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Hi and welcome to Broadway Radio's Grosses Report episode for Wednesday, May 27, 2026 on Broadway Radio's Matt Tamminini we did not have a Last week on Broadway come out earlier this week because of the Memorial Day holiday and then all of the show reviews that I have been doing and I've been trying to plow through. Always hoped to get one done per day or at least one per day. When I didn't have another episode. I wasn't able to stick to that plan at first, but I'm doing a better job of that as I'm rounding through the rest of them. I will have Masquerade coming up tomorrow, then Mexico, followed by Proof, and then I will have one episode where I talk about three off Broadway. They're not really plays, they're more of entertainment, 11 to midnight, amaze and Got a Dance. So there'll be four more of those coming. I'm really enjoying doing them, but they are hard work, especially when you are silly like me and decide to stack 17 shows in eight days. But I really appreciate all of the lovely feedback that you have had about those and I'm really looking forward to this being how I operate with reviews moving forward. And now that I have kind of gotten my sea legs under me with them, hopefully they won't take as much time in the future. But nonetheless, we are here to talk about a ton of incredible news that has happened over the past week. And let's start with the Broadway grosses because not only do we have last week's grosses to talk about, but because the week ending on Sunday, May 24th was the 52nd week of the 20252026 Broadway season. We have complete season wide details to get into, but let's start with the micro before we get to the macro. And let's talk about the 52nd week's totals. In total, 40 of Broadway's 41 theaters were full. Of course that is because the Eugene o' Neill where the Book of Mormon is playing had been undergoing the repairs from the three alarm fire that happened on May 1st. Well, as I am recording, they are probably about 15 minutes into the first act of the first show back. We'll talk a little bit more about that. So next week, the first week of the 2026, 2027 season will be factored back in, although because of the closing of Beaches will still be at 40 houses full. But nonetheless, last week Broadway brought in $40,707,260. That is up 7% from the previous week, but still down significantly 14% or about 6 and million from this period last year. Attendance was up 6% week over week to come in at 336,648 people, but that is still down 2% from last year. The average ticket price was up 49 cents from the previous week coming at $120.92, down a whopping $17.32 from the 52nd playing week last year. Leading the way last week was every brilliant thing. That of course was Daniel Radcliffe's final week in the show. It brought in $2,296,473. I'll be interested to see what Hargitay is able to do during her first week. Obviously she is not a star on the level of Daniel Radcliffe, but she has a lot of very passionate fans and a lot of very passionate New York based fans. So I'll be interested to see what those numbers are like come next week. Also above 2 million was Hamilton to come in at $2,038,122. The rest of the top five were the Lion King at 1.98, Death of a Salesman in just seven performances at 1.64 and MJ at 1.59. The rest of the show's north of seven figures in descending order are oh Mary, Wicked Ragtime, the Lost Boys, Aladdin, Giant, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Now keep in mind Tom Felton is still out. You remember this is when he had already planned on leaving. He did extend his contract to go through November, but he is taking a little extra time that had previously been scheduled for him to already be out of the show. Continuing from there we had Moulin Rouge cast, the Jellicoe Ball, the Rocky Horror show and stranger things. The first shadow, the first show beneath seven figures is chess coming in at $995,473. We'll get back to Chess because that's not a terrible number. But obviously it's not enough to keep the show going. But we'll get back to that. Of course, down at the other end of the scale, Celebrity Autobiography, despite having a $77,000 increase from the previous week, is still bringing up the rear by nearly 328,000 DOL. It only grossed $111,087 last week. The average ticket price was at $20.88. Although it was not the lowest show in terms of capacity, it did have 58.96% capacity. It was ahead of only Beaches, which came in at 57.89% during its final week on Broadway to gross 511,892 bucks. In total, 25 of Broadway's 40 shows played to 90% capacity or more. With Ragtime and Every Brilliant Thing both at an even 100%. Hamilton at 101, death of a Salesman, just a smidge above that, and just in time, continues to lead the way at 102.77%. That's the 52nd week. Now, let's talk about the full 2025, 2026 season. Now, keep in mind that when comparing this to the previous year, the 2024, 2025 season, it is not apples to apples, because every seven years, and we've talked about this a number of times throughout the history of today on Broadway, but every seven years, the Broadway calendar has 53 weeks. Just the way that the calendars fall, you have to do that every seven years so that it keeps up. So numbers are not exactly the same, but this season was still up 1% in terms of grosses come in at $1,910,903,835, up 1%, but having one less week then attendance actually was down 0.6%. Again, one less week. But 14,577,322 people saw a Broadway show during the season. The 2025, 2026 season saw a total of 74 productions, 35 of which opened during this season. They played a total of 13,416 performances with an average capacity of 90.8%, which is pretty good. I mean, we talk every week about which shows are at 90% capacity or more on average. Of course, that is not meaning that every show is there, but on average, Broadway did that last season, which is pretty great overall. I think those are encouraging numbers, depending on how you want to look at it. We know that there are tons of financial issues plaguing Broadway right now. And not the least of them are the financial issues of how much it costs for an average theater goer to buy a ticket. But those are pretty good numbers and I think encouraging to realize that despite the fact that tourism into the United States, especially from Canada, is really crashing out for a lot of different reasons, some political, some societal, some economic, the fact that Broadway is still at least treading water is positive, optimistic, certainly not wonderful, but it has not been completely crushed by circumstances outside of its control. Now, I did mention the fact that Chess, despite having just under $1 million last, is going to wrap up its run. We had previously talked about the fact that Lea Michele was going to end her run in June and would then be replaced by recording artist and former star of Moulin Rouge on Broadway, Jojo Levesque. However, this week it was announced that instead of continuing without Lea Michele, the show is going to close on June 21st. Obviously I feel terrible for everybody in the show. The Tony nominees, Nicholas Christopher and Hannah K. Cruise, Bryce Pinkham, Aaron Tveit, all the ensemble and everybody else. But also Jojo, like that's, that's gotta be awful to have the rug pulled out from under you, especially when you had probably already begun, if not actual rehearsals, you know, learning the part and working on it. That's a, a really kind of awful okie doke to have to go through. I hope that we find her back on a Broadway stage very soon, whether that is with Working Girl, which she led the out of town tryout for last year, or in something else. But our hearts go out to everybody over at the Imperial. But as one door closes, another one opens because this week we also found out about a very star studded Broadway revival of the play Other Desert Cities. The show will play a 16 week limited engagement at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway. As I'd mentioned, I think last week, despite the fact that every brilliant thing was doing incredibly well. And we're bringing in Tracee Ellis Ross following Mirka Hargitay. The Ambassador Theater Group uses that house as a regular rotating home for star studded events. And that is obviously going to be what's happening here. The show will be led by Julia Louis Dreyfus, making her Broadway debut alongside Ed Harris, Allison Janney, Joe Keery and Lily Rabe. The play will be directed by John Benjamin Hickey and is scheduled to play for 16 weeks, starting previews on September 29th and running through January 17th. As I mentioned earlier, of course, Book of Mormon is back on the boards over at the Eugene o' Neill Theater and that is going to kick off a celebration of the show's 15th anniversary on Broadway and part of that is going to be original stars coming in and out of the show, the creators making guest appearances and cameos, but it will also lead to a special performance at the Tony Awards this year. The entire cast, including Nikki M. James, Josh Gad, Andrew Rannells and Rory o', Malley, will reunite for a special performance performance and the show's writers, Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Bobby Lopez will introduce the performance as well. Sticking with the Tonys, we also found out that every single nominated musical, either Best Musical or Best Revival, will be performing at the Tonys this year. That means we will have seven performances from current nominees. Those are the Lost Boys, Schmigadoon, Titanique, Two Strangers, Carry a Cake Across New York Cast, the Jellicoe Ball, Ragtime and the Rocky Horror Show. They do say that additional performances will be announced in the coming weeks. This obviously includes Book of Mormon, which was announced after this original news was released, but hopefully we get some more. Obviously there aren't any other currently running musicals from this season that would perform. Obviously Chess could, but it won't because it is going to be closing two weeks later. They don't want to spend money on that. But there aren't any other musicals from this season that are actually still running, so it wouldn't make sense for anything else. So it'll be interesting to see if they do add any others, if there's any other way they can sneak in anniversary performances or maybe even some of the upcoming shows get an opportunity to do a performance or something. Maybe we get a little bit of Wanted or Evita or Paddington or Galileo or Dream Girls or something like that. Who knows. But I'm hoping that we do get more performances rather than just these nominees in Book of Mormon. I think the 20s are always better when we have more performances. Of course I have always been in favor of getting the best play nominees to have some sort of scene. They've done that in the past. I know it's not nearly as compelling as the musicals, but still I think very worthwhile. Alright, going from the Tonys broadcast proper to the Act 1 pre show, we found out who was going to be hosting this year and my God, what a perfect duo of theater favorites who are also absolutely hysterical. Hosting this year will be Tony Award winner Laura Benanti and star of stage and screen Titus Burgess. They will kick off the Pre show at 6:35pm Eastern Time on June 7th. This will air for free on Pluto. It'll finish a little bit before 8pm so you'll have time to switch over out of Pluto either to Paramount plus or however you watch cbs. There will be some awards, generally design awards and some non competitive awards that are given out during the pre show. So if you want to make sure that you see everything, you obviously have to download Pluto. It is completely free and at least according to this press release that I'm looking at, you will click on the live music channel which is found underneath the entertainment category. A little confusing, but there will probably be some sort of banner if I remember correctly, from years past that you can click on to go straight to act one. All right, going from the Tonys to the Off Broadway Alliance Awards, the winners have been announced. This is an award that only does production categories. So Best Musical went to Mexicus. Best Play went to Cold War Choir Practice. Best Revival went to the 25th annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Best Solo Performance went to Can I Be Frank? And the best Unique theatrical experience went to Masquerade. Alright, let's run through some show and casting news fairly quickly. We already knew that the Rachel Zegler led production of Jamie Lloyd's Evito will be coming to Broadway next season. We now know when and where performances will begin at the Winter garden theater on February 27th with an opening night on March 2025th. As I'd said before, Jamie Lloyd's production of Much Ado About Nothing will be playing the Winter Garden in the fall and he is essentially just going to be setting up shop there for the rest of the season. Moving from the Winter Garden over to the Ambassador, one of my absolute favorite performers is going to be joining the Broadway production of Chicago starting on June 15th. That will be the one and only Christa Rodriguez. She will take over for Rachel Schur in the role of Roxy Hart. Now I did not see this movie, nor did I read the book, but there's a stage adaptation of the recent big screen thriller the Housemaid. It starred Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney. The play is being written by Becca Brunstetter. Now from what I can tell, this is just a play. It is not a musical. The movie is based on the book by Freda McFadden that is the first of a trilogy. So if Becca Brunstetter, who has long been one of my favorites, especially given what I thought was lovely work in the Notebook, it'll be interesting to see if this ends up being a show that has an opportunity to kind of break Broadway's sequel Curse and then to wrap up kind of the announcements that happen during the back half of the spring Road conference. Three shows announced, national tours, Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York, which will launch in the fall of 2027 Schmiga Dune, which will also head out during the following touring season. And then Heather's the Musical will go on its very first ever tour. It'll kick off in Baltimore, actually less than a year from now in May of 2027. Alright everybody, that is all that I have for you. Thank you as always for your support of Broadway radio. If you want more Broadway radio, head over to patreon.com broadwayradio thank you so much for listening and giving of your time. This has been Matt Tamnini and I'll talk to you soon.