Nothing like a boycott promoted by conservative Republicans to send the Broadway grosses soaring. The boycott of “Hamilton,” Lin-Manual Miranda’s mega-smash, was started, you’ll recall, after the cast was said to have “lectured” Vice President-elect and audience member Mike Pence at the curtain call of the November 18th performance. The politely phrased plea for inclusiveness and tolerance drew a rebuke from Donald Trump and started a Twitter debate about its appropriateness. The pop star John Legend wrote, “If #boycotthamilton goes like #boycottbeyonce I’m gonna start #boycottjohnlegend. S—seems lucrative.”He made a good point. In the eight-performance week that included the Thanksgiving holiday, “Hamilton” took in a whopping $3.3 million with an average ticket price of $303.00. That metric reflected the official premium ticket price of $998, an all-time high in an industry that also experienced another record that week: the 34 Broadway shows that were running brought in a record-breaking $35.3 million, with four shows exceeding $2 million — “Hamilton,” “The Lion King,” “Wicked,” and “Aladdin.”To put the gross in perspective, only the strongest shows exceed $1 million, although Thanksgiving week is traditionally the second most lucrative period of the season. This time around, in the week ending November 27, a lucky 13 productions made that amount, including the newcomer, “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.” The new $998 official premium ticket price for “Hamilton” no doubt sent it to stratospheric heights. That demand doesn’t take into the consideration the secondary market, like StubHub, where tickets to the show are going for far above the official premium price. Expect the grosses to go even higher when the end-of-the-year holiday season rolls around.The Christmas and New Year’s grosses will no doubt make this Broadway chapter one for the books. What these sorts of numbers mean for the theater is a mixed bag. The staggering price of tickets reinforces the idea that Broadway musicals are an elitist art form, geared only to the wealthiest, even though there are clever ways to grab discounted tickets for the less popular shows through such outlets as the Theatre Development Fund. And with Wall Street at an exuberant high, expect more and more theater-loving business titans to lay their chips down on the Great White Way.
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