Last season, grumbling in the industry was this season would have fewer musicals. Shows were taking longer to receive their full capitalization. Many musicals were losing hundreds of thousands of dollars per week. Attendance was down from pre-pandemic levels. Buying habits had changed such that reserves had to increase. In other words, it didn’t feel like a particularly hospitable time to launch a Broadway show without a bankable star or title, especially a musical, which typically has a higher running cost than a play. But instead of there being fewer musicals this season, we are about to have more new musicals than any season in this century.
If you include Melissa Etheridge: My Window, four musicals have already opened this season. (My Window might attract a musical-leaning audience, though come Tony time it should be a Special Tony recipient, rather than a musical eligible in a competitive category.) One of those closed quickly.
Seven more have theaters and dates officially announced: Gutenberg! The Musical!, Harmony, How to Dance in Ohio, Days of Wine and Roses, The Notebook, Water for Elephants, and The Outsiders.
That is eleven, which wouldn’t be a record breaker. But insiders know Lempicka, The Heart of Rock & Roll, and Suffs have theaters. We’re unlikely to see both BOOP! and Hell’s Kitchen this season, but we're likely to see one, with Hell’s Kitchen being the favorite with a theater on hold, pending reviews. That makes fifteen.
For the sake of not muddying the waters, let’s remove My Window and say fourteen. While shows can always drop out, fourteen is the minimum number of new musicals that I expect to be on Broadway this season.
And I say "minimum" because there are others that could come in, but we’re likely in for at least fourteen. That is more than any other season this century. The closest is the 2016-2017 season, which had thirteen. Usually, we’re in the eight to eleven range. In the last full season before the pandemic, the 2018-2019 season, which was the highest-grossing and best-attended season in recorded history, there were eleven new musicals and two musical revivals.
In addition to thirteen new musicals, the 2016-2017 season also had six revivals and the return engagement of Motown, so twenty musicals overall. We only have four announced revivals. Therefore, it’s possible we might not break the century record for musicals overall, but we still might. There are additional revivals likely.