Strong winter for Broadway

The Phantom from the Opera hit 10,000 performances on February. 11. Chandra Lee Schwartz and Jackie Burns in Wicked in the Gershwin.Winter, surprisingly, continues to be kind to Broadway this season. Sure, last week's box office amounts might not have given legiters much to obtain looking forward to, however for a mid-Feb frame, it had not been so bad. And calculating from the beginning from the twelve months, the present annum is well in front of 2011 both when it comes to sales and attendance. Based on amounts come up with through the Broadway League, the 2011 B.O. cume hit $112.3 million versus. the $87.six million drenched for the similar days this year. Attendance arrived at 1.3 million, in comparison towards the a million theatergoers who switched out throughout exactly the same window this past year. Numerous factors lead towards the uptick, most famously of the greater quantity of productions running this season than within the same six days this year. You will find also Street-wide marketing deals, underneath the ad banners Broadway Week (which ended February. 4) and Kids' Evening on Broadway (February. 5-9), assisting to warm up winter biz, and in addition, the unseasonably warm winter has not produced just one blizzard to discourage auds. Per week when some shows were up yet others were lower -- and no fluctuations were attention-getting -- the greatest news from the frame was probably the 10,000th performance of "The Phantom of Opera" ($604,378) on February. 11. The week's tally was lower a little in the prior sesh simply because half the inventory at this landmark perf on Saturday was contributed for an Stars Fund charitable organisation event. Also lower was "Porgy and Bess" ($818,346), inside a dip possibly due to the 4-show lack of above-the-title thesp Norm Lewis. An even more worrying decline was published at "Sister Act" ($426,152), which saw attendance slide below 48%, in addition to at soon-to-close play "Stick Fly" ($196,337), another reveal that performed to under 1 / 2 of capacity. Among individuals confirming gains within the prior week was "Wicked" ($1,508,501), which reclaimed the very best just right the charts in front of last week's leader, "It of Mormon." The second, however, still did all right, breaking another house record in the O'Neill Theater having a weekly tally of $1,485,740. "Spider-Guy: Turn from the Dark:" ($1,378,970) and "The Lion King" ($1,349,837) rounded the frame's millionaires' club. One of the other productions to determine a sales bump were those probably to possess become a lift in the Kids' Evening campaign, including kid-friendly "Mary Poppins" ($667,272) and "How to achieve Business Without Really Trying" ($656,165), whose star, Nick Jonas, was marketed because the Kids' Evening ambassador. Overall sales rose about $600,000 to $15.six million. That's greater compared to $15.a million published throughout exactly the same frame this past year, but last week's attendance of 177,602 was a little beneath the 179,000 from 2011. Joining the fray a week ago was the commercial change in last fall's nonprofit staging of "Venus in Fur" ($346,117), confirming solid amounts for any play that's technically still in previews in front of a February. 29 re-opening. Contact Gordon Cox at gordon.cox@variety.com