Broadway box office drops over holiday

Only 'Conquests' bucked the downward trend

By GORDON COX

As usual, the fireworks and barbecues of the Fourth of July holiday overshadowed such indoor pursuits as theatergoing, with Broadway B.O. dropping almost across the board.

The only production to buck the downward trend was "The Norman Conquests," up slightly to $320,397. Import of Alan Ayckbourn's Brit trilogy has been slowly gaining ground in the weeks since scoring positive reviews and picking up the revival Tony, although the run -- limited to 16 weeks -- won't be long enough for the production to recoup, according to producer Sonia Friedman.

Total sales slid $2.7 million to $18.8 million for 24 shows on the boards, with the dip compounded by the absence of recently shuttered productions including "August: Osage County."

The big-name hits still attracted auds, with five shows posting sales above the $1 million mark. Even a 9% dip of more than $125,000 proved relatively insignificant at "West Side Story" ($1,253,984) -- although a drop of about the same amount at "Hair" ($999,471) caused the show to fall just short of that million-dollar line.

Largest loss of the week, a 16% drop of $140,000, was posted by "South Pacific" ($745,970), the hot-ticket revival of last year that has cooled a bit in recent months and consequently proved increasingly vulnerable to streetwide trends.

"Shrek the Musical" ($853,080), "9 to 5" ($675,136), "Rock of Ages" ($569,432) and "Next to Normal" ($418,644) were also among the tuners to see B.O. dips of 10%-15%, although "Rock" and "Normal" each logged attendance percentages in the high 90s.

Despite the anticipated slip in B.O., the Main Stem's cumulative attendance remained fairly robust at 221,717, or 89% of overall capacity. That's about on par with the same frame last year.

Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118005737.html

Like this article? Variety.com has over 150,000 articles, 40,000 reviews and 10,000 pages of charts. Subscribe today!
http://www.variety.com/emailfriend
or call (866) MY-VARIETY.
Can't commit? Sign up for a free trial!
http://www.variety.com/emailfriend