Broadway’s Recovery Continues Ahead Of A Jampacked Spring

Broadway’s Recovery Continues Ahead Of A Jampacked Spring

Everything's coming up roses on Broadway. Well, not everything, not yet. But the buds are definitely green. Accounting for inflation, ticket sales are about 79% recovered to where they "should" be compared to the same week in 2020. That math is fuzzy, however, as fewer than half of Broadway's theaters are currently occupied, and no new shows will open in the next six weeks. Half a dozen closed over the holidays due to Covid-related cancellations and illnesses. In the interim, producers are hoping to build capacity for the remaining ventures back up to pre-Omicron levels. Given the rapidly declining cases in New York, they've reason to be optimistic; an additional 13, 000 seats had butts in them compared to the week prior, for the same 19 shows. The downstream effect: A spring schedule even more jammed than before the pandemic. Historically, many productions open as close to the Tony Awards eligibility deadline as possible, hoping to leverage recency bias and stay fresh in the minds of nominators and voters. However, this has led to a worsening April logjam, a self-inflicted paradox that risks flattening individual projects amid a wave of competition. This year, no fewer than 16 opening nights are