Broadway‘s spring roster seemed to settle into a Tony season box office ranking, with the strongest of the newcomers maintaining their draws and the weakest continuing downward slides.
In that first category were repeat sell-outs An Enemy of the People, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club and Hell’s Kitchen, with both The Outsiders and Stereophonic inching onto that turf. The Outsiders was up $129,650 from the previous week to a big $1,023,827, and Stereophonic jumped $92,392 to $683,911. All five shows were well represented among Tony nominees.
A second batch of newcomers, though not hitting sell-out status, nonetheless were very strong performers during the week ending May 12. Appropriate was up more than $43,000 to $702,686, filling 91% of its seats; Mary Jane and Mother Play both held steady, with attendance around 97% of capacity; Suffs, The Great Gatsby and The Wiz each posted box office jumps of more than $100,000, settling into the impressive 91% to 95% of capacity terrain.
Illinoise filled 94% of its seats, but receipts were down $4,656 to $679,737 due to the canceled performance on May 8 following the tragic death of production stage manager Thomas J. Gates.
At the 80%-90% of capacity level, The Who’s Tommy, nominated for Best Musical Revival, and Lempicka posted noticeable jumps, with Tommy up $80,674 to $991,028 and filling 85% of its available seats. Lempicka, which posted a distressing early closing notice of May 19, was up $144,424 to $419,472, with attendance at 87% of capacity but an average ticket price at an unsustainable $57.34.
Also making box office increases were The Notebook (up $113,058 to $786,488, at 87%); Water For Elephants (up $63,952 to $1,074,006, 84%; and, with the biggest drop-off, Uncle Vanya, down $83,365 to $914,675, with attendance at 87% of capacity.
Also bucking the overall upward trend were Patriots, down $12,225 to $404,147 and filling only 65% of seats; and The Heart of Rock and Roll, dropping $31,973 to $319,030, with attendance at 70% of capacity.
In all, the 34 Broadway productions new and otherwise grossed $35,727,377 for the week, a jump of about 3% over the previous week and a significant 14% over this time last year. Total attendance was 286,841, about 91% of capacity and a tiny slip of 1% from the previous week (but up 8% from last year).
Season to date, Broadway has grossed $1,502,896,749, down about 3% from last year at this time, with total attendance at 11,995,066 steady with last year.
All figures courtesy of The Broadway League. For complete box office listings, visit the League’s website.