Broadway Box Office Is Starting to Look Like Christmas: Returns 10% to $37 Million

The holiday cheer — at least the kind measured at the box office — seemed to hit Broadway last week, at least for some shows. Clear example: A Christmas songStarring Jefferson Mays in his tour de force as every last ghost, warp and woof in history saw a whopping 34% increase in sales, grossing $742,010 and occupying 83% of the seats at Dutchman’s.

Overall, the 35 Broadway shows grossed $37,217,001 for the week ending December 11, a 10% increase over the previous week. The number of visitors of 283,548 showed an increase of 7%. The average ticket price for the week was $131.25.

Some love it when it’s hot opened to rave reviews and climbed nearly $125,000 in the previous week to a total of $747,142. Expect a similar development in the coming weeks.

Other strong performers in this countdown to Christmas include & Julia with Sondheim and grossed $1,152,409 with 95% of the house filled.

A beautiful sound, the Neil Diamond Musical appeared to be on a healthy run at Broadhurst and earned $1,447,503 with 95% of seats filled. This dollar figure represents the highest-grossing musical in the venue’s history – the overall box office record is held by special event productions Hugh Jackman back on Broadway as of 2011 with sales of $1.5 million.

Funny girl got his usual big ($1,892,378), just like the music man ($3,389,857), Leopoldville ($1,078,215), The piano lesson ($938,103), The skim of the opera ($2,020,245) and followers of The lion king to city ​​of Hades. Kimberly Akimbotaking up 86% of the booth space at $108, a doll cost $570,155.

Difficult to find ticket buyers is not a motherJordan E. Cooper’s outstanding Broadway debut, which grossed just $164,592 with the Belasco only half full; Murders in the State of Ohio ($300,180, 64% capacity at James Earl Jones); and Top dog/under dog ($264,965, 52% at Golden). All three shows deserve a bigger audience.

In his last week KPOP grossed $281,757 and filled all the Circle in the Square seats (the producers offered the AAPI community 200 free tickets to the final show on December 11).

Two shows are in preview and will be the last productions to open before the new year: Between Riverside and Crazy at the Hayes (opening December 19) and Cooperation at the Friedman (opening December 20).

In the season to date, Broadway has grossed $841,596,045 with total admissions of 6,616,571 at an approximately 87% seat load rate.

The 35 productions reporting numbers on Broadway last week were & Juliet, 1776, A Christmas Carol, Ain’t No Mo’, Aladdin, Almost Famous, A Beautiful Noise, Beetlejuice, Between Riverside and Crazy, The Book of Mormon, Chicago, The Collaboration, Death of a Salesman, Funny Girl, Hadestown, Hamilton, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Into the Woods, Kimberly Akimbo, KPOP, Leopoldstadt, The Lion King, Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man & the Pool, The Music Man, MJ, Moulin Rouge!, Ohio State Murders , The Phantom of the Opera, The Piano Lesson, Six, A Strange Loop, Some Like It Hot, Take Me Out, Topdog/Underdog and Weak.

All figures courtesy of The Broadway League. The full box office list can be found on the league’s website.