After 33 days, Actors’ Equity has ended its limited strike against the Broadway League over how its members are compensated for developing new work.
Actors had sought profit share and a raise from the current $1,000 weekly salary when participating in a developmental lab, which are multi-week workshops to create new plays and musicals.Continue Reading
Broadway celebrated 2019 with a slew of milestones: highest-grossing week and year in history and best-attended week and year since at least 1984, according to the Broadway League.
Long-running shows such as Wicked ($3.4 million), The Lion King ($3.7 million) and Hamilton ($4 million) recorded their best sales last week and charged their highest average prices, with tourists continuing to flock to Broadway’s biggest brands.
Hamilton, whose composer-lyricist, Lin-Manuel Miranda, returns to the show next week for a short engagement in San Juan, Puerto Rico, became the first Broadway show to clear $4 million over eight performances.Continue Reading
Early in The Cher Show, Sonny Bono reprimands Cher when she complains about the rigors of stardom. “You bought the ticket; take the ride.”
The target audience at the Neil Simon Theatre is onboard.
Book writer Rick Elice (Jersey Boys), director Jason Moore (Avenue Q) and choreographer Christopher Gattelli have created a celebratory jukebox musical that has energy and style. Continue Reading
Broadway sold $43 million of tickets in the week ending on Sunday, up 10 percent from a year ago for its best Thanksgiving ever.
In an ugly week for stocks but fine one for tourism and premium pricing, most shows bounced, especially musicals that performed in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.Continue Reading
With a top-ticket (so far) of $119, Lin-Manuel Miranda and three co-producers are mounting an engagement early next year of Freestyle Love Supreme, the improv hip-hop group that the Hamilton creator has performed in since 2004.
“There is nothing like a live hip-hop show that is improvised from the first moment til the final curtain,” Miranda said in a statement. Previews begin on Jan. 30 at the tiny Greenwich House Theater. That’s three days after a run of Hamilton is scheduled to end in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which stars Miranda in the title role. Continue Reading
Ninety minutes, no intermission has its appeal. But Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman, with two dozen actors, a rabbit, goose, and a real-life baby dramatizing plot lines that explosively coalesce, makes the case for epic drama.
As directed by Sam Mendes, it has more humor and vitality than one might expect from a play set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.Continue Reading
In Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at the Hunter Theater Project, Jay O. Sanders plays the title character as the kind of wisely figure you’d like to have as your own uncle. That is, until a brother-in-law announces he wants to sell the family estate that Vanya has managed for 35 years.
“Thanks to you,” Vanya bellows, “I destroyed, I annihilated the best years of my life!” He’s initially terrifying, then almost befuddled at the intensity of his own outburst. “What am I saying? I’m losing my mind.”
EXCLUSIVE: Can’t afford to spend $1,551, including Ticketmaster fees, for two center orchestra seats to Hamilton at the Richard Rodgers Theatre?
How about 12 monthly payments of $138 instead?
That’s a new option at Ticketmaster, the primary online dealer for Hamilton and a dozen other Broadway shows.Continue Reading
Early in his funny and poignant off-Broadway show, The New One, the comedian Mike Birbiglia expresses a low tolerance for children. “We gotta get babies off planes,” he says. “We got rid of smoking in the eighties, so we could get rid of babies now. Or bring back smoking and get those babies some cigarettes, because they’re too stressed out and they’re too powerful.”
The Broadway season that ended on Sunday was strong but not stellar.
Overall attendance: up 4 percent to 13.8 million, according to the Broadway League. Grosses rose 17 percent, to $1.7 billion. The average price of a ticket for a musical gained 11 percent to $125.70 — thanks to strong demand for Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, The Lion King, Hello, Dolly! with Bette Midler and, increasingly, Mean Girls, which looks like a hit.
