Suffs, the feminist Broadway musical that counts Hillary Clinton as one of its main producers, is officially a box-office bomb, with the show announcing a closing date after reportedly failing to turn a profit after nearly six months.
The musical — a nearly three-hour celebration of the suffragette movement, featuring a cast comprised entirely of women and gender “non-binary” performers — cost $19 million to produce, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing reviewed by the New York Times. That money has not been recouped, with ticket revenue failing to cover the weekly cost of operations.
Producers announced Friday that Suffs will close January 5 — only running for eight full months since its opening on April 18, 2024. Among the show’s other producers is Meena Harris, the niece of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
Clinton aggressively promoted Suffs ahead of its highly touted opening in April, appearing on late-night talk shows and even holding a Democratic fundraiser tied to the show. But her efforts, as well as reams of favorable coverage by the media, failed to juice ticket sales.
As Breitbart News reported, the musical showed signs of struggle early in its run, with attendance dipping as low as 78 percent in May, just a month after opening — a troubling sign for a show that was in the midst of prime Broadway season.
The numbers improved somewhat during the summer but have come down with the end of tourist season. For the most recent week that ended October 6, it played at just under 78 percent capacity, grossing $679,589.
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.
In addition, soaring costs due to inflation under the Kamala Harris and Joe Biden administration have hammered numerous shows, including the long-running The Phantom of the Opera, which shut its doors last year after more than three decades on Broadway.
A national tour for Suffs is set to begin in Seattle late next year, producers said.
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