Musicals Draw Best During Thanksgiving Week on Broadway

More Thanksgiving theater-goers attended big-budget Broadway musicals like “Wicked” and “The Lion King” last week instead of Broadway plays starring such Hollywood celebrities as Jessica Chastain (“The Heiress”), Katie Holmes (“Dead Accounts”) and Paul Rudd (“Grace”), according to box-office data released on Monday.

While musicals almost always do better than plays over Thanksgiving and Christmas, play producers had hoped that casting movie and television stars would attract strong numbers of holiday tourists who like seeing celebrities live on stage. But as Thanksgiving visitors thronged the Broadway theater district last week, only one play with a big-name actor â€" “Glengarry Glen Ross” starring Al Pacino â€" did strong business, grossing $853,737 for just five performances, according to the data released by the Broadway League, a trade association of theater owners and producers.

Among other plays, “The Heiress” grossed $505,468, down nearly 20 percent from the previous week; “Dead Accounts” took in a modest $402,460; “Grace” had $320,199; and “The Anarchist,” Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet's new play starring Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, grossed $317,201. (“Dead Accounts,” “The Anarchist” and “Glengarry” are still in preview performances.)

Several musicals set box office records for their theaters last week, including the Tony-winning hit “The Book of Mormon” ($1,801,672), the new revival of “Annie” ($1,499,879), and the Disney musical “Newsies” ($1,106,383). The long-running blockbuster “Wicked,” meanwhile, had the highest gross of any Broadway show in history for a standard eight-performance week, taking in $2,290,819.

The record for a nine-performance week, which usually occur between Christmas and New Year's Day, was set at that time last year by “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” with $2.94 million.While “Spider-Man” had the fourth highest gross of any Broadway show last week, $1.78 million, the show's comparable gross last Thanksgiving week was about 17 percent higher, $2.07 million.

The worst-performing musical at the box office last week was the newly opened “Scandalous,” which has a book and lyrics by the television personality Kathie Lee Gifford. “Scandalous” grossed $194,511 last week, or only 15.51 percent of the maximum possible amount â€" a strikingly low figure at any time, but especially during a major holiday week. A spokesman for the musical declined to comment on Monday about whether “Scandalous” would be closing this week.

Overall Broadway musicals and plays grossed $27 million last week, slightly less than the $28.1 million during Thanksgiving week in 2011.