{"id":12434,"date":"2014-05-29T01:12:16","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T17:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=12434"},"modified":"2014-05-29T01:12:16","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T17:12:16","slug":"broadways-box-office-and-attendance-figures-go-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/05\/29\/broadways-box-office-and-attendance-figures-go-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Broadway’s box office and attendance figures go up"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The famous Broadway strip in New York City. Wikimedia photo<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK — Broadway’s revenue and attendance figures were both up this season, largely fueled by classics from Harold Pinter and William Shakespeare rather than brash, new musicals.<\/p>\n

The Broadway League said Tuesday that box offices reported a record total gross of $1.27 billion – up from $1.13 billion from the previous season. The trade association for theater owners, operators and producers said attendance was up 5.6 percent to 12.2 million.<\/p>\n

New musicals – “After Midnight,” “Rocky,” “If\/Then,” “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” “Bullets Over Broadway” and “Violet” – mostly recorded fine but not spectacular business.<\/p>\n

A few flopped – “Big Fish” and “The Bridges of Madison County” – and a few have soared, like Neil Patrick Harris in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”<\/p>\n

Pushing the overall numbers higher were first-rate play revivals, including a double bill of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and “Richard III.” They recouped their $3.1 million capitalization costs, despite putting aside 250 seats at every performance for just $25.<\/p>\n

A revival of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,” starring Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and Rafe Spall, wrapped up its 14-week engagement with a stunning cumulative gross of just over $17.5 million. It set a record for best single week for a play ever on Broadway.<\/p>\n

Another revival – Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” starring Zachary Quinto and Cherry Jones – recouped its $2.6 million investment, while a double bill of Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” and Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, left after 23 weeks with a $14.3 million haul. A revival of “A Raisin in the Sun” with Denzel Washington has been a sure thing, with the Ethel Barrymore Theatre packed each time and making over $1 million a week.<\/p>\n

The two-time Tony Award winner Mark Rylance, nominated twice this year, said he is heartened by the draw for his Shakespeare plays. They were performed by an all-male cast and sought to replicate how the plays were produced in Shakespeare’s day, including with live musicians and low-tech candlelight.<\/p>\n

“My view is that people are increasingly enabled by technology but also rather isolated by it – isolated from visceral experiences,” he said. “Being in a room with Viola or with Richard III or with any of those characters as they go through real experiences and real emotions – that beats watching it on the screen every time.”<\/p>\n

The numbers were boosted by steadily increasing ticket prices, high demand from tourists swelling Times Square, reconfigured seating in some theaters and the use of premium-priced seating, in which some tickets are snapped up for very high amounts.<\/p>\n

The numbers are an improvement on last season’s decline in box office take and a 6 percent dip on the number of ticket buyers, both blamed on Hurricane Sandy. The storm darkened Broadway for four days and cost more than $8.5 million in lost revenue.<\/p>\n

This year, producers had to contend with a savage winter and the promise of Super Bowl crowds that never materialized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK — Broadway’s revenue and attendance figures were both up this season, largely fueled by classics from Harold Pinter …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":12590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1482,2],"tags":[4211,4209,4210],"class_list":["post-12434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art-and-culture","category-breaking","category-entertainment","tag-audience","tag-broadway","tag-theatre","mauthors-mark-kennedy","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}