The high ticket prices on Broadway are an annual and perennial outrage, but maybe more galling as the season wraps up. The hottest ticket on Broadway last week sold for $975. The hottest one in London? The equivalent of $350. Why Are Theater Tickets So Much Cheaper in London Than New York? The New York Times asked in an article posted on World Theater Day, and answered: “Production costs are significantly lower in London — for everything from actors’ salaries to the cost of wood used to build sets.” So much so that British producer Cameron Mackintosh, who has produced 19 shows on Broadway (including Tony winners Cats, Les Miz, Phantom, Carousel) tells the Times he’s staying in London. “The costs of running a show are ludicrous in New York. I won’t do it anymore.”
But the most resonant comment in the article is probably from Rachel Chavkin, director of “Hadestown” (midweek tickets $277 in New York and $187 in London): “One reason prices are lower in London is artists are not worried about where they will get their health care from, because of the national health care system.” (Hadestown, coincidentally, has announced its live capture will be presented in cinemas this summer — one of several stage plays and musicals soon to be or currently on screen; see below.)
In the article’s comments section, “GEW” explains how she used to splurge on an annual Broadway weekend with her daughter, but “I have not been to the theater in three years. I can’t get past the prices! .. I now have the money and the freedom to do the thing I love most. What I lack is the ability to talk myself into spending what it costs. So this summer, my daughter and I are starting a new tradition. For the cost of seeing a few shows on Broadway, we are going to London for our first (maybe not annual) West End Weekend. I’d rather see it at home but if I am going to spend the price of a trip, I might as well take one.”
Below are the latest Broadway lottery and rush policies.
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
I can see three main reasons why some theatergoers might want to sympathize with the antisemite at the center of the incendiary true incident being dramatized in “Giant.” The man, for one, is Roald Dahl, the children’s book author whose titles (including “Matilda” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) many have read and loved since childhood. Dahl is being portrayed in another virtuoso performance by John Lithgow, the fine eighty-year-old actor who has been able to locate the humanity in insufferable villains…Then, some might agree with Dahl’s criticism of Israel, which he made four decades ago, but that is even more commonly heard in March of 2026 …But it becomes harder to muster up much sympathy when such lines of dialogue about Israel, imagined by “Giant” playwright Mark Rosenblatt, bump up against lines about Jews taken verbatim from Dahl’s writings and interviews, which get increasingly explicit…The more “Giant” reveals about Dahl’s antisemitism, the more ambivalent I felt about the play.
The “Hamlet” that has been written and directed by Chela De Ferrari, the founder of the 23-year-old Teatro La Plaza of Peru, uses Shakespeare’s play less as text than pretext for a celebration of the cast – and by the cast – not despite of their Down syndrome but because of it.
Three sailors are on 24-hour shore leave in New York City before being shipped off to war. No, this is not a simple spoof of the 1944 musical “On The Town.” The initial premise is a feint. “No Singing in the Navy” turns into something far more surreal, a satirical musical that’s really a scattershot revue that’s really a contemplation in serviceable tunes and idiosyncratic lyrics of identity, unrequited love, dementia, war and death.
Book: Digital Access to the Performing Arts
Digital theater was not just something that happened during the explosion of online innovation during the COVID-19 lockdown. To Magda Romanska, it’s a human right — a means of providing access to culture for people who long have been deprived of it: the disabled, the elderly, the homebound, the economically excluded, the geographically distant. This argument is central to the case she makes for the importance of digital theater in “Digital Access to the Performing Arts: Comparative Study of Legal and Structural Challenges” (Bristol University Press, 163 pages), a book that is available for free online. Despite its unsexy title (and sometimes dense text), it functions as a kind of accessible handbook to rethink and reactivate the genre.
The Week in New York Theater News
Mariska Hargitay (“Law & Order: SVU”, My Mom Jayne) will make her Broadway debut starting May 26 in the solo play Every Brilliant Thing, for the last two weeks of its run, which has been extended to June 8. (My review of the play starring Daniel Radcliffe.)
New York Theater Awards Calendar and Guide 2026
Stage On Screen
The live West End capture of the Tony Award-winning best musical Hadestown will be presented in cinemas in North America starting on July 24, 2026 featuring the original cast members of the Broadway production: Reeve Carney as ‘Orpheus,’ André De Shields’ in as ‘Hermes,’ Amber Gray as ‘Persephone,’ Eva Noblezada as ‘Eurydice,’ and Patrick Page as ‘Hades.’
The filmed Broadway revival of Merrily We Roll Along, starring Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez, which was presented in cinemas last December, will begin streaming on Netflix in the United States on April 4, 2026.
Currently on Netflix: Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride
Currently on HBOMax: Julio Torres’ Color Theories
Digital Lotteries Announced
Beaches Digital lottery: $49 General rush: $45
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone Digital lottery: $49 Rush: $45 Student rush: $35
The Lost Boys Digital lottery and general rush: $45
Proof Digital lottery: $49 Student rush: $45 TDF Graduate Gift Program (for graduating seniors): $22
Schmigadoon Digital lottery $45, general rush $40
Details (listed alphabetically): Broadway Rush and Lottery Policies
Sardi’s has been bought by its landlord, the Shubert Organization. It will close in June for several months for renovations. (NY Times)
In Memoriam
Mary Beth Hurt, 79, known to moviegoers for her roles in Interiors and The World According to Garp, was a 16-time Broadway veteran actress, nominated three times for a Tony, including for Beth Henley’s ” Crimes of the Heart’
Larry Reed, 81, master of shadow puppetry. “Mr. Reed turned the intimacy of traditional Balinese shadow puppetry into a large-scale show, using the age-old techniques to tell stories from around the world”
Robert Fox, 73, Tony winning producer of 29 Broadway productions, including the current revival of “Chess.” One of his plays, “The Audience,” about Queen Elizabeth II, inspired the Netflix show “The Crown.”
Eric Overmyer, 74, largely a TV writer for the last forty years, contributing scripts to prestigious, gritty series like “St. Elsewhere,” “Homicide: Life on the Street,” “The Wire,” and “Treme” but he began as a playwright. “On the Verge, or the Geography of Yearning,” the best known of his 12 plays and adaptations, was a time-traveling comedy about three Victorian-era female adventurers searching for the last uncharted territory on Earth. It has been performed for decades at regional theaters around the country.
The Week’s Theater Video
Call it political theater:
Full No Kings Flagship rally in Minnesota
