Broadway Journal

INSIDE BROADWAY’S $1 MILLION NUT CASES

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Water for Elephants, the circus-themed new musical, will be under pressure to make a big splash when it arrives on Broadway.

Scheduled to open March 21, 2024, at the Imperial Theatre, it will need to sell at least $960,000 of tickets each week to cover operating expenses, according to an internal budget prepared over the summer and reviewed by Broadway Journal. (The sales here refer to “gross gross,” the weekly figure that the trade association the Broadway League makes public, which includes credit card commissions and other fees the production doesn’t keep.)

Joining the million dollar club at the Broadway box office used to be a matter of prestige. Today, it’s often a requirement for a show’s survival.Continue Reading

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

EDDIE REDMAYNE-LED ‘CABARET’ WILL TRANSFER TO BROADWAY IN 2024 (EXCLUSIVE)

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Ambassador Theatre Group and Underbelly Productions plan to transfer their hit West End revival of Cabaret  to Broadway, two people familiar with the production said.

Eddie Redmayne has committed to reprise his performance as the louche Weimar-era nightclub emcee — a role made famous by Joel Grey in the 1966 Hal Prince-directed musical and in the 1972 Bob Fosse-helmed movie, and more recently by Alan Cumming in two Roundabout Theatre Co. revivals. Rebecca Frecknall is slated to direct the production, which is to begin previews in March 2024 ahead of an April opening.Continue Reading

NEW YORK EXTENDS $3 MILLION BROADWAY TAX CREDIT; DISNEY’S ‘ALADDIN’ APPROVED

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New York State extended the New York City Musical and Theatrical Production Tax Credit, a subsidy of up to $3 million per Broadway show, as the industry struggles with rising costs and subpar sales.

On May 3, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the two-year extension through 2025 and said commercial Off-Broadway shows will also be eligible, albeit for a smaller credit. The Broadway League trade association lobbied for preserving the program. It was designed to jumpstart the industry, which contributes billions to the economy, and encourage productions “to begin performances sooner and come back stronger” as the city recovered from Covid-19.Continue Reading

TONY NOMINATORS LIKE IT ‘HOT’ AS VOTERS’ TREND FAVORS QUIRKY ‘KIMBERLY’

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The $19.5 million crowd-pleaser Some Like it Hot was nominated for 13 Tony Awards today, the most of any Broadway show this season. In six of the past 10 Tony races, the musical that got the most nominations won the high-profile best musical award.

But a less encouraging trend could derail the Shubert Organization-produced show — which was also nominated for lead actors Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee, and for Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman’s toe-tapping score. Eight of the past 10 best musical winners were smallish and experimental — a la A Strange Loop (2022), Hadestown (2019), and, potentially, Kimberly Akimbo.Continue Reading

WILL A NEW ‘SWEENEY TODD’ MAKE ITS INVESTORS A KILLING? (EXCLUSIVE)

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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

OSKAR EUSTIS IS NONPROFIT THEATER’S PANDEMIC PAY CHAMP (EXCLUSIVE)

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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

PLAY GROSSES GO WRONG: SALES TUMBLE FOR SECOND SEASON

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The cast of The Play That Goes Wrong at a New Dramatists fundraiser. Photo: Anita & Steve Shevett

Broadway producers and investors made the brave decision to present several new plays without stars this past season.

Audiences haven’t followed. Grosses for straight plays (non-musicals) tumbled 15 percent in the 12 months ending on Sunday, after plunging 27 percent the previous season, according to statistics out today from the Broadway League. At $154 million, it was the lowest-grossing season for plays in at least six years.

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