NEW YORK • Musicals about the aftermaths of a teenage suicide and a terror attack proved to be unlikely sensations.
Star turns by Bette Midler, Josh Groban, Jake Gyllenhaal and Glenn Close added sizzle.
And, led by Hamilton and Hello, Dolly!, the hottest shows started charging once unthinkably high prices for the best seats.
The Broadway season that ended on Sunday was one for the record books.
Box-office grosses, which have been climbing since 2013, rose 5.5 per cent to US$1.45 billion (S$2.01 billion), a new high, according to figures released on Tuesday by The Broadway League, an industry trade group.
The growth was fuelled not by attendance, but by ticket cost.
Producers, perfecting a strategy called dynamic pricing, used increasingly sophisticated analytics to adjust ticket prices to reflect varying demand on different days of the week and for different sections of a theatre.
Hamilton, a musical about the life of American founding father Alexander Hamilton, continues to play to sold-out houses 21 months after opening.
It led the way, setting a record box-office price of US$849 for many orchestra seats, in an effort to recapture profits being lost to resellers.
Hello, Dolly!, starring Midler, has a top ticket price of US$748.
Sunday In The Park With George, starring Gyllenhaal, was charging US$499 for its most sought-after seats, while The Book Of Mormon tops out at US$477.
There are bargains available for all the buzziest shows, but still, the average price paid for a Broadway ticket during the 2016-2017 season was a record US$109, up from US$103 in the previous season.
And with several big-brand titles on the way - stage adaptations of the hit 2013 film Frozen and the best-selling Harry Potter books are scheduled to open next spring - Broadway's blockbuster-led boom seems unlikely to end any time soon.
But the big numbers mask continuing challenges for the industry.
Broadway's success is lopsided.
Much of the profit goes to a small handful of shows, while a majority flop.
Over the last 12 months, 81 productions played at some point during the season, but about half of all the box-office revenue went to just 10 of those shows.
"The hits are bigger than they have been, but the shows that are not big hits are struggling more," said Mr Jordan Roth, president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which operates five Broadway houses.
NYTIMES
