Broadway

As always, there are a wide variety of performances being played across Broadways 39 Theatres. There are 5 shows playing currently that are incredibly hot right now. Each show has played 8 times and have each raked in over $1,000,000. The tallies look like this:

Wicked $ 1,458,664
West Side Story $ 1,191,832
Billy Elliot: The Musical $ 1,158,561
The Lion King $ 1,128,044
Jersey Boys $ 1,037,565

Remember, these totals are all after 8 shows a piece. Thats saying that the ticket prices are around $100 and that each performance has brought in over $125,000 which is a tremendous amount if you ask me. I have seen that a lot of other people have talked about the show "Wicked" in their blogs and I've never heard about it, but now that I see its been the most productive too, I am interested in it and have done some research on it. Its about a story of two girls in the Land of Oz. One born with green skin, is smart, and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious, and very popular. Its a musical by Stephen Scwartz that is based on a novel by Gregory Maquire. The musical takes a look at how these unlikely friends end up as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch. Joe Mantello directs it, and "Wicked" is the winner of 3 2004 Tony Awards.

The other show that is up on top of the list with sales that I would like to see is "West Side Story." I haven't seen it since we watched the movie in middle school, like 10 years ago and I forget much of it. I remembered it was about 2 gangs, and it had a cheesy knife stabbing scene in it. That's all I could remember so I looked it up again. Its directed by two-time Tony Award winner Arthur Laurents. Matt Cavenaugh stars as Tony the main character, with Josefina Scaglione as Maria the other main character, Karen Olivo as Anita, and Cody Green as Riff. The show transports this musical tragedy to the streets of the Upper West Side in 1950's New York City. The two lovers, Tony and Maria, find themselves caught between the rival street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds, the "Jets" and the "Sharks." The show features a book by Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original Jerome Robbins choreography will be restaged by Tony Award nominee Joey McKneely. I don't know any of these names besides Stephen Sondheim, of course, but everywhere I look, I see Tony Award or an award of some sort, so it has to be good. Also, this production has an onstage cast of 37 and 30 musicians in the orchestra pit. That sounds like it would be a great show to attend with so many performers and musicians. This show has been out for so long I wonder if it has that kind of income every time they feature it. If so they make a lot of money off of it.

The information I found was all from Theatermania.com where you can also buy the tickets from. For all the shows I mentioned, they are somewhere around $80 to $150 from what I saw. I've never seen any of these as a live show, but from what I have been reading about these top 5, any of them seem like good candidates even if you've never been to one. Unfortunately, right now I'm a poor college student so I won't be able to attend a show of this calibur yet.