Reprieved ‘Indecent’ Jumps $228K; Setting ‘Sunset’ Also Rises At Broadway Box Office

Jeremy Gerard

Updated 26 June 2017 at 4:17 pm

Glenn Close finally did say goodbye as her Sunset Boulevard revival ended on a high note, while the formerly struggling Indecent jumped over a quarter-million dollars in the wake of a last-minute reprieve extending its run from June 25 to August 6. In an overall even week at the Broadway box office, the story at individual shows showed more of a roller-coaster.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s minimalist revise of Sunset Boulevard, which brought Close back in the role of Norma Desmond that earned her a Tony Award more than two decades earlier, finished out its limited run at the Nederlander Organization’s Palace Theatre with a $202,000 boost to $1.1 million, 63% of potential and near-full houses.

In a remarkable turn of events, Sunset‘s kick in the b.o. was surpassed by the one for Indecent, a non-musical that was struggling at the Shubert Organization’s Cort Theatre and had posted a June 25 closing notice despite two Tony wins (for direction and lighting). When word went out that the critically acclaimed and audience-pleasing show was getting ready to pack up, lines at the box office began to form. Last week’s sales were up 60%, to $606K from $338K, with near full houses at the 1,073-seat venue. Departing Pulitzer Prize winner Sweat went out on a $136K leap to $412K at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Studio 54.

Horror-house reviews and a brush-off from the New York Times don’t appear to have scared customers off from 1984, which opened at the Ambassador Theatre Group’s Hudson, where the Sonia Friedman-Scott Rudin import increased $36K to $337K during a heavily comped opening week, still below half its gross potential but boding well for the summer. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory continued to improve at the Nederlander Organization’s Lunt-Fontanne despite some critics’ groans; the Roald Dahl-based musical was up $51K to $1.3 million and full houses paying an average price of $109.67 per ticket. Long-run Kinky Boots was on a kick as well, jumping $256K to $1.3 million at Jujamcyn Theatres’ Hirschfeld, where the Cyndi Lauper/Harvey Fierstein show was SRO.

Hello, Dolly!, having settled into its eight-performance per week schedule, continues to break records at the Shubert, where sales inched up to $2.3 million, average price $197.08, placing it at No. 2 for the week behind Hamilton, $3 million at the Nederlanders’ Richard Rodgers; average ducat, $282.96. In third place was Disney’s The Lion King, $2.15 million at the Nederlander’s Minskoff.

Ticket sales across 34 shows rose 2%, to $35.3 million, during Week 5 of the 2017-2018 season, according to the trade group Broadway League. Average ticket price also rose, to $117.14 from $115.75 in Week 4.