Broadway ends year with a (slightly smaller) bang
“You definitely eat, live and breathe the show,” during the holidays, said Kara Lindsay, who plays Glinda in the hit musical “Wicked.” This week, she’ll perform 10 shows in six days. She’ll take showers — whether she needs them or not — so the steam can help her voice.
“The way I explain it to my family — they feel bad that I have to work on Christmas — but it’s what we dreamed of doing, so it’s a gift to me that I get to be on Broadway for Christmas,” Lindsay said.
The week of Christmas and the week of New Year’s Day are the highest-grossing of the year for Broadway shows, as tourists and visiting family descend on New York.
During the week ending December 27, “Hamilton” grossed $1.8 million, “Aladdin” $2 million and “Wicked” $2.4 million, according to the Broadway League.
All Broadway shows combined grossed $36 million in that time, and season-to-date, they had grossed nearly $823 million.
Both the weekly and annual totals are down about 1.4 percent from last year.
“There are several big reasons for that,” said David Rooney, theater editor for the Hollywood Reporter. “Christmas day fell this year on a Friday, which was slightly less advantageous than the year before,” he said. And while musicals like “The Lion King” and “Wicked” remain blockbusters, several plays haven’t spoken to audiences as much as 2014’s offerings.
“There’ve been a lot of plays in the fall that have not done the business they had hoped, and they probably dragged the overall box office for the year down a little,” said Rooney.
But there are still a few days left in 2015, and Broadway will sing and dance its way right up to the end.
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