Broadway breaks records through New Year’s weekend

The 33 plays and musicals running last week brought in a whopping $49.7 million, making it the highest-grossing week in Broadway history.

All around Times Square, records were toppled like pins in a bowling alley: it was the best week ever for long-running shows like “Chicago,” “Jersey Boys” and “The Lion King”; the most money ever grossed at theaters built more than a century ago ($911,000 by “Oh, Hello” at the Lyceum, which was built in 1903); the most performances ever by a single show during a seven-day period (17, by “The Illusionists”), and the most money ever grossed by a single show ($3.3 million, by “Hamilton”).

An astonishing 24 shows grossed more than $1 million last week, including seven that grossed more than $2 million, according to figures released Tuesday by the Broadway League.

The most significant factor appears to be pricing — the base prices for many Broadway shows are high, and the premium prices charged over the holiday period were even higher.

New York City was wrapping up a banner year for tourism — an estimated 60 million visitors, up from 58 million the previous year, according to Christopher Heywood, a spokesman for NYC & Co., the city’s tourism agency.

The period between Christmas and New Year’s is always popular for tourists — and lucrative for Broadway — but especially so this winter, because Christmas and New Year’s fell on weekends, and many people took off work the week in between.

Cirque du Soleil’s first Broadway venture, “Paramour,” had its best week yet, at $1.9 million, and “The Phantom of the Opera,” the longest-running Broadway show and a reliable barometer for tourist traffic, had its best week too, also at $1.9 million.