Broadway Journal

TONY AWARDS BOOST ‘STRANGE LOOP,’ ‘MJ’ SALES

June 22, 2022 by Philip Boroff

Nearly 20 years in the making, A Strange Loop is having a moment.

In the seven days ending on Sunday, Michael R. Jackson’s newly minted Tony Award-winning best musical had its highest-grossing week since it opened in late April, at $845,000. That was up 23 percent from two weeks earlier, according to Broadway League data. (The week before the Tonys is a difficult comparison because Strange Loop, which also won for book of a musical, had seven performances instead of the customary eight.)

Jaquel Spivey in ‘A Strange Loop’

Producer Barbara Whitman and the Shubert Organization capitalized on the win by raising its top ticket price 23 percent to $373. Its average ticket jumped $11 in two weeks to $116, a price, for now, on par with Beetlejuice and The Book of Mormon but $47 below the royal hit Six.

Weekly sales for Strange Loop — about a Black gay man struggling for acceptance from himself and his family — were in the same ballpark as The Band’s Visit and Fun Home a week after they won best musical. Like Strange Loop, both shows skew more experimental than commercial and ran a relatively short 17 months on Broadway.  (Whitman was a lead producer of Fun Home.)

Running even that long may be a challenge for Jackson’s funny and endearing semi-autobiographical musical, given the ongoing pandemic and a narrative some may consider family unfriendly. In the show, the ‘F’ word is uttered or sung 60 times, the ‘N’ word 18 times and the ‘D’ word — nickname for Richard — 32 times, according to its script. (For what it’s worth, I saw it three times and would happily go again.)

MJ, produced by Lia Vollack and the estate of the other Michael Jackson, saw sales jump 15 percent to $1.7 million. Although it wasn’t named best musical, MJ was technically the most-winning new musical, with four Tonys, including for moonwalker extraordinaire Myles Frost, who led a magnetic performance of “Smooth Criminal” on the CBS telecast. (MJ in particular may have benefited from increased tourism during the three-day weekend.)

Grosses for Company, the Marianne Elliott-directed, gender-bending revival of the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical comedy that won five Tonys, gained 14 percent to $727,000. Yesterday, lead producer Chris Harper said the revival will end its Broadway run on July 31.

Paradise Square, the Garth Drabinsky-produced new musical, reported that grosses soared an impressive 47 percent after its lead actress, Joaquina Kalukango, won for lead actress in a musical and performed a rousing number at the Tonys. But it was starting from a depressed base, and its $388,000 in sales was still below its weekly breakeven of $599,000, per an estimate in its 2019 operating agreement filed with New York state.

Broadway grosses overall fell 7 percent to $29.5 million. Two plays closed the previous week — Take Me Out and How I Learned to Drive — and The Music Man‘s sales dropped by nearly half after Hugh Jackman took a leave because he tested positive for Covid-19.

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Filed Under: Grosses Tagged With: A Strange Loop, Barbara Whitman, Garth Drabinsky, Marianne Elliott, Michael Jackson, Michael R. Jackson, Shubert Organization

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