“Much Ado About Nothing,” the Jamie Lloyd revival starring Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell, grossed $2,340,819 last week with all eight preview performances sold out at the Winter Garden, according to Deadline. It opens on Broadway November 19.
Let's look at the math. Three Broadway shows topped $2 million last week: Hamilton, a revival of “Other Desert Cities” starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Ed Harris, and a 400-year-old Shakespeare play in its first full week of previews. The play did not win on the text. The headline that sold out the Winter Garden is a name. The sonnets are decoration. The marquee is the product, per The Hollywood Reporter.
The average ticket was $194.26, which is $67 above the Broadway average last week. That is a lot of money to pay for the distinction of having seen Benedick “live.” That is the mechanism. You are not buying seats to a play. You are buying a marquee. Part of the audience will post one production photo. The rest will tell their grandchildren they were in the room.
It opens November 19, and the previews sold out without opening night. That is the difference between a show and a name. The play can have a rough opening. The name does not have rough weeks. Somewhere, a Shakespeare fan is reading that a Shakespeare play is a hit, and the receipt says otherwise: it is a face with a 400-year-old excuse attached.
YOUR TURN: Are sold-out previews a hit, or the most expensive proof that the marquee does all the work?
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