The hottest ticket on Broadway is fast becoming the most-coveted ticket across the USA.
The commercial blockbuster Hamilton will hit the road next year, and fans are chomping at the bit. They include Allison Alonso, who has seen the musical on Broadway but plans to catch it again in Boston — one of 12 cities the tour will visit in roughly the next two years. A separate production begins an open-ended run in Chicago on Sept. 27.
Alonso, a 20-year-old film and television major at Boston University, waited on the cancellation line for the Broadway staging on two separate occasions before scoring tickets in January. She arrived at 6 a.m., determined to catch Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop-infused musical about founding father Alexander Hamilton. The show, which seems destined to run forever in New York, is nominated for a record-setting 16 Tony Awards and is certain to win best musical on June 12.
"I was the second person on the line," recalls Alonso, a native New Yorker. Nearly 14 hours later, she received the second pair of tickets released, "just before the curtain."
And she's prepared to be patient again. The national tour (featuring its own cast, like the Chicago production) will begin next year, with stops in San Francisco (21 weeks, beginning in March) and Los Angeles (Aug. 11-Dec. 30). But in the other cities, including Boston, Hamilton will not arrive until the 2017-18 season, and except for Washington, where it will launch a 14-week engagement at the Kennedy Center in mid-June 2018, timing has not yet been determined.
The production has rather been "teased" at a combination of commercial and non-profit theaters, with announcements alerting fans that the best way to guarantee tickets is to purchase subscriptions (or memberships, depending on the theater) for the 2016-17 seasons and then renew their seats for the following season.
That doesn't mean non-subscribers and non-members will be shut out. "Single tickets will be available in every market where Hamilton plays," says Sam Rudy, a spokesman for the Broadway production.
They haven't yet gone on sale, though, which has predictably incited some grumbling. A Chicago Tribune post in May quipped that single-ticket buyers would be serviced only "after the subscribers get their chance to buy additional tickets, and then maybe sell them to pay for their entire subscription." Lou Raizin, president of Broadway in Chicago, counters, "Hamilton will run in Chicago as long as there's a market for it, so it's not a matter of if you get a ticket, but simply when."
In touring cities, where the engagements are limited, executives say subscribers and members will have priority principally at the beginning of the run. Scott Kane, CMO of Shorenstein Hays-Nederlander (SHN), the Bay Area entertainment company that owns and operates San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre, notes, "Our membership footprint is a four-week window, which leaves another 17 weeks that will be available to the general public." Kelly Carnes, public relations director for the Kennedy Center, says, “Full theater subscribers are typically seated over three weeks of performances.”
But not surprisingly, given Hamilton's Broadway box office, some fans aren't taking any chances. Raizin says the show has had an "unprecedented impact" on subscription sales in Chicago, with the 2016-17 season sold out as of May 22. Lauren Reid, CEO of Broadway Across America, which brings Broadway shows to 40 cities across North America, says, "We have people who have been our loyal subscribers for 20 years and people who are coming in as new subscribers, and we are seeing a general increase in both those groups.”
While not much data is available yet, there are strong indications that Hamilton is appealing to a wider, younger and more diverse group of fans. Kane notes that nearly 80% of the people who have signed on as new SHN members since Hamilton was announced "have never visited our website before, and a lot of them are buying balcony seats, which is a lower-priced ticket. It feels like we're reaching a new generation of theatergoers."
The fusion of textures in Miranda's score and book is, naturally, a factor in its widespread appeal. "You have a young author and composer telling this story in a language that's relatable," says Reid. Deborah F. Rutter, president of the Kennedy Center — in the city where that story happened, to loosely paraphrase a Hamilton lyric — says, "We in the performing arts world are always looking to bring in new patrons with introductory experiences, and you can't overestimate the importance of this work."
Alonso, who grew up loving both musicals and hip-hop, thinks "it would be worth it" to buy a subscription package in Boston. She adds that when Hamilton first premiered off-Broadway at the Public Theater, months before transferring uptown last summer, "I asked my mom to buy a subscription, but the show was sold out. Now she goes to see every show at the Public, in case it becomes the next Hamilton."
Tom Melcher, creator and CEO of Show-Score, a website that combines critic and consumer reviews of New York theater with discount comparisons and show alerts, notes that Hamilton already has appealed to a greater variety of demographic groups than other Broadway mega-hits that have toured. "The Lion King is a terrific, family-friendly show, and Wicked has shown great appeal to younger women. But the demographics for Hamilton are striking; there is no real disparity. Everyone has a palpable sense of something relevant to their lives."
Melcher adds that some of Show-Score's members, about half of of whom live outside the greater New York area, "are planning trips to Boston or Atlanta or Chicago" to see Hamilton in those cities. According to Broadway League president Charlotte St. Martin, Hamilton's success both benefits touring shows and enhances the prospects of other Broadway productions: "It's gotten a lot of people to know what's going on, and see On Your Feet or The Color Purple."
Rutter admits she is concerned about the kind of price-gouging that occurs with Broadway hits, and has been especially prominent with Hamilton, with other outlets buying tickets and selling them at several times the original price. "I want to make sure people aren't getting scammed by ticket brokers," she says. Rutter doesn't cite any specific strategies, but says, "There are measures you can take, having to do with how many tickets (one party) can purchase and who they're being sold to."
Broadway in Chicago already has sold out its first allotment of group tickets for Hamilton, though more blocks will be announced at a later date. Raizin says he also is eager to accommodate the individual tourists who flock to Chicago, home to a number of major theater companies.
"There is a frenzy right now about having Hamilton tickets in hand," Raizin says. "But our objective is to put them in as many hands as possible, and we're working hard to develop strategies to do that."
