Jonathan Groff is scheduled to perform twice at the Tony Awards on Sunday. The enviable television exposure should confirm his show, Just in Time, as the most commercially successful new musical to-date of the 2024-25 Broadway season.
Groff, 40, who was Tony-nominated for playing King George III in Hamilton, will join other original company members to mark 10 lucrative years on Broadway; and lead Just in Time, in which Groff plays the 1950s and ’60s singer-songwriter-actor Bobby Darin. Last week, the average ticket price at Circle in the Square –which Derek McLane refashioned as a faux nightclub — was $213.52. That’s the highest average ticket price of any musical now on Broadway.
If Just in Time sustains its $1.2 million weekly gross, it could recoup its $9.4 million of production costs soon after Labor Day, based on a company recoupment chart obtained by Broadway Journal. Not bad for a show that wasn’t nominated for best musical. (To be sure, expenses tend to exceed projected expenses, especially during awards season. And the recoupment chart includes a state tax credit of up to $3 million.)
Buena Vista Social Club, inspired by the 1997 album of Cuban music, is also earning operating profits, albeit less than Just in Time‘s. At this rate, it would take Buena Vista well over a year to recoup its $17 million capitalization.
Hamilton, The Book of Mormon and other all-original musicals have produced some of Broadway’s biggest fortunes. This past season, none of the 10 musicals with original scores appear to be on track to repay their costs before the 2026 Tony Awards — if ever. Maybe Happy Ending, which has piled up awards, could become a hit if it takes home the best musical Tony and its sales explode.
Just in Time was conceived by Ted Chapin, who recruited Groff for the 92nd Street Y‘s “Lyrics and Lyricists” series in 2018. Groff is a charismatic homegrown star who first came to attention playing Melchior in the raucous 2006 rock musical Spring Awakening. In that show, he performed opposite Lea Michele, both of whom later found a mass audience on Glee on television.
Bobby Darin doesn’t have the same name recognition among younger theatergoers. “I never thought that a musical about Bobby Darin would be so popular,” said Steve, a 28-year-old substance abuse counselor and compulsive theatergoer, who lined up at 6:30 am Thursday morning outside Circle in the Square for $40 rush tickets. Steve, who declined to give his last name, said the success of the show, which is directed by Alex Timbers, has cemented Groff’s status as a Broadway leading man and box office force.
Jack Viertel, a creative consultant on The Outsiders and former senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters, now part of ATG Entertainment, said that whether a score is familiar or new isn’t a bellwether of success. “It’s about the excitement that a show creates in total,” Viertel told Broadway Journal. With a hit, “usually it’s a first-rate production that has appeal to a broad range of people.”
Groff is aiming to be the first man to win back-to-back Tonys for lead actor in a musical, after triumphing in 2024 for Merrily We Roll Along. He’s currently committed to Just in Time through Jan. 11, 2026.
It may have a life after he leaves. The show’s lead producers, Tom Kirdahy and Robert Ahrens, opened a revival of Little Shop of Horrors off-Broadway with Groff in the lead role of Seymour in 2019, and successfully cycled through other stars. Six years later, the Groff-less Little Shop is still blooming at the Westside Theatre.
START YOUR STOPWATCHES: Tony organizers are apparently aiming for a fast-paced broadcast, which includes acceptances speeches.
“There is a strict 90-second time limit that begins immediately when the winner’s name is announced,” Jason Laks of the Broadway League and Heather Hitchens of the American Theatre Wing, who oversee the awards, wrote this week to representatives of nominated shows. “No one ever likes to be played off by the orchestra and the audiences at home and in the theater don’t enjoy those moments either so please be conscientious of that limited window. We have instructed the producers to play people off as necessary as soon as that time limit is reached. We obviously don’t want to be in that position, so we do ask for your cooperation.”
Co-producers — who invest in and raise money for shows and whose numbers have increased with the size of budgets — will be permitted onstage. The sight of dozens of check writers and bundlers storming the stage has been a sore point among some Broadway traditionalists. Last year, when the ceremony was at a smaller venue, Lincoln Center’s Koch Theater, they were relegated to upstairs risers. While they got some airtime on CBS, many felt miffed, given their key role financing Broadway shows.
Laks, who officially succeeded Charlotte St. Martin as League president in December, and Hitchens wrote that “we are not limiting the number of people that may or may not join the winning productions’ designated acceptors on stage this year. Whether the cast or creative or co-producers join on stage is up to the discretion of the lead producer(s).”
Should Gypsy win for musical revival — which was produced by Kirdahy, Mara Isaacs and 17 lines of co-producers listed on the Internet Broadway Database — the Radio City stage could get busier than the Rockettes’ Christmas show.
