'Bye Bye Birdie' was one of the few Broadway shows to see box office rise last week.
Who says bad reviews always spell B.O. doom?
"Bye Bye Birdie" ($638,124) last week flouted largely unfavorable notices -- not to mention a streetwide downward trend -- by posting a week-over-week gain of 16%, or more than $85,000.
Show was one of only a few to see sales climb last week, along with "Jersey Boys" ($1,175,433) and "West Side Story" ($1,107,211), which logged smaller bumps.
The majority of productions reported late-October slippage, although few dropped dramatically. The most significant erosion came at tourist-magnet tuners, with "Burn the Floor" ($301,345) down by 21%; and "The Phantom of the Opera" ($808,695), "Mary Poppins" ($701,021) and "Shrek the Musical" ($497,813) each off around 15% (although "Shrek" producers attribute some of that dip to one performance last week held for an entirely invited aud and for which no tickets were sold).
Overall Rialto cume was down $460,000 to $20.7 million for 32 shows on the boards. Attendance, on the other hand, was actually up slightly to about 250,000, or 83% of total capacity.
Adding modest new coin to the pot last week were a handful of incoming offerings playing their initial perfs, including "Ragtime" ($270,161 for five perfs), "Fela!" ($219,116 for six) and "In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play" ($56,201 for four).
Among the shows that opened last week, "After Miss Julie" ($216,363) managed to rise a bit, while "Memphis" ($528,902) slid slightly.
The sales-challenged revival of "Brighton Beach Memoirs" ($124,720), which opened Sunday, held about steady in a week that included press perfs and the heavily comped opening night. It remains to be seen whether reviews, which ranged from lukewarm to glowing, can help kick up the momentum up a notch.
Contact Gordon Cox at
gordon.cox@variety.com