Broadway Box Office: ‘All The Way’ Ends On $1.6M High; ‘Aladdin’ Gains To $1.5M For Disney

Bryan Cranston ankled his Broadway gig as LBJ on another high, as All The Way ended its a limited run Sunday with another record-breaking week. The Tony winners (Best Play, Best Performance By A  Leading Actor in a Play)  took in $1,623,495, a new high figure for a non-musical,  at the Neil Simon Theatre. Average ticket price was $141.62.

On the musicals front, Disney’s Aladdin is proving more popular each week, having its best stand since opening at the New Amsterdam. It was up $176,710 to $1,623,495, according to figures released by the trade group Broadway League for Week 5, which ended Sunday.

The season’s newcomer, Holler If Ya Hear Me, continued to sink, taking in just $159,571 at the Palace, and the long-running Once also looks to be in trouble, grossing barely half its $922,885 potential at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.

Broadway total was up fractionally from the week before, to $29,774,659 for 33 shows, from $29,753,590. The Week 5 tally a year ago was $24,997,386, with fewer shows running.

Wicked, at $2,107,598, edged out The Lion King, at $2,044,928 for the top spot; third place was The Book Of Mormon, at $1,658,638. Mormon continued to have the highest per-ticket average, at $189.52.

The other news of the week: Sting’s musical The Last Ship (not to be confused with the new TNT drama) opened its Broadway tryout run in Chicago with a big wet kiss from the Sun-Times’s Hedy Weiss, who called it “a true masterwork” and, for good measure, “a monumental achievement on countless levels.” The Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones was somewhat more circumspect but extremely positive as well, writing, “Sting has proven that his formidable narrative songwriting skills can translate to the Broadway stage,” and that the autobiographical musical is  “very promising (if still tentative and far-from-finished).” It’s due here in the fall.