Broadway Journal

SOLO SHOWS DELIVER AS ASPIRING BLOCKBUSTERS STRUGGLE

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Capitalized for $22 million, the David Byrne-Fatboy Slim musical Here Lies Love dramatizes the rise and fall of the Marcos regime, in a Broadway theater repurposed as a discotheque.

Last week, it was outgrossed by $35,000 by a little-known comic on an open stage with three stools. Just for Us, Alex Edelman’s monologue about antisemitism and identity that ended its run on Saturday, was capitalized for $2.25 million.

In an era of mammoth Broadway budgets and huge losses, one-person shows have been a relative safe haven for investors. Prima Facie, James Bierman’s $4 million production of Suzie Miller’s one-woman play starring Jodie Comer, is the only show from 2022-23 to announce that it recouped.Continue Reading

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

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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.)Continue Reading

BROADWAY CINDERELLA STORY: ‘A STRANGE LOOP’ FOLLOWS ITS PULITZER WITH BEST MUSICAL

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Maybe Usher can finally quit his day job.

A Strange Loop — Michael R. Jackson’s deconstructionist portrait of a musical theater artist as a young, Black, insecure gay man — was named best musical at the 75th Tony Awards tonight. A former Lion King usher, Jackson spent nearly two decades working on his sacred-cow-slaughtering show about a “Disney ushering, broke-ass middle-class politically homeless normie leftist Black American” aspiring composer-lyricist.Continue Reading

‘MOULIN ROUGE!’ & ‘STRANGE LOOP’ TEST TONY TRADITION OF GOOSING GROSSES

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Eight months after winning the Tony Award for best musical, Hamilton’s weekly grosses were up 45 percent. Dear Evan Hansen‘s were higher by a comparable margin after its win.

Grosses for Moulin Rouge! at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre were down 25 percent last week compared with early fall, when the adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 movie reopened as Broadway’s newly minted best musical. At $1.2 million, its box office is off by nearly half since the end of 2019, when Moulin Rouge! was the top grossing new production of 2019-20, with an average ticket price second only to Hamilton.Continue Reading

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