The producers of Merrily We Roll Along have raised the revival’s top ticket price to $899 — the most expensive seat on Broadway so far this season.
The $899 tickets, which include a $50 fee for buying online, are for some orchestra and mezzanine seats in the Hudson Theatre for a handful of weekend performances in December. In this era of “dynamic pricing,” the move reflects strong demand heading into the holidays.Continue Reading
It doesn’t suck to be David Stone today.
Nineteen years after the satiric Avenue Q (“It Sucks to Be Me”) upset the Stone-produced blockbuster Wicked at the Tony Awards, the 56-year-old won his first Best Musical Tony, for Kimberly Akimbo, and his second for best play revival, Suzan Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog.Continue Reading
Hamilton producer Jeffrey Seller is raising as much as $14.5 million to revive Sweeney Todd on Broadway this spring, a test of whether a big-budget Stephen Sondheim revival can succeed in the post-Sondheim era.
Josh Groban (The Great Comet) will play the vengeful barber and Annaleigh Ashford (Sunday in the Park with George) will play the creative pie maker Mrs. Lovett, according to an operating agreement distributed to investors and reviewed by Broadway Journal. The musical, with a book by Hugh Wheeler, will be staged by Hamilton director Thomas Kail with a full orchestra playing the score, a person familiar with the revival said. (Two prior Broadway revivals, while critically acclaimed, were comparatively small-scale productions.)Continue Reading
In 2020, a year in which theaters were dark for nine and a half months, Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis earned $1.15 million in pay and benefits, more than any other nonprofit theater leader in New York.
Eustis’ 10 percent jump in overall compensation — disclosed in the Public’s 2020-21 tax return filed with the New York Attorney General — runs counter to the company’s messaging about pandemic pay. In an April 2020 New York Times story about the cancellation of Shakespeare in the Park and planned staff furloughs, Michael Paulson reported that much of the remaining staff “will take up to a 25 percent pay cut. Eustis will take a 40 percent pay cut.”
The tax return, which details compensation for calendar year 2020, tells a different story. Eustis, one of the highest-profile figures in nonprofit theater since assuming leadership of the storied organization in 2005, was paid $901,000, up from $807,000 in 2019. Benefits and deferred pay were valued at an additional $255,000.Continue Reading
EXCLUSIVE: Seven years after Hamilton began previews at the Public Theater and gave the business of Broadway and touring a shot in the arm, its lead producer, Jeffrey Seller, is following a similar playbook. He’s underwriting The New Group‘s world premiere of Black No More.Continue Reading
Ivo van Hove’s video-heavy revival of West Side Story, which was originally produced by Scott Rudin and opened a month before Broadway was shuttered, has scored a $10 million Small Business Administration grant to reopen.
A person familiar with the production said it will imminently announce when it will resume, along with who will oversee it. Following multiple reports alleging that Rudin abused his staff, the producer has said that he’s stepping back from the entertainment business. There’d been industry speculation that the musical, which was capitalized at $16 million and received mixed reviews, would not return. Continue Reading
Broadway is usually a risky business — but the remount of Waitress looks like an excellent bet.
Pop star Sara Bareilles, who wrote the musical’s acclaimed score, will return to the lead role for the first six weeks of the four-month engagement, scheduled to begin Sept. 2 at the Barrymore Theatre. And the U.S. Small Business Administration has awarded the production $10 million as part of its disaster relief program for the live entertainment industry.Continue Reading
The U.S. Small Business Administration plans to notify 10,000 Shuttered Venue Operators Grant applicants, or 70 percent of the total, about awards by Independence Day, Broadway League President Charlotte St. Martin wrote to members.Continue Reading
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today that Broadway can resume performances at 100 percent capacity on Sept. 14 and recommends that Broadway require Covid-19 vaccinations for entry to theaters.
“The simplest formula: 100 percent vaccinated,” Cuomo said at a news conference. “The theaters are going to have to make those decisions.”Continue Reading
Growing up in Las Vegas, Ilana Atkins started studying piano at six but eventually hit a wall with classical music.
“The music didn’t speak to me,” she said. “As I got older, the most consistent response I got was, ‘Oh girl, you’re light skinned and you play the piano, you could be the next Alicia Keys.'”Continue Reading
Copyright © 2019 Broadway Journal.
