The Star's Away--and So Is a Lot of the Audience

Nathan Lane took a vacation from the run of The Addams Family last week, August 24-29.  I found out when I looked at the weekly grosses on Playbill.com.  The Addams Family grossed $764,231 last week but the week before that, it had grossed $1,125,749.  That's a drop of $361,518.  Lane should renegotiate his contract!

And I confirmed that Lane's vacation was the cause of the drop.  It's announced on the Addams Family Blog.

The show took the hit on total ticket sales and the average price of the ticket sold.  Percent of house dropped from 85.7 percent to 70.8 percent.  Average ticket price dropped from $115.16 to $88.84.

We've noted the value of stars on Broadway elsewhere in this blog.  Theater lovers may bemoan the increase in star casting in limited-run productions, but Broadway is only following its first precept: It's all about the money!

Update October 5

The impact of stars is felt in the adding of them to a show as well as the taking away.  When the frontman Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, the rock band whose songs are used in Broadway musical American Idiot, joined the musical in the part of St. Jimmy for a week, box office grew to $1,092,334.  The week before the gross was a mere $480,566.  The producers might want Armstrong to return but it won't happen soon.  He's on tour with Green Day, according to Playbill.com. They're playing October dates in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru.