Hillary Clinton’s feminist Broadway musical Suffs is struggling at the box office despite receiving a bounty of Tony Award nominations and an outpouring of adulatory coverage from the mainstream news media.
Suffs — a nearly three-hour musical about the rise of the suffragette movement, featuring a cast comprised entirely of women and gender “non-binary” performers — played to 81 percent capacity last week, while dipping to 78 percent capacity the week before, according to data from The Broadway League.
Those figures spell potential trouble for a new show that should still be drawing big crowds during Broadway’s peak season — the month before the Tony Awards.
To put the Suffs numbers in perspective, the new Broadway musical Lempicka just posted a closing notice after playing to 83 percent capacity last week.
Broadway stats can be deceiving due to dynamic ticket pricing. Shows that are in trouble often offer steep discounts to entice audiences and pump up attendance numbers — sometimes at a net loss to producers.
Hillary Clinton is one of the main producers of Suffs and has made her presence felt on Broadway this season.
The former first lady and two-time presidential candidate attended the show’s opening last month and has promoted the show in several TV interviews, including stops at NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and CBS Sunday Morning.
As Breitbart News reported, Hillary Clinton used Suffs as part of a recent Broadway-themed fundraiser for President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
Hillary Clinton and Lin-Manuel Miranda hosted the April 3 fundraiser in New York, which featured a performance from the Suffs cast.
Among the other producers of Suffs is Vice President Kamala Harris’ niece, Meena Harris.
The economics of Broadway are brutal for new musicals that don’t come with a celebrity cast or Disney imprimatur. The vast majority of Broadway ticket buyers are tourists whose tastes in theater tend toward crowd-pleasing family fare.
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