For reasons long lost in the mists of time, Broadway theatres have always been far more open than their West End counterparts when it comes to declaring audience numbers and the revenues that they generate. With inflation bouncing around at an unhealthy level, it must be expected that there will be regular announcements of broken records. Even so, the latest is quite something.
Last week, Good Night, and Good Luck “shatters all box office records with gross of $4,003,481.50”. They must be very proud of that last $0.50.
For anyone unfamiliar with this new play, it is an adaptation by George Clooney and Grant Heslov of the film of the same name and stars Clooney making his Tony-nominated Broadway debut under the direction of David Cromer. Perhaps a little ironically, given Clooney’s recent criticisms of the American president, and the subject matter, following broadcaster Edward R Murrow as he battles McCarthyism, itself a war on communism, the phenomenal sales actually represent a zenith for extreme capitalist principles.
The show is playing at the Winter Garden Theatre, a gigantic house more commonly used for musicals, having hosted Cats for 18 years and soon to welcome Mamma Mia. Given its 1,537-seat capacity (per the Broadway League) and, one would assume, the difficulty in conveying any degree of intimacy for a straight play, it might seem an odd venue for this play, but the producers obviously decided that they needed something of this size to maximise profits.
It is worth emphasising that the gross takings last week of over $4 million managed to break the records at the venue and for plays despite holding only eight performances. Typically, these achievements occur over the Christmas and New Year period where a ninth is slipped in.
Although the numbers don’t quite stack up, the Broadway League state that the average ticket price was approximately $320 (over £240), which may strike many British theatregoers, even pretty rich ones, as incomprehensible. Since it is almost impossible to buy New York theatre tickets without paying a booking fee, the actual cost is in excess of £250, without food, drink, transport etc.
In fact, the reality might be even worse since a quick look at ticket prices for the last day of this month going through the official web site shows a range between $329 and $849 plus $22 booking fee. $871 is equivalent to £655, but only because luckily the dollar has dipped in value considerably in recent weeks thanks to the tariffs farrago.
How does any of this make sense? For most of us, it doesn’t. Maybe I mix in the wrong circles, but I don’t know anybody who would be willing to pay £500 for a pair of theatre seats, let alone £1,310. George Clooney is clearly a great draw and the opportunity to see him on Broadway may never return, but is watching him on stage some distance away for a couple of hours really worth that much? Audiences obviously believe that it is and are happy to see a staging of what many regard as a movie classic with the great man strutting his stuff in the flesh.
Anyone stopping to think might wonder whether there might be better value in spending under $20 on the Blu-ray and, if they have no Blu-ray player, buying one of those and still having several hundred dollars to spare. For the more curmudgeonly, streaming is available at less than $4.
The record-breaking results for Good Night, and Good Luck are as good a demonstration as one could imagine for trends in theatre today. An A-list film star is the primary ingredient for big sales, while re-staging a big film in a theatre will also boost popularity. The only thing that the producers might have got wrong is choosing not to convert the show into a musical, which might then have enabled them to exceed the $5 million mark, a weekly figure achieved by Wicked last Christmas.
Then again, last week, the second most popular show was written by none other than William Shakespeare, Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal. Another star-studded straight play, Glengarry Glen Ross, came in third place. Astonishingly, Othello, playing in the smaller Ethel Barrymore Theatre, had an average ticket price last week of just under $370 (£280) and top price touching $900 (£680) before booking fees.
Even so, as the George Clooney show heads towards closure on 8 June, the meagre £4 million record is likely to be broken on an almost weekly basis as flexible (dynamic) ticket pricing pushes top tickets inexorably upwards towards the $1,000 mark.