\'Heiress,\' \'Annie\' Draw Well in Early Previews on Broadway

By PATRICK HEALY

Two new Broadway revivalsâ€" “The Heiress,” starring Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain (“The Help”) in her Broadway debut, and the famed musical “Annie” â€" were solid sellers at the box office last week during their first sets of preview performances, according to ticket sales data released on Tuesday by the Broadway League, a trade association of theater owners and producers.

“The Heiress,” a 1947 play about a shy young woman treated shabbily by her father and a suitor, had its first two preview performances last weekend; the show grossed 70 percent of the maximum possible amount for those performances and had an average paid admission of $84.59. None of the other six straight plays on Broadway last week performed as well on those two benchmarks. The gross for “The Heiress,”which also stars Oscar nominee David Strathairn (“Good Night, and Good Luck”) and Dan Stevens (TV's “Downton Abbey”), was $151 ,328 for the two performances.

“Annie,” meanwhile, grossed $560,928 for its first five performances, or 65 percent of the maximum potential amount. The average paid admission was $77.40, relatively modest for a big musical but a reflection of early ticket discounts available for “Annie” during its first weeks of performances.

“The Heiress” is the latest commercial Broadway production to star film and television actors whose fame might help sell tickets to theater-goers. Another new Broadway play, “Grace,” has similar appeal thanks to cast members like Paul Rudd and Ed Asner; “Grace” opened to mixed reviews last week, but still grossed a healthy $511,130.

Other coming Broadway plays with celebrities include “Glengarry Glen Ross” (Al Pacino), “The Performers” (Alicia Silverstone and Henry Winkler), “Dead Accounts” (Katie Holmes), “The Anarchist” (Patti LuPone and Debra Winger), and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (Scarlett Johansson).

“Annie,” like many Broadway musicals, has a cast made up mostly of theater performers, including Katie Finneran (“Promises, Promises”) as Miss Hannigan and Lilla Crawford (“Billy Elliot”) as Annie.

The long-running hit musicals “The Lion King” and “Wicked” topped the box office chart last week; another musical, “The Book of Mormon,” was in third place and set its latest box office record at the Eugene O'Neill Theater for a gross of $1,668,832. Overall Broadway musicals and plays grossed $20.1 million last week, helped by the Columbus Day holiday weekend; the Broadway gross for the previous week was $17.2 million, and the gross for the comparable week in 2011 was $19.6 million.