envisioned it.’

“I think we’ve done that,” Schuman Silver continued. “I think it’s evolved all through the years like Steve would have done. We’ve always had the strictest guidelines for making it the best show we possibly can, having the best talent, the best people working there. That’s why I could never leave it to anybody.”

Charlotte Shultz, San Francisco’s chief of protocol and one of Steve Silver’s best friends, called the news “heartbreaking.” Quoting her husband, former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, she said, “When you think of San Francisco, it’s the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars and ‘Beach Blanket Babylon.’ ” Steve Silver used her as a model for the female outline on playbills and posters for the show; Shultz and her husband even performed in “Beach Blanket,” for Prince Charles — in a show that Charlotte Shultz co-wrote. “George was Superman, and I was Wonder Woman. I flew,” she recalled. “When it goes — something you love — you’re never ready, and I’m not ready.”

“Most of us would not have thought it would have lasted longer than six months,” says former San Francisco mayor and Chronicle columnist Willie Brown, also a friend of Schuman Silver. “But it had literally its own flavor. It became a part of San Francisco on the day it opened, and it has remained a part of San Francisco to this minute.” He attributes its success to its responsiveness to current events, as well as its ability to relate to locals and visitors alike. “It was always dignified. It was funny as all hell. But it wasn’t like ‘Saturday Night Live.’ It was more like Johnny Carson’s monologue — or, now, Stephen Colbert’s monologue.”

For Bay Area actors, “Beach Blanket” has represented one of the coveted few local opportunities not just for steady employment but for benefits almost unheard of in theater, such as paid vacation, sick time, health care and retirement. Actors Doug Magpiong, Tammy Nelson and Curt Branom have all been with the show for 25 years; actor Renée Lubin has been there 33. Band member Steve Salgo tallies 34 years, and stage manager John Camajani just retired after 40. Director Kenny Mazlow and Musical Director Bill Keck count 29 and 26 years, respectively.

In advance of breaking the news to cast, crew and staff, Schuman Silver said she didn’t know what she would say or how she would say it. “It will be very difficult, but I know I have to do it. I’ll just tell them I’ll cry with them … and have them one by one come over to see me the next day. I’ll answer every question they have — but they have to be in the show on Wednesday night. … But they’re professionals. They will do it.”

After being told the news Wednesday evening, Branom said, “It feels like a death.”

“I’m hurt and sad and devastated, but I don’t begrudge her decision. I get it. I wish there was some solution, but I don’t know what it is,” Nelson said. “I’m 56, 57 in June. I guess I’ll be looking at reinventing myself.”

“Beach Blanket” has four more years on its lease for its venue, Club Fugazi, which seats 373. A spokesman for its owner, Italian Community Services, did not respond to a request for comment about how it might be used for the remainder of the lease or after.

Whatever fills the building won’t be “Beach Blanket Babylon,” and that will be hard for many San Franciscans to imagine, including Schuman Silver.

“I thought I’d be dead, or something. I never thought I would close the show, ever, in my whole life. But I felt it was time.”

She can’t put her finger on what started to change — though she doesn’t feel Steve Silver’s presence in the venue as much any more. And a cousin recently observed that, the past two years, she hasn’t gone through the New Year’s Eve lineup with the family, like she always used to — a change Schuman Silver says wasn’t conscious but might be illustrative.

Asked what she’s proudest of, Schuman Silver says, “Everything. I can’t really get it down. With my family, I was trying to put down what was the best night, what was the best day, what was the best number, and I can’t. I really can’t. It was all wonderful.”

As tied to the city as “Beach Blanket Babylon” has been, Schuman Silver said she’s not worried about San Francisco after the show. “The city’s fabulous. It’s going to be fabulous if we’re here or if we’re not here.”

Brown concurs. “The city, in spite of the disappearance of some of our beloved cornerstones — we survive, and we grow, and we lionize. That’s how good the city really is.”

Shawna Ferris McNulty, a “Beach Blanket” actor who played Snow White for 15 years pointed to celebrating the time they have left with San Francisco, “I’m excited we have eight months to share this with the city, to give people a chance to come out here and love the show.”

“Beach Blanket Babylon”: Created by Steve Silver. Directed by Kenny Mazlow. Through Dec. 31. 90 minutes. $35-$160. Club Fugazi, 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd., S.F. 415-421-4222. www.beachblanketbabylon.com