Broadway Shows' Closings Are Good for Business - NYTimes.com

Three Broadway productions saw expected upticks at the box office last week given that their runs were coming to an end, two newcomers showed mixed results and big-ticket shows that have been dominant for months mostly held steady, according to the weekly grosses and other data released by the productions.

Of the departing shows the one with the biggest jump, both in terms of gross revenue and the number of theatergoers taking advantage of a last chance to see it, was the revival of the musical ?Fela!,? which closed on Saturday. Attendance was up by nearly 2,500 compared to the previous week, and the gross rose by almost $200,000, to $568,727. ?Harvey? and ?Memphis,? both of which closed on Sunday, also saw increases in both categories, if on a more modest scale.

After previews, ?Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth,? a one-man show featuring the former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, opened officially last Thursday for a limited run that ends next Sunday and performed solidly, bringing in $624,496, or 78 percent of its potential gross. ?Bring It On: The Musical,? the other newcomer, opened officially on Thursday as well and registered a gross of $387,388. That figure was down by about $80,000 compared to the previous week of previews, a decline that a publicist for the show attributed to the large number of free tickets distributed last week.

Shows heavy on spectacle, like ?Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,? ?The Lion King? and ?Wicked,? dipped slightly compared to the previous week but other long-running hits, including ?The Book of Mormon? and ?Newsies,? showed slight box-office increases. Among the star-driven shows, ?Evita? experienced a drop of $233,144, or 18.6 percent, last week, attributable in part to the absence of Ricky Martin, who plays Che Guevara, from one performance.

Over all, the 28 plays and musicals on Broadway took in $23.5 million last week, with 82.4 percent of seats sold, benefiting from the summer flow of tourists to New York. That figure was up by nearly $3 million compared to the same week in 2011, and by slightly more than $100,000 compared to the previous week.

Source: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/broadway-shows-closings-are-good-for-business/

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