
New York · Midtown
The Broadway theatre district
Forty-one theatres inside one square mile, selling more than ten million tickets a year
A Wednesday matinee, which costs less and plays to a sharper house
Forty-one houses qualify as Broadway theatres, defined by having five hundred seats or more and sitting in the district around Times Square. Between them they sell more than ten million tickets a season, and the economics mean a hit runs for years while a serious play may close in six weeks.
Around them, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway houses programme the work that is not designed to run for a decade, usually at a third of the price and frequently at twice the interest.
The detail
Good to know
- Theatres
- 41 qualify as Broadway
- Tickets sold
- More than 10 million a season
- Cheap entry
- Digital lotteries, rush tickets, TKTS
- Dark night
- Most houses close on Mondays
More in New York
Three more rooms in New York
MuseumIconNew York · Upper East Side
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Five thousand years on Fifth Avenue, and a roof garden above the park
MuseumFree hoursNew York · Midtown
MoMA
The museum that wrote the history of modern art, and hung it in the order it wrote
Opera houseBook aheadNew York · Lincoln Center
Metropolitan Opera
The largest repertory opera house in the world, with Chagall murals behind a glass front
Theatres
Elsewhere: theatres
TheatreBerlin · Charlottenburg
Schaubühne
A Bauhaus-era cinema on the Kurfürstendamm, running German theatre's most exported repertoire
TheatreLondon · South Bank
National Theatre
Denys Lasdun's concrete terraces on the river, three stages and a free foyer that never closes
TheatreCopenhagen · Kvæsthusbroen
Skuespilhuset
The royal playhouse on a boardwalk over the harbour, with a foyer that is a public promenade