AP News, June 11th, 2007
It's taken a while, but "Spring Awakening," the big winner at the 2007 Tony Awards, appears on its way to becoming a hot ticket _ at or least hotter than when the musical first opened last December.
"But we are not going to be `Jersey Boys,'" producer Ira Pittelman said Monday, referring to the big musical hit from a year ago. "We never intended to be."
Yet the show has shown steady improvement at the box office, and winning eight Tonys _ more than any other show _ Sunday night has given the musical another boost.
Advance sales now stand at $4 million, a figure that has doubled in the last two weeks.
"Ever since the (Tony) nominations were announced (May 15), the box office has taken a giant leap forward," Pittelman said. "We wrapped about $1 million last week and wrapped between $800,000 and $900,000 in each of the other two weeks."
Not bad for an edgy little show about the angst and sexual anxiety of teenagers in provincial, late 19th-century Germany, a musical laced with a driving, contemporary score by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater.
"Ever since we opened, the show has been in the black," Pittelman said. "It's all a matter of degree. We were modestly in the black for a long time. Sometime in February, when we were on David Letterman and we ran a three-week TV campaign, business got pretty strong. Then it kind of leveled out, and now it's come back really, really strong."
Last week, for example, the show grossed $644,716, filling more than 92 percent of the seats at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. And it has recouped nearly 50 percent of its $6 million production costs.
Pittelman says a lot of regular theatergoers _ "the kind of people who would watch the Tonys, but may have had reservations about the musical" _ have put it back on their radar screens.
Tickets are on sale into November and Pittelman has booked a 72-city American tour, expected to start sometime in 2008. Foreign productions are planned, too, in England, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Korea, Japan and Australia.
