After a record-breaking $35 million Thanksgiving week — inflated by Hamilton‘s $998 top ticket price and $3.2 million haul — Broadway sank back into something like normalcy during Week 28 of the 2016-2017 season. Staggering-seeming falloffs were the result of temporarily spiked prices: While the overall tally was off 18 per cent from the holiday week, attendance overall was off less than 5 per cent. The Lin-Manuel Miranda musical sold $2.23 million in tickets at the Nederlander Organization’s Richard Rodgers Theatre, to take the most extreme example — a whopping drop of $1 million but still 3 per cent above its gross potential.
Among the shows evading parentheses in the grosses column was the musical version of Chazz Palminteri’s A Bronx Tale, which opened to mixed notices (better than that from the Times) and was up $5.8K at the Shubert Organization’s Longacre Theatre to $723.7K, 76 per cent of its potential. Lauded one-act Heisenberg, at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Friedman, was up $111.3K to $423.7K or 53 per cent of potential. Jersey Boys, looking to the end of a great run, gained $102.2K to break $1 million at Jujamcyn Theatres’ August Wilson. The Liev Schreiber-Janet McTeer led Les Liaisons Dangereuses revival at the Shuberts’ Booth was up $36.5K to $465K, or 56 per cent of potential. The Roundabout Theatre Company revival of The Cherry Orchard, starring Diane Lane, bowed out with a $100K boost at the American Airlines.
The others showing the biggest drops were Wicked (down $551K but still a $1.7 million near-sellout at the Nederlander Organization’s Gershwin) and Disney’s The Lion King (off $596.6K at the Nederlanders’ Minskoff, also close to SRO, while Aladdin, at the New Amsterdam flagship, fell $544K to $1.5 million, 88 per cent of potential). The Cats revival was off $364.3K at Nederlanders’ Neil Simon, to $839.5K, 59 per cent of potential; Andrew Lloyd Webber’s School Of Rock, at the Shuberts’ Winter Garden, fell $597K to $992K, 65 per cent of potential.
Total sales for 33 shows hit $29.04 million, according to the trade group Broadway League. Average pid admission across the board was $107.77, up slightly from a year ago.
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