Hot ticket “Hamilton” continued to wow at the Broadway box office, but the buzzy founding-father bio wasn’t the only title showing its muscle in a strong sales week. Jim Parsons starrer “An Act of God” broke the $1 million mark for the first time while “Aladdin” started to make a habit of claiming the No. 3 slot on the chart.
“Hamilton” ($1,302,511 for seven previews) pushed up to No. 6 on the top 10, rising slightly compared to its debut week on the boards and raking in what is a huge tally for a seven-performance frame. Broadway watchers will be poised to see just how high the show will go, as it begins to add an eighth weekly performance and the reviews — sure to be repeats of the raves the musical earned Off Broadway — roll in.
Proving that “Hamilton” wasn’t the only show of note last week, “Act of God” ($1,011,538), the modestly scaled comedy powered by Parsons’ familiar face, attained the millionaires’ club for the first time, and seems likely to do it again this week, the final one of the limited engagement. Disney’s “Aladdin” ($1,831,846), meanwhile, has started to show powerhouse endurance toward the top of the chart, with the musical (which opened in April 2014) maintaining a hold on third place for the ninth week in a row.
An even dozen shows earned more than $1 million each at the box office, with “Hamilton,” “Act of God” and “Penn & Teller on Broadway” ($1,237,512) hailing from the current season and “An American in Paris” ($1,429,500), “Finding Neverland” ($1,162,145) and “Something Rotten!” ($1,067,457) on the list from the 2014-15 season.
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Among last season’s other big earners, “The King and I” ($969,161) dipped thanks to the absence of Tony-winning star Kelli O’Hara (taking a scheduled vacation last week), while Tony champ “Fun Home” ($805,369) held strong in one of Broadway’s smallest houses. “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” ($405,108 for six), a Tony magnet from 2014, played its first, abbreviated week with Taye Diggs in the lead.
While “Hamilton” was hitting the stratosphere, the other new musical to open this summer, “Amazing Grace” ($297,904), remained stuck at the bottom of the sales chart. Now that the show has earned lackluster reviews follow its July 16 opening, it’s starting to look like only a matter of time before producers start to lose faith.
Overall Broadway attendance was down some 15,000 to 255,568, but it still registered as a heavily trafficked summer frame, filling houses to 89% of total capacity. Cumulative sales slipped about $1.8 million to $28.1 million for 28 shows running.
Looking ahead, a slow sales decline over the month of August usually begins sometime around now, leading up to the more extreme dip that usually hits Broadway after Labor Day.
