Kinky Boots, the Harvey Fierstein/Cyndi Lauper 2013 Tony winner for Best Musical, continues to land business at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. For the week ending July 28, the award-laden tuner set a new box office record for the house — the fifth time it has done so since the week ending June 16, 2013.
Kinky Boots' gross for the week was $1,612,845.00, the highest for any eight-show week at the Hirschfeld. Prior to Kinky Boots, the holiday show Elf held the Hirschfeld's house record for an eight-performance week, grossing $1,464,912.50 in Dec. 2010.
Kinky Boots accomplished this feat with an average paid admission of $140.49 to capacity-plus audiences. With sales like that, it's unlikely the show's top ticket price of $349 will be coming down anytime soon. At present, only the mega-hit The Book of Mormon can command a higher price.
The Street lost a show — Richard Greenberg's praised The Assembled Parties — but gained an opening in the Beatles-fest Let It Be, so the tally of running shows remained steady at 25. For its final week, the Greenberg play performed to 93% capacity audiences and saw a $77,000 spike in its box office totals. Let It Be should have counted itself so lucky. The revue played to just under 60% filled seats, taking in only 28% of its potential earnings.
Douglas Carter Beane's The Nance saw a slight dip in its attendance, owing perhaps to its star, Nathan Lane, missing part of a performance due to a foot and leg injury. Gaining a bit, meanwhile, was Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful, which climbed $26,000 in its collections, playing to 68% capacity. Shows selling out, aside from Kinky Boots, were Chicago, Matilda, Motown: The Musical, Newsies, Pippin, The Book of Mormon and The Lion King. Falling a hair's breadth short of a full house was The Phantom of the Opera.
Attendance on Broadway was up by roughly 4,700 and box office increased around $750,000 to a total of $24,169,058. The season-to-date numbers stood at $214,372,786, a few million less that last year's $216,591,761. Total playing weeks for this season to date were 226, 52 weeks fewer than last year at this time.
