Broadway does this every August. Half the marquees change at once, the tourist crowds hit their peak, and five shows start playing beat-the-clock with their final performances. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone already slipped out the side door on July 26. Five more follow before Labor Day weekend.
Here’s the thing about a closing notice, though: it’s the best cheap-seat signal on Broadway. Full-price tickets get ugly as the end approaches — but the lottery price never moves. A $49 lottery seat to a show in its final week costs exactly what it cost in month three. That’s the arbitrage. Here’s the play for each one.
CATS: The Jellicle Ball — final performance August 8
The Broadhurst turns the runway lights off first. The ballroom-remix CATS goes out on a Saturday, which means the last week will be a zoo (sorry). The move: the $49 digital lottery through Telecharge, backed up by a $45 general rush at the Broadhurst box office — 10 AM Monday through Saturday, noon on Sunday. Rush lines for closing weeks form early. Bring coffee. Full show details here.
Death of a Salesman — final performance August 9
The Winter Garden revival closes the day after CATS. This one is lottery-only — no rush, no standing room — so the $49 Telecharge digital lottery is the whole game. Entries open at midnight the day before the performance and close at 3 PM that same day, with winners drawn at 10 AM and 3 PM. Set two alarms. Show page here.
Every Brilliant Thing — final performance August 9
The Hudson’s one-person heartbreaker has the friendliest cheap-seat menu of the August class: a Lucky Seat digital lottery, a $45 digital rush in the TodayTix app, and a $45 general rush at the box office (10 AM Tuesday–Saturday, noon Sunday). Three doors in. If you strike out on one, you’ve got two more. Details here.
Ragtime — final performance August 16
The Vivian Beaumont revival gets one more week than the rest. No lottery on this one — it’s a day-of rush through Telecharge, so check rush availability the morning you want to go. And if you’re between 18 and 35, LincTix membership (free to join) gets you $35–$40 seats, which is the single best deal on this list. Show page here.
Moulin Rouge! — final performance August 30
The Hirschfeld’s glitter cannon fires for the last time at the end of the month. The $49 Lucky Seat lottery has a quirk worth knowing: for weekday performances, enter by 9:30 AM the day before; for weekend and Monday performances, enter by 9:30 AM the Friday before. Miss the Friday cutoff and your Saturday plans are toast. Full details here.
The one that got away
Titanique was supposed to be on this list — the original closing date was August 30. Then the box office kept printing money and the run got extended to September 20, with Jim Parsons, Melissa Barrera, Deborah Cox, and Frankie Grande on the marquee. The Lucky Seat lottery and $49 TodayTix rush both keep running. Consider this your bonus month.
The September warning shot
One more date for the calendar: Just in Time — Jonathan Groff doing Bobby Darin in the round at Circle in the Square — closes September 6. TodayTix digital lottery, plus a $40 general rush at the box office. Don’t be the person who kept saying “next month.” Show page here.
A word on why the timing matters. When a show announces a closing date — especially one with Tony hardware on the shelf — the resale market notices before you do. Orchestra seats that sat at $150 in June will be pushing $300 by the final weekend, and the “premium” seats go somewhere I refuse to type. Meanwhile the lottery stays $49 and the rush stays $45. The house always releases those seats. The only question is whether your name comes up.
How to play a closing show
Closing notices pull two crowds at once: the people who always meant to go, and the people who saw it twice and want one more. Both of them are in your lottery pool now, and the odds get worse every day closer to the final curtain. So play it like a local:
Enter every eligible performance, not just Saturday night — a Tuesday or a Wednesday matinee can double your odds. Have a rush backup for the shows that offer one, and know the box office opening time cold. And if you win, claim it fast and completely — claim windows are short, and we wrote a whole guide on what to do after you win so you don’t fumble at the one-yard line.
And keep one eye on the TKTS board in Duffy Square — closing shows sometimes surface there at 30–50 percent off when a performance undersells, which is a fine consolation prize on a lottery-loss day. We break down when the booth beats the lottery in Wednesday’s post.
If you’re still deciding which door to try for which show, the rush vs. lottery vs. standing room framework breaks it down by show type, and the full lottery playbook covers entry mechanics for every platform. The complete list of what’s running lotteries right now lives on the Broadway lottery hub — bookmark it, because after August 30 this whole list is history.
