Broadway Hits $36M: Mel Brooks Fills Seats, ‘Mockingbird’ Sets Record & ‘Beetlejuice’ Scares Up Personal Best
Mel Brooks played to full houses during his two-night Broadway stand last week, adding $583,140 to Broadway’s overall pot of $36M for the week ending June 23.
Brooks’ June 17-18 engagement at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre had a total attendance of 2,967, 99.2% of capacity. The $583K figure marked 112% of potential, with average ticket price hitting $197. (The unscripted show was probably very funny – critics weren’t invited.)
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In all, Broadway’s total box office for Week 4 of the 2019-20 season – $35,987,055, to be exact – held steady with the previous week, showing a tiny 4% boost. (Receipts for the five-show Regina Spektor residency at the Lunt-Fontanne will be reported cumulatively next week).
Attendance for the 35 productions was 296,070, just about dead even with last week.
Among the stand-outs for the week:
To Kill A Mockingbird broke the $2M ceiling, a best-ever weekly figure for an American play; exact number at the Shubert was $2,018,314;
A still-growing Beetlejuice had its best week yet at the Winter Garden, $981,335, about 69% of potential; attendance of 10,570 was about 89% of capacity;
Ink, now in its final two-week stretch at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, took in $397,578 last week, about 3% less than the previous week. Bertie Carvel’s Tony win for Best Featured Actor/play doesn’t seem to have had much lasting impact, money-wise, though the point is moot: After two extensions, the production has to put a cap on it Sunday, July 7;
Hillary And Clinton played its last performance at the Golden on June 23, taking in $302,871, a wispy 37% of potential. The critically lauded play starring Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow was one of a batch to post early closing notices after the Tonys offered no effective lifesavers;
The Prom, at the Longacre, showed a slight increase at the box office last week, grossing $700,279, a bump of $61,967 from the previous week, but still only 67% of potential. The musical closes Sunday, Aug. 11, with a tour and a Netflix movie to follow;
Also about to depart is Be More Chill, which posted an Aug. 11 closing notice of its own. The Joe Iconis musical grossed $459,379 last week at the Lyceum, showing a Prom-like spike of $42,819, but still hitting only about 52% of b.o. potential and 71% of attendance capacity.
Also closing this month, as scheduled, are the nonprofit Roundabout Theatre Company productions of All My Sons and Kiss Me, Kate, both giving their final performances June 30. All My Sons, starring Annette Bening and Tracy Letts, played to houses 92% full last week, while Kiss Me, Kate, with Kelli O’Hara in the title role, played at 95% capacity.
The complete roster of sold-out productions (or nearly so, at 98% of capacity or more) for Week 4 was Ain’t Too Proud, Aladdin, Come From Away, Dear Evan Hansen, Frozen, Hadestown, Hamilton, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Mean Girls, Mel Brooks, The Book of Mormon, The Lion King, To Kill a Mockingbird, What the Constitution Means To Me and Wicked.
Season to date, Broadway has grossed $140,493,449, off about 10% from last year at this time. Total attendance to date is 1,201,475, just shy of 1% more than last year at this time.
All figures courtesy of the trade group Broadway League.
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