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and welcome to your Midweek Grosses and News episode from Broadway Radio. My name is Matt Tiamine. On today's episode, I'm going to run you through all of the data from this week's grosses report for the week ending on Sunday, July 19th. That will be if you are scoring at home. Week 8 of the 20262027 Broadway season, we will start with the big numbers and last week Broadway had 31 shows on the boards and the grosses came in at 30,989,768 bucks, down 6% from the previous week and 8% from last year. Attendance was at 255,560 people, a decline of about 17,000 people from last week and 2035 from the corresponding week in 2025. The average ticket price was up a little bit about $0.50 to $121.26 over last week, but down $10.14 from the same week last year. For the second week in a row, we had Hamilton and Death of a Salesman both leading the pack above $2 million. Hamilton was on top at 2.2 million with Death of Salesman coming in at 2,062,000. But again, the caveat remains the Death of a Salesman is only doing seven shows per week, so that will average out to a better per performance haul, which is for the Arthur Miller revival. Those two shows were followed closely by the Lion King at 1.9 million, MJ at 1.8 and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at 1.56. The rest of the shows north of seven figures in descending order are Ragtime, Wicked, the Lost Boys, the Rocky Horror Show, Joe Turner's, Come and Gone, Schmigadoon and Aladdin during its final week on Broadway, Proof was at over 101% capacity and it topped out at $934,473. That was its highest GR week of its run on Broadway since previews, so it was nice to see a show that I felt was underappreciated this season go out on such a high note. Omari continued to slide fairly significantly since Maya Rudolph departed the show, but it took an extra big dip last week because Meg Statler, who had taken over as Mary Todd Lincoln, was out with an illness through Thursday night. She came back on Friday. Every Brilliant Thing also saw another fairly sizable decline to come in at just $361,158 during the second week of Tracee Ellis Ross's run. But that can be attributed a little bit to the fact that the Sunday matinee was canceled, so they only did seven shows last week compared to the normal eight during a traditional week. The show is currently scheduled to play for a couple more weeks through August 9th. So far this season, Broadway has grossed $282,970,861, down about 9% over last year with attendance down 2%, coming at 2,326,833. But since seats of Broadway's 31 currently running shows, only 14 played a 90% capacity or more, Ragtime was at exactly 100%, Hamilton was a bit over at 100.68, Death of a Salesman was at 101.25 and the aforementioned Proof led the way at 101.83. Alright, getting into some news. The biggest seismic news that we got came on Wednesday when the longtime artistic director of the Public Theater, Oscar Eustace, announced that he would be stepping down when his current contract ends on July 30th of 2028. As of now, he has been with the theater for 21 years and has helped keep the Public Theater as one of the most preeminent institutions of theater in the world. Eustace will be 70 on the day that his contract ends and will then turn over the reins to a new artistic director. The Public Theater was the preeminent institution in New York Off Broadway theater before Eustace took over, but in the years since he came on board they have won Pulitzer Prizes for Hamilton and Sweat, Tony's for Hamilton, Fun Home and the Hair Revival. They have done over 250 productions and hundreds of millions of dollars in fundraising. But since the Coronavirus Pandemic things have been difficult, as there have been fights for higher wages both for actors and for staff members and for crew members, as well as pushes for better working conditions and more diverse programming. The cost of everything that theater does has risen dramatically, and the public trying to meet those demands has also had to lay off a number of employees. So it has been a fairly turbulent time in the past five, six years for the Public Theater, and whoever takes over will have to navigate a massive mandate for what the Public Theater means to not only Off Broadway theater, to New York theater, to Broadway theater, but just to theater in general. But they will also have to figure out how to make that legacy something that can be maintained and enhanced moving forward in a very different environment, both theatrically and from a labor perspective than they have ever had to deal with in the past. I think Oscar Eustace is a genius and one of the greatest artistic directors in the history of the American theater. However, at 70 years old, I do think that this is an opportunity for somebody who sees things differently to come in and try new things. I think that the Public Theater has in many ways gotten a little bit stale with programming, and I think this is an excellent time to cultivate a new, younger generation of theater creators to lead the most hallowed of theatrical institutions in New York City. All right, going from one New York nonprofit institution to another, this week, the Roundabout Theater Company set dates for its upcoming season. We already knew what the season would include, but we now know that the Imaginary Invalid will play the Todd Haymes Theater on Broadway, beginning performances on September 25th. Mix and Master by Dominique Morisseau that will feature Ruben Santiago Hudson and Kara Young will begin performances on January 5th. And the Broadway revival of the Full Monty will begin performances on April 3rd. Off Broadway, we also now have dates for the Heart, beginning performances on October 8th, the Grief Eater beginning performances on January 21st. And the last show of the season still doesn't have a date yet, but it will be the Vagina Monologues, directed by Nomad Mezwini. Moving into some show and casting news this week, the Broadway production of Anne Juliet announced a number of people joining the production. One will be new to the Broadway production and one will be back to the Broadway production. Ben Jackson Walker, who originated the role of Romeo in the production, will return beginning on August 13th. He will succeed Liam Pierce, who plays his final performance on August 9th. And then Corey Mock, who originated the role of Shakespeare on the national tour, will take over the role on August 4. Taking over the great Drew Gehling who wraps up his run on August 2nd. Somebody who I think would probably be a pretty good Shakespeare would be Nick Blaymire. But he's a little busy because his musical soon will have an Off Broadway run. This fall it will play the Loft at St. Luke's Theater. Beginning performances on September 30th. It will be a six week run and it'll be directed by Will Blum. Casting will be announced at a later date. And then going from New York to London, it was announced this week that Andrew Barth Feldman will make his London stage debut in the new musical by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik called Nero. As you might have guessed, the musical reimagines the story of the Roman Emperor Nero. Key of fiddling while Rome burns fame. It will begin performances on November 2nd at London Southwark Playhouse Elephant and it is currently scheduled to run through December 2nd. Lindsey Posner will direct and choreography will be done by James Cousins. Further casting will be announced at a later date. All right everybody, that's all that we have for you today. Thank you so much for supporting Broadway radio. If you want more Broadway radio, head over to patreon.com broadwayradio I will be out of town this weekend, so Last Week on Broadway will come to you on Monday night and Patreon and Tuesday. So adjust your listening schedule accordingly. All right everybody, thank you so much for giving us of your time and listening. This has been Matt Tammanini and I'll talk to you soon.
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