A Coastly Business

The above is part of the exterior of the Lincoln. See the big Utopia poster on the right-hand side? The latest today...

Live Broadway has some fascinating data on Broadway shows from the League of American Theatres and Producers. It is updated weekly and dates back to the mid eighties. You can search the information by show, by date and by theatre. Here are the main pieces of info about a certain play...

Total grossings

• Last week (ending Mar 18th) Utopia took $576,164. This figure obviously varies according to the number of performances in any given week, and has fluctuated from $200k to over $600k in early December.
  

Capacity

• Utopia seems to be doing very well on this front. Last week it managed to fill 92% of the Vivian Beaumont's 1,047 seats, therefore beating all Broadway plays bar one, namely The Year of Magical Thinking, which achieved 95%. (Funnily, I was a statistic in both these cases).
  
  
• Overall, Utopia's capacity is almost always in the nineties, with the odd week in the high eighties. The most it has ever been is 98%, achieved in the weeks ending Jan 21st and Nov 12th. The lowest it has ever been was one complete anomaly of 43% (perhaps linked to the fact that there was just one performance that week).
  

Average Paid

• As those of you who have seen it will know, the full ticket price for Utopia is $100. But the average that theatre-goers pay seems to vary week-to-week. It dropped to $47 in early December, but last week was a more hefty $85 (so I definitely got a bargain with my two tickets, which were $20 and $30 respectively!)

The Vivian Beaumont

• You can also conduct a search solely by theatre. Looking at the Beaumont specifically, Utopia's capacity has largely soared above that of the most recent previous productions such as The Light in the Piazza and The Rivals. I am not exactly knowledgeable about this sort of thing, but I'm guessing that will at least be partly attributable to the status of the respective playwrights and the publicity involved for each production.

Interesting stuff.

In other news, the New York Post briefly urges people to see Utopia in the next six weeks, describing it as both "wonderfully acted" and "one of the truly epic theater pieces of our time".

Meanwhile, Brendan Lemon 's latest post on the LCT site talks about a recent audience member even more significant to Utopia than a former President - a direct descendant of Herzen himself!

Lastly, the mother of young actress Anabel talks briefly of her daughter's role in Utopia. Anabel is not mentioned on the Utopia site cast list as yet, but it looks like she will be playing Tata and Olga from today until the end of the month at least. All the best to her.