With the smell of doom and regression in the air, perhaps it’s not surprising that the hottest ticket on Broadway this season is for a 400-year-old tragedy. There’s been much ado about the box office for Othello, a new rendition of Shakespeare’s classic given movie-star wattage. The show at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, grossed $2.
8m during one week of previews – the most of any non-musical during a single week on Broadway ever, in part because some orchestra tickets are going for a whopping $921. Related: Buena Vista Social Club review – exuberant yet dramatically thin Broadway musical The sticker shock is not just an Othello problem – tickets for two other celeb-driven plays on Broadway – Glengarry Glen Ross, and George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck, aren’t averaging much less , and it’s already been a lucrative season for celeb-studded Shakespeare as Romeo + Juliet , starring screen-famous Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor, recouped its $7m capitalization before closing last month. But before it even officially opened, Othello became emblematic of Broadway’s trend toward luxury experience and status symbol over popular entertainment, billing Hollywood names in a hyper-competitive, exclusionary market.
(Full disclosure: the Guardian, denied tickets for review, paid $400 for a middle orchestra seat.) Ticket prices, of course, are not the fault of the show itself, nor typically relevant to a review. But the.