Matt Tamnini (0:01)

Welcome to Today on Broadway for Wednesday, December 18, 2024 on Broadway Radio's Matt Tamnini. We are just seven days away from Christmas, so if you have not yet really started your shopping, I'm about halfway through. You need to get on that. Today's episode is going to be very short because it seems like everybody's pretty much packed it up and started their holiday vacations already. Also, Grace is a little under the weather, so I'm going to run you through the very few stories that we have as quickly as humanly possible. But on yesterday's show, I did mention that, like, right around the time we were recording, I started to see a bunch of stars at all in, and that is because they did, in fact have their gala performance on Monday night. Basically every celebrity from the world of comedy was there. You had Olivia Munn, who of course is married to John Mulaney, who is one of the stars of the show. Tom Hanks, Pete Davidson, Steve Martin, Jon Stewart. So many people were there to check out this show. I talked to a few people who were there and they just said, like, it's the craziest room that they have ever been in in terms of celebrities. I have a friend who's on the producing team who got her picture taken with. With Tom Hanks, just not like posed. They were just standing there in conversation and got a picture taken. So absolutely wild. The show is obviously made up of some of the biggest stars in both Broadway and comedy spaces. Currently it is starring John Mulaney, Fred Armisen, Richard Kyne and Renee Elise Goldsberry. Coming in throughout the run are the likes of Lin Manuel Miranda, Jimmy Fallon, Nick Kroll, David cross, Chloe Feynman, A.D. bryant, Annaleigh Ashford, Hank Azaria. So many incredible people. So whoever you see, if you are going to see the show as is now running through February 16th, you're going to see a great group. And I am currently trying to arrange tickets to see it in January. I don't think I'm going to get invited, so I'm probably going to go ahead and pay for tickets. They are expensive. Everything in the Hudson theater is, and I hate sitting upstairs there. But this seems like one that'll be a ton of fun. And if you do make it into the end of the theater, you will be richly rewarded with a ton of laughs. All right, on to the news. And this was completely coincidental. I did not know that this was happening. When I mentioned this show earlier in the week. I talked about the fact maybe it was last week. I talked about the fact that when I saw the Sarah Silverman musical the Bedwetter, I did not see Casey Levy on she was out ill, maybe Covid. The first preview happened off Broadway and instead I saw Lauren Marcus, who I had been a fan of since I saw her in the Jonathan Larson Project. Now we know that the Jonathan Larson Project, which has been seen in Washington D.C. but also at 54 below where I saw it, will now have an official Off Broadway staging. It will move to the Orpheum Theater Off Broadway in the East Village, which seems appropriate for something written by Jonathan Larson and will begin a 16 week limited engagement on Valentine's Day, February 14, which with an opening night on March 10, the cast will be announced at a later date. I do not know like I said anything about this potential production, but I will tell you who I saw at 54 below when they did this. Originally, in addition to Laura Marcus, who I mentioned, we also had Nick Blaymire, Andy Mientis, Christa Rodriguez and George Salazar. Jennifer Ashley Tepper, who theater fans know as the programming director at 54 Below. She's also a theater historian. She conceived it and she produced it in direct directed it at 54. It'll now be directed by John Simpkins, but Tepper is still involved. Obviously the songs in this show were discovered by Tepper, who was doing research as she does. And I think this, I could be getting some of this wrong, but I think the story is that she found them as like tapes in a lot of cases, maybe the National Library when she was doing research. They are songs that were cut from a musical version of 1984 Jonathan Larson show Suburbia also cut songs from Rent and what became Tick Tick Boom they had. They had never been publicly performed before or recorded before the Jonathan Larson Project. And now it is going to get an Off Broadway run. So Rent heads, people who came of age in the musical theater era of Rent are going to love this. So I hope that many, if not all the people who originally did this at 54 return, because that cast was was tremendous when they did it back in 2018. All right, let's dive in to last week's Broadway grosses. Despite the fact that they were down one show following the closing of Tammy Faye, Broadway still saw some pretty healthy increases. There were 36 shows on the boards last week, but they brought in $43,720,381. That was up 4% over the previous week. Attendance also climbed 2% to come in at 314,951 and the average ticket price was up 2% at $138.82. Wicked continues to ride the momentum of the film success, but wow, just a few weeks ago, it was the only show north of $2 million. There are now four Broadway shows who brought in $2 million or more last week, led by Wicked at $2,878,086, then the Lion King at basically just a smidge under 2.5 million, then Hamilton at 2.18, and then ELF coming in at $2,033,784. Sunset Boulevard was in fifth at just a little bit over 1.9 million. The rest of the shows, in descending order, north of gypsy at 1.8, which is very good for them. MJ, the outsiders, the Great Gatsby, Hell's Kitchen, Death Becomes Her, Aladdin, Moulin Rouge, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the Book of Mormon, oh, Mary and Juliet. Maybe Ketanji Brown Jackson helped to boost that a little bit. But also Cabaret, Back to the Future, the Notebook, in its final week on Broadway, Suffs, and in just five preview performances, all in Comedy About Love, came in at $1,046,514, which is absolutely astonishing. And that tells you, like I said, the tickets are not cheap. But with a cast like that, you can understand why Gypsy was the biggest riser out of all of the shows last week. But that can also be explained a little bit because last week was its first week of eight performances, but it did increase $215,586. In terms of shows that did not see more performances, Elf had the biggest jump at a $207,000 increase. The notebook, playing its final week on Broadway, also saw over 172,000, and the roommate, which also closed last week, increased 169,000 as well. Down at the other end of the scale, the two Broadway plays that are in subscription houses right now and were in previews for either all or most of last week were Eureka Day coming in at $230,425, and Cult of Love at 315,283. Again, both of those subscription houses, very small, but both got great reviews, so it'll be interesting to see if those climb in the coming weeks. In total, a staggering 28 of the 36 shows on Broadway last week played to 90% capacity or more, including all in and Wicked, which were at 100%. Death becomes her and Hamilton just a little bit over 100%. SUFFS at 101.5. The notebook, at 101.76, the outsiders at 102.21. And then Romeo and Juliet leading the way. Even though it was not at a million dollars this week, it was pretty close. It was like 920 something thousand led the way in terms of capacity at 102.6%. And then finally some good news in the Off Broadway cabaret space. We've discussed what's been going on over at the Lori Beachman Theater in the West Bank Cafe as it has dealt with potential closings basically since COVID But we now know that not only will the Lori Beachman Theater and the West Bank Cafe continue to operate, but they will have new owners. The original owner, Steve Olsen, is retiring and he is selling it to Broadway producers Michael and Tom D'Angora, who have really led the way to try to keep that venue and restaurant open. They are purchasing it from him and will take over after 46 years under Olson's management. It is currently closed for renovations, which of course has me singing Little Shop of Horrors. But it is scheduled to have a grand reopening celebration in January of 2025. I would imagine that you will see a bunch of stars not only participate in that, but maybe try to do more regular at the Laurie Beechman. I've seen a number of shows there, including that used to be the home of Broadway Sessions, which is now over at the green room 42. But with all of this love for that space. They had performers like Andrew Both Feldman, Julie Benko, Annie Golden, Joe Iconis, Judy Kuhn, Lorna Luft, even Obozada, Richard Kind, Lillias White. All of those types of people were involved in some fundraisers and a gala performance this past fall. So hopefully they'll be able to get some of them to do sets there, do shows there, and really reinvigorate that performance space because it is so special and it has such a great history. I mean, Joan Rivers did her last performance there before she passed away and it was her regular home to try out new material. So very happy for everybody. The Lurie Beachman and the west bank both in terms of what their future looks like. But everybody who has loved going there and seeing things over the years also. I will be in town this week. Currently I am seeing Sunset Boulevard again today, Wednesday, matinee, then Cult of Love tonight and then Wonderful World, finally checking that one out on Thursday night. I'm not sure what I'm gonna see on Friday. I'm hoping that I'm gonna be able to see Eureka Day. I was originally supposed to see that a different night. But I had to change my travel plans for honestly, my nephew's choir concert on Tuesday night. So I am seeing that on Tuesday night. And then so I'm hoping to see Eureka Day on Friday. So I'll be talking about that, obviously. And you can follow along on Patreon with travelogue episodes as well. All right, everybody, that's all that we have for today. Thanks for listening to Today on Broadway. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram @BroadwayRadio. You can follow me on Instagram @bwwmatt. Have a wonderful hump day, and we'll be back to talk to you tomorrow.