The end of “Finding Neverland’s” Broadway run took a bite out of earnings last week. Box office on the Great White Way dropped 6.6% to $21.5 million after the theater community bid goodbye to the musical look at the life of Peter Pan creator J.M. Barrie. It capped a slow month for Broadway and represented a 2.3% drop from the year-ago period.
It’s understandable, in a way, and not just because the Malarial weather in New York must be warning off tourists who aren’t excited by the prospect of navigating the theater district in the heat and humidity. After all, the glow of the Tony Awards is fading and a new crop of hopefuls doesn’t start hitting theaters until next month when a revival of “The Front Page” with Nathan Lane and John Slattery and a new take on the Irving Berlin chestnut, “Holiday Inn,” open.
That left “Hamilton” as the week’s biggest earner. The hip-hop exploration of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton continued to be a cultural phenomenon with few parallels, bringing in more than $2 million while playing to capacity audiences.
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Musicals dominated ticket sales. “The Book of Mormon,” “Les Miserables” and “The Lion King” essentially sold out, while “Aladdin” and the recently opened revival of “Cats” also were strong performers.
“Paramour” saw its grosses plunge by nearly $400,000, but that was because the Cirque du Soleil show only had five performances last week. The circus troupe’s attempt to bring its high-wire acrobatics to Broadway underwent a creative retooling, resulting in a three-performance mini-hiatus and a dearth of juggling in the Time Square vicinity.
