BROADWAY'S MISSING MOJO
Nonprofit companies scored this season; investors, not so much.
Broadway’s annual Tony Awards promotion machine, which launched this morning with nominations for the 2025-26 season, arrives just in time.
Broadway grossed $39 million last week, down 3% from the previous week and off 16% from the same week in 2024-25, according to Broadway League data.
To date, just two of the roughly two dozen new commercial productions this season announced that they recouped — which means a production made enough to repay its investors. Both commercial successes are from the fall: Waiting for Godot, with Keanu Reeves (which was nominated for featured actor Brandon J. Dirden); and Art, with Neil Patrick Harris, Bobby Cannavale and James Corden, which didn’t earn any nominations.
Every Brilliant Thing starring Daniel Radcliffe, Tony-nominated for the role, seems poised to join the recoupment club, given its strong grosses ($1.7 million last week) and relatively low capitalization as a one-actor show — $5.75 million, per a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Ragtime, a Lincoln Center Theater production that has outside investors and now 11 Tony nominations, has repaid about half of its backers’ stakes.
Seven shows from last season ultimately recouped: Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary!, which set a production box office record last week of $1.5 million as Maya Rudolph stepped in as Mary Todd Lincoln; the Simon Rich comedy All In (as opposed to this season’s All Out, which flopped); The Picture of Dorian Gray, with Sarah Snook; Glengarry Glen Ross, with Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk and Bill Burr; Good Night, and Good Luck starring George Clooney; Othello, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Denzel Washington; and Just in Time, originally starring Jonathan Groff, now Jeremy Jordan, which is expected to announce recoupment imminently.
It’s unclear whether last season’s offerings connected better with ticket buyers than this season’s; or whether the current record-low consumer sentiment, high gas prices and depressed Canadian tourism undermined demand amid ever-rising production costs. Likely all of the above.
Winning the best musical Tony has traditionally all but guaranteed financial success. That hasn’t been true in a few years, partly because of production inflation. Schmigadoon!, about a couple trapped in a Golden Age musical, was capitalized for as much as $15 million, according to an SEC filing. The vampire musical The Lost Boys was capitalized for $25 million, per a 2024 filing, and there are rumors that it ultimately cost more. A Lost Boys spokesman said it came in on budget.
Both musicals, like several others on Broadway, are running at a loss. But both just opened and should benefit from the publicity from securing 12 Tony nominations each.
Nonprofit theater companies with Broadway houses also had a strong showing this morning, illustrating their essential role in developing plays and musicals.
The Roundabout Theatre Co. can claim 19 nominations — nine for the Sam Pinkleton-directed Rocky Horror Show, five for Noel Coward’s Fallen Angels with Kelli O’Hara and Rose Byrne (both nominated) and five for Liberation, Bess Wohl’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play (as of yesterday) that the Roundabout presented last season off-Broadway.
Lincoln Center Theater was nominated for the Ragtime actors Brandon Uranowitz, Joshua Henry and Cassie Levy and director Lear deBessonet. She had staged a concert version of the musical at City Center in 2024 before she decamped for Lincoln Center Theater to be its artistic director.
Manhattan Theatre Club got 10 nominations: Five for David Lindsay-Abaire’s new play The Balusters, four for its revival of Tracy Letts’ Bug and one for Will Harrison’s leading performance in Punch.
Second Stage Theater got four nominations — for the actors Danny Burstein and June Squibb in Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime and two for its revival of Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw, including for featured actor Alden Ehrenreich.
Cats: The Jellicle Ball earned nine nominations, including for Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch’s direction. Rauch is the artistic director of Perelman Performing Arts Center, which first presented this Cats revisal in 2024.