The frenetic 2023-24 Broadway season officially ended Sunday. Notwithstanding encouraging results this Spring amid back-to-back openings ahead of the Tony Award nominations, industry statistics indicate a stalled recovery from the pandemic.
Broadway recorded 2023-24 attendance of 12.3 million, which was little changed from the previous season and down 17 percent from 2018-19, the last full season before the industry shutdown. Box office grosses in 2023-24 dropped 2.4 percent to $1.54 billion, according to the Broadway League, the trade association of theater owners and producers. That’s the lowest since 2016-17, not counting seasons that were partially or entirely cancelled due to the pandemic.
The average ticket price in 2023-24 fell by $3 to $125.27. While the average ticket was 1 percent higher than in 2018-19, production and operating budgets have grown astronomically in the interim.
Given the tepid sales and inflation of production costs, Broadway has endured its own version of stagflation, the scourge of the late-1970s United States. The industry’s struggling with the absence of much of its suburban audience and theatergoers 65 and over, plus the lack of a popular new musical that transcends Broadway, on the order of Hamilton or Book of Mormon. (New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli is scheduled to release an update on tourism tomorrow.)
Since reopening in late 2021, Broadway has lost more long-running shows than it created. Out are The Phantom of the Opera, Dear Evan Hansen, Come From Away and Ain’t Too Proud (a strong 2019 entry that lost momentum going into the pandemic). M.J., thanks to its Michael Jackson score and propulsive choreography, has been the highest-grossing post-pandemic new musical; & Juliet, with its Max Martin hits and cheeky Shakespeare-inspired story, is prospering; Six has been a money machine.
But the Queens have faded ever-so-slightly at the box office; as have the 13-year-old Book of Mormon and Hamilton, which first opened at the Public Theater off-Broadway nearly a decade ago. The three blockbusters still appear to be profitable, especially Hamilton.
Last week, 15 of the 35 shows running on Broadway sold more than $1 million of tickets. They grossed $36.4 million in total, up 2 percent from the previous week and up 11 percent from a year earlier. The results are in contrast to a dismal start of the season, when five of the first six new musicals promptly failed: Once Upon a One More Time, Here Lies Love, Harmony, How to Dance in Ohio and Days of Wine and Roses. More recently, Lempicka, in development for well over a decade, shuttered after a month.
That’s about $98 million lost to-date from 2023-24’s musicals. The Heart of Rock and Roll, the long-gestating romp featuring the Huey Lewis catalog, is grossing a fraction of its running costs and looks like a goner.
Hell’s Kitchen, the semi-autobiographical show produced and scored by Alicia Keys, is a leading candidate to be 2023-24’s long-running hit, especially if it wins the Tony for best musical. It grossed $1.6 million last week, just above M.J. and just under Merrily We Roll Along, the season’s least likely hit. Four decades ago, the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical-told-backwards shuttered after 16 performances.
The Broadway revival at the Hudson Theatre, produced by Sonia Friedman for $12 million and directed by her sister, Maria, has announced it recouped. To-date, it’s paid back 80 percent to its investors. (Recoupment in effect refers to the ability to repay investors, not whether they’ve gotten their money back.) Merrily is expected to earn a tidy profit by the time it closes July 7.
Sondheim revivals have thrived since the composer-lyricist died in November 2021. But their success can’t be separated from the celebrities playing the roles. From May 30 through June 2, Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) is scheduled to be out of Merrily. Tickets are heavily discounted — relatively speaking — and widely available for those performances.
