Only Bruce Springsteen can overshadow Hamilton and Hello, Dolly!
After just five performances, Springsteen’s mostly solo show at the Walter Kerr Theatre grossed $2.3 million, with an average ticket of $496.72 — surely a Broadway record. Hamilton has long sported the highest average, which was $272 last week, according to the Broadway League, and has been as dear as $310.
With tickets as much as $998 for the front row, Hello, Dolly! starring Bette Midler had its best week to-date, grossing $2.35 million over eight performances. Its average, at $204, was also a fraction of the Boss’s.
The intimate Springsteen concert is sold-out through the run, which ends in February, although the production is making available 26 $75 lottery tickets per performance. Tickets went for as much as $850 and now list for thousands of dollars apiece on the secondary market. As part of the show, Springsteen tells stories, reads from his 2016 memoir and performs a couple of his songs with his wife, Patti Scialfa.
Among new musicals, The Band’s Visit, about an Egyptian band in a sleepy Israeli town, grossed a solid $135,000 for a single performance. The show, by David Yazbek and Itamar Moses, made a splash last season off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater.
To-date, grosses for the Broadway season are up 20 percent over this point in 2016-17; attendance is up 6 percent, as average prices continue their decades-long ascent.
