As Tony awards approach, these Broadway trends are reshaping theater

Broadway’s spring madness is underway with shows opening on an almost nightly basis until the Tony deadline and the official end of the 2024-2025 season in a couple of weeks.

What trends might a theatergoer spot this season?

Sky high prices

Many people think a hit show means a full theater. In fact, most Broadway shows these days sell almost all of the seats. The profitability, or lack thereof, is determined by how much those seats sell for. So far this spring, we’ve seen two shows in particular that have pushed all previous boundaries: “Othello,” starring Denzel Washington and “Good Night, and Good Luck,” starring George Clooney. The former, which is far from great, has gone as high as about $900 from official outlets; the latter, a much more rewarding buy, as high as $849.

Why? Simple. Theaters have limited capacity, Broadway is a for-profit business (mostly) and there are enough people willing to pay that price, as least before the stock market wreaked havoc this week. Broadway is a costly, heavily unionized business and stars like Washington and Clooney don’t like to get tied up in the same project for months, let alone years. And when they leave, the shows often aren’t viable without them.

So here’s the new Broadway math: Initial production costs on Broadway are very expensive but if you charge those kinds of prices, producers can make back their money in, say, 20 weeks rather than 50, all being well. So projects with stars of that kind of wattage have become more viable.

Expect more celebs moving in and out, and more pricing records, next season. Unless we’re suddenly in a major recession. At that point, $2,500 for a couple’s night out with theater, drinks and dinner might look pretty foolhardy.

Stars aplenty

Hollywood actors often have tried their hand at Broadway over the years. But this spring season has a notable large number of bonafide celebrities, including Kieran Culkin in “Glengarry Glen Ross” and Sarah Snook in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” as distinct from theater celebrities who can hit or miss at the box-office.

What’s changed? In this age of TV dominance of a culture that moves on fast, producers are trying to snag stars at the moment of their peak appeal. Hence, half the cast of HBO’s “Succession” has shown up on Broadway. Note also that there is a huge overlap between the demographic that watches “Succession” and Broadway ticket buyers. The most obviously similar show is “White Lotus,” so don’t be surprised if you see Carrie Coon or Walton Goggins on Broadway soon. Parker Posey’s image is in Times Square already.

TV shows spawning Broadway shows

Two Broadway attractions opening next week are based not on movies or novels, as long has been common, but on television shows. “Smash,” a Broadway musical about making a Broadway musical, is based on the NBC drama that was created by Theresa Rebeck and ran from 2012-2013.

“Smash” was a fraught and short-lived TV project. People got fired, storylines went awry and, by the end, it had as many hate watchers as full-on fans. But “Smash” was watched by a lot of people who love Broadway and, of course, there were songs already created (by the great Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman) and epic dance numbers already choreographed.

“Smash” had stars, too (the likes of Debra Messing, Megan Hilty and Katharine McPhee) but they’re not in the Broadway show. Nor is the musical using all the same characters or storyline, although the internal musical about Marilyn Monroe still is in place.

You might say “Smash” is relying on the brand of the TV show to attract an audience while also requesting license from its fans to take things in a new direction. We’ll have to see how it goes, but it’s a fascinating experiment.

Meanwhile, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” which opens April 22, is a prequel to the massive Netflix hit series. This import from London is in many ways drawing from the same playbook as “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which managed to be both a prequel and a sequel at the same time. Indeed, the savvy writer Jack Thorne had a hand in both shows.

Prequels are clever ways to exploit valuable intellectual product without actually trampling on material audiences already love; some savvy Broadway types have come to see that as a surer bet than the more typical live adaptation. Of course, the risk here is that the idea of a “Stranger Things” prequel won’t appeal to those who have not seen the TV show, any more than ”Cursed Child” attracted folks who did not know anything about Harry Potter.

Then again, “Stranger Things” was a far bigger deal on the small screen than “Smash,” and maybe other folks will trust that the show can stand on its own. Broadway audiences will know soon.

Fusion of Broadway and streaming

Broadway has long embraced technology but the use of cheap, high-definition video, easy to stream live, has exploded this season. For years, Broadway looked at phones as enemies to be silenced. You still have to put your device in a pouch at “Othello” but pulling out phones for curtain calls now is customary. Usually, shows like “BOOP! the Musical” fly in their logo at just that moment, fusing spectacle and marketing.  But it is going deeper than that and audiences now seem increasingly willing to watch fusions of human beings and digital images.

Tom Francis walks around Midtown while performing live to a camera in “Sunset Blvd.” And in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Snook’s solo show uses highly sophisticated prerecorded video matched in real time to live streaming. The use of technology is stunning. And although “Good Night, and Good Luck” largely is an old-fashioned show, it still hands over its most climactic moment to a prerecorded video about the media’s progressive meltdown since the days of Edward R. Murrow. It’s brilliantly done, but would Murrow have approved?

No matter. Time has marched on.

Old school is still in session

Is there anything more old school than a Stephen Sondheim revue or a Jerry Mitchell musical? Reviews for the unabashedly retro “Betty Boop the Musical” land Monday night, Cameron Mackintosh’s “Old Friends” opens Tuesday, and the bankable Broadway star Jonathan Groff tops “Just in Time,” a show celebrating the music of Bobby Darin with an opening night now planned for April 26.

All that and “Dead Outlaw,” a musical about a corpse opening April 27.

Let’s hope Broadway eclecticism is one trend that never dies.

Chris Jones is the Broadway critic for the Daily News.