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Broadway box office was up a bit last week, despite being down a show from the previous week. With a very slight 2.4% rise, the 23 productions grossed a combined $28,652,877, with attendance of 227,568 holding steady.
The roster, thinned from the summertime line-up with The Cher Show, King Kong and Pretty Woman not-so-long gone, was bolstered by Betrayal, the Tom Hiddleston-starrer at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, which grossed $626,943 for the week ending Sept. 1. In previews with a Sept. 5 opening night, the play took in about 60% of its potential, with 87% of seats filled.
Betrayal‘s box office just about makes up for the absence of Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me, which concluded its engagement at the Helen Hayes Theater the previous week with a house record of $638,509 (the Hayes’ previous record holder was Rock of Ages, with a gross of $583,527 for a January week back in 2015).
Some other notable productions during the end-of-summer week included mega-hit Moulin Rouge! The Musical, posting a whopping $2.1M weekly gross, with attendance SRO and an average ticket price of a big $203. Only the mighty Hamilton outdid it, breaking the $3M mark by $14,202, with an average ticket price of $280.
On the play side, Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird continued its powerful run at the Shubert, SRO and grossing just shy of $2M, remarkable for a non-musical. The long-running The Lion King at the Minskoff was at $2M.
Other sell-outs (or nearly so) last week included the ever-strong Temptations musical Ain’t Too Proud, Come From Away, Dear Evan Hansen, Hadestown, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Mean Girls, The Book of Mormon, To Kill A Mockingbird and Waitress.
Inexplicably struggling was the terrifically funny Tootsie, taking in $918,350, an impressive number at first glance but only 56% of its potential at the Marquis. Even with a modest-for-musicals average ticket price of $90, Tootsie hovered at Beetlejuice levels despite Tootsie‘s slightly larger theater size and better reviews. Beetlejuice grossed $1,001,783, filling 92% of seats at the Winter Garden.
Sea Wall/A Life, the paired solo acts starring, respectively, Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal, played to 96% of capacity at the Hudson, grossing $660,312, an $18K bump over the previous week.
Season to date, Broadway has grossed $465,347,748, down about 10% year to year. Total attendance to date is 3,825,371, off about 3% from last season at this time.
All figures courtesy of the trade group Broadway League.