A London run is sold to people who do not live there
The West End’s audience is substantially visiting, which changes what can run for years and what closes in months.
London
New YorkThe same show is two businesses on two streets
A title crossing the Atlantic keeps its songs and changes its economics: capitalisation, weekly costs and the definition of a hit are different on each side of the water.
The show does not change. The arithmetic does.
London
Shaftesbury Avenue is a business model, not a street
Nearly every house sits in one of two small grids
London’s theatre district is walkable in twenty minutes and New York’s is smaller still. Concentration is the whole industry’s operating condition.
New York
Broadway is forty-one rooms and a union rulebook
Broadway is a list of buildings, not a place
The designation is contractual. Forty-one theatres qualify, and everything from union agreements to award eligibility follows from that list.
Every week’s takings are published
The Broadway League reports weekly grosses show by show, which makes New York the most transparent commercial theatre in the world and the most brutally comparable.
Houses
When a production runs long enough the theatre stops being a venue and becomes an address — and the building is quietly re-engineered around one tenant. The houses →
The Pit
The composer writes the tune, somebody else writes the sound
Orchestration is a separate credit and a separate craft. Jonathan Tunick’s work on Stephen Sondheim is as identifiable as the songs it dresses — and the size of the band he writes for is set by a contract negotiated house by house.
