| Broadway on track for record year |
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It's been a good year for the Great White Way.
Flush with the success of such musicals as "Spamalot" and "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," Broadway will close the books on 2005 with its biggest box office take for a calendar year. That's an estimated $825 million through year's end, up 10% from 2004's $749 million, according to data from the League of American Theatres and Producers.
Paid attendance is 5% higher than a year ago, 11.98 million compared with 11.3 million in 2004 -- the highest level in two decades. There were 1,517 playing weeks during the year, up from 1,455 in 2004.
"Live entertainment is really prospering, and people are demonstrating their appetite for live theater," league spokesman Alan Cohen said. "The theater has become the mass art form it was decades ago."
Cohen said that a number of factors are helping the upswing in Broadway, including a plethora of new and long-running musicals as well as an influx of celebrities appearing in shows, including Billy Crystal, Alan Alda, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Denzel Washington, Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane.
"There's also an unusual number of musicals that really drove popular interest," Cohen said. "The four Tony-nominated musicals -- 'Spamalot,' 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,' 'The Light in the Piazza' and 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee' -- are still playing at the end of the year and performing very well to packed houses."
Two other long-running shows, "Wicked" and "Avenue Q," are successfully treading the same path as such shows as "Hairspray," "Rent" and "The Phantom of the Opera."
The recent three-day transit strike in New York isn't expected to impact totals because only four performance slots were affected, Cohen said. Yet as good as the calendar year's performance is, it's not the internal yardstick. As a business, Broadway follows the Tony season, with its year beginning in June.
Another strong indicator: Tourism in New York appears to have returned to pre-September 11 levels.
"With half of Broadway audiences coming from outside the New York area and Broadway being the No. 1 reason why people say they come to New York for leisure, it's boding very well for Broadway," Cohen said.
By Paul J. Gough
Dec 29, 2005
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter |
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