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The new revival of the Bernstein musical On The Town opened this past week to unexpectedly sunny reviews. At the Lyric, the tuner played to 87%, no doubt feeling the impact of press night. The box-office gross was a lowly 39%. Look for those numbers to improve next week.
Another recent opener that did well with the critics, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, continued to do well at the Barrymore, even if, at 97% capacity, it wasn't quite selling out, as shows like Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder and It's Only a Play continue to do.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch got a new star in Michael C. Hall Oct. 16. Ever since the departure of original leading man Neil Patrick Harris, who won a Tony Award for his work, the John Cameron Mitchell musical ceased doing sell-out work at the Belasco. During the reign of Andrew Rannells as Hedwig, house capacity hovered between 80% and 90%.
Upon first impression, it doesn't look like Hall will be bringing the show back to Harris-like territory. Box office and attendance were down slightly last week, topping at $544,166 and 5,552 respectively. Houses were 92% full, and box-office take was 85% of the potential, both respectable numbers. The three shows in previews, Disgraced, The Last Ship and The Real Thing all performed slightly better than they did last week, though none is proving itself a breakout hot property. The laggard of the bunch is Sting's virgin effort as a musical composer, Ship. Houses were 75% full at the Neil Simon and box office-take was under half of the potential.
Once, which recently announced that it would close at the end of the year, played to auditoriums that were 61% full. Another show that is slowly making its exit, Cinderella, played to roughly the same number of ticketbuyers.
Overall, numbers were down somewhat. Broadway took in $25,993,464, a little over a million less than last week. Attendance was down a couple thousand and change. The number of shows on the boards held steady at 31. The gross for the season to date stands at $537,419,282, nearly $70 million more than last season at this time.
