Attendance revival on Broadway

As Broadway prepares for its big night tonight, it has more to celebrate than the annual parade of self-congratulations that is the Tony Awards. For the second straight year, Broadway has registered record attendance and gross revenues at a time when other forms of entertainment are looking at bleak bottom lines.

The League of American Theatres and Producers, a national trade association for the Broadway industry, reported recently that 12.3 million tickets had been sold during the just completed 2006-07 season, up 2.6% from last year’s previous record level. Grosses hit $939 million, up 8.9%.

If the growth continues at a similar rate next season, Times Square box offices will break the billion-dollar barrier -- this just a few years after Broadway producers worried about their future after the terrorist attacks of 2001, which scared off foreign visitors and depressed ticket sales and grosses alike.

Broadway’s good news, fueled by a series of musicals that run at or close to capacity, is in stark contrast to the trend in recorded music, in particular. Revenue from CD sales dropped 13% between 2005 and 2006 and is down 20% this year. Network television has found itself in a slump too: In the most recent “sweeps” period, ratings surveys reported that only three shows -- two of which were the twice-weekly “American Idol” episodes -- averaged more than 20 million viewers.

Movies have been a mixed picture, meanwhile: After three down years, the domestic box office rose to a record $9.49 billion last year. And with a series of blockbuster sequels hitting the multiplexes this year, Hollywood, like Broadway, could well chalk up a second round of all-time highs.

But film and theater share another trend -- rising production costs -- that complicates any celebration of the record numbers.

“I guess much has been said all year, and the end of last year, how grosses are going up, and of course that is terrific,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the executive director of the producers league here. “But as we know, you can’t just look at the top line.”

St. Martin notes that whereas shows a decade ago recouped their costs and began to make a profit after 30 weeks, that time span has stretched now to two years, meaning that four out of five shows will never earn back their investments. One extreme example is “The Pirate Queen,” from the creators of “Les Miserables,” which will close June 17 -- just two months after it opened -- at a loss of $16 million.

Much as with films, the blockbusters drive up Broadway numbers. Currently six musicals -- “Jersey Boys,” “Wicked,” “Mamma Mia!” “The Lion King,” “Mary Poppins” and “Beauty and the Beast” -- are running at more than 90% capacity, while the best received of the new musicals this season, “Spring Awakening,” is filling 88% of its seats, a figure that could well increase following tonight’s awards.

But the broad-appeal shows, many of them movie-to-stage adaptations or jukebox musicals, also benefit their competition in ways that high-grossing films do not: Many of the ticket buyers, some paying more than $100 for a seat, are visitors to New York who wind up seeing more than one show during their stay.

Of the just-completed season’s 12.3 million Broadway show attendees, 5 million were domestic tourists and 1.3 million were from other countries -- that figure well more than twice the total of international ticket buyers in the season immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. These days, even midweek, they’re impossible to miss on the crowded streets of Times Square, taking each other’s picture in front of the Virgin Megastore sign, climbing on double-decker tour buses and getting “free passes” from a hawker promising “a crazy time” at a comedy club.

The Broadway producers relish such visitors as Los Angeles architect Barry Gittleson, who was reading the Zagat guide to restaurants the other night while waiting to pick up a ticket to another new show, “Grey Gardens,” at the Walter Kerr Theater on 48th Street. Gittleson, 73, said that his favorite thing to do in New York is to simply “walk and stare at buildings” and that the Broadway scene was not high on his list. But he’d seen a recent Tony-winning musical during this trip, “Avenue Q,” and had decided to take in this one after hearing an NPR radio interview with “the star, whatever her name is.”

So that’s how he came to see Christine Ebersole, playing both the mother and daughter in the two-act musical adapted from the 1975 film documentary about the real-life blueblood relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who became reclusive cat women in their decaying Hamptons mansion, a performance considered a lock for the Tony as best actress in a musical.

Mike Rosenberg, who oversees theatrical productions for East of Doheny, the L.A.-based firm producing “Grey Gardens,” said he has been pleasantly surprised to find that such out-of-towners make up half the audience for the show, which had been expected to appeal more to a New York audience.

“They come to see the blockbusters -- some see ‘Phantom’ every time [they are in town]. They pre-buy a show they know, like ‘Phantom’ or something new and familiar, like ‘Legally Blonde,’ then they save time to go see something new and in their minds different,” Rosenberg said. “I’m happy to say that we’re new and different.”

Though Broadway theater may be a remnant of another era, when all entertainment was live, the marketing of a show like “Grey Gardens” is very much of today: 40% of the tickets are purchased online, Rosenberg said, and the producers advertise, among other places, on gossip websites, such as Gawker and PerezHilton.com.

“Grey Gardens” also represents another Broadway trend -- a musical moving into a theater better known for straight plays. The relatively cozy (950-seat) Walter Kerr has in the past showcased such acclaimed plays as August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” and David Auburn’s “Proof.”

Though the past season’s 35 new productions were divided almost evenly between musicals and plays, “Broadway has become synonymous with the musical, whether the big lavish musical or the smart new musical,” says producer Jeffrey Richards, who has his name on one of the latter, “Spring Awakening,” as well as two plays, “Talk Radio” and “Radio Golf,” which have struggled to find audiences even though the latter was written by one of the top playwrights of our time (Wilson) and the other features one of America’s top stage actors (Liev Schreiber).

Richards believes that both were hurt by “a deluge of straight plays in competition for the market,” and that “Talk Radio,” about an abusive and self-destructive late-night radio host, was a victim also of the real-world scandals that enveloped radio icon Don Imus and some others.

“Sometimes reality is so vivid that it’s difficult for entertainment to compete,” he said.

The late Arthur Miller used to complain that America didn’t have real theater anymore: “We have show business.”

But one of this year’s straight plays, “Frost/Nixon,” about the events surrounding David Frost’s 1977 television interviews with the dour former president, is running to 80% capacity, and producers such as Richards are not giving up on the straight play. For the coming season, he’s backing a revival of Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming” and a new comedy by David Mamet.

Still, in any area of entertainment, people will try to repeat what works. So in the wake of “Grey Gardens,” Rosenberg’s firm is planning to turn two more old films into musicals: “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” and “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

And Richards jokes that Broadway might take another cue from Hollywood.

“We rarely have sequels in the theater,” he said. “But that may change.”

paul.lieberman@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Broadway boom

The Broadway stage is having a record-setting year at a time when manyother forms of entertainment are suffering.

*--* Gross Attendance Playing New Season (millions) (millions) weeks* productions 2006-07 $939 12.30 1,509 35 2005-06 $862 12.00 1,501 39 2004-05 $769 11.53 1,494 39 2003-04 $771 11.61 1,451 39 2002-03 $721 11.42 1,544 36

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*Playing weeks are calculated by counting the number of weeks duringwhich each show performed in a given year and then adding up eachshow’s subtotal to determine the overall number of weeks ofperformance logged by all shows. The result is the best measure ofBroadway’s productivity (overall activity).

Source: League of American Theatres and Producers