I have written this board a dozen ways — by price, by odds, by entry deadline, by whether you have to stand up for three hours. Here is a cut I have never done, and it is the one that actually matters if you are already in Times Square with an evening to fill: by block.
Twenty-five shows are running on Broadway right now. They are not spread evenly. Five of them sit on West 45th Street, two apiece on 43rd, 46th, 47th, 48th, 49th and 52nd, and the rest are singletons. If you know which door is on which street, you can walk a rush route instead of guessing at one.
Everything below was pulled off the live catalog this week.
West 45th Street: five theaters, five cheap doors
The densest block in the business, and every single house on it has a way in under $60.
- Minskoff, 200 W 45th — The Lion King, $35 Broadway Direct lottery. Entries open 9 AM and close 3 PM the day before, limit two.
- Lyceum, 149 W 45th — Oh, Mary!, $47 digital lottery drawn the day before at 10 AM and 3 PM, or $43 rush at the box office on the day.
- Schoenfeld, 236 W 45th — Buena Vista Social Club, $49 lottery on the same day-before draw, or $45 rush.
- Jacobs, 242 W 45th — The Outsiders, $49 Telecharge lottery, $45 rush from 10 AM, and $39 standing room. Three doors at one address.
- Golden, 252 W 45th — Operation Mincemeat, $59 lottery through Telecharge, a separate $79 Ticket Draw run by the production, and a $49 rush. The rush is cheaper than the lottery here, which is worth saying out loud.
Two things jump out. The cheapest ticket on the block is The Lion King at $35, which is the one nobody under thirty thinks to enter because they saw it in fourth grade. And the Lyceum is at 149 while everything else is in the 200s and 250s — so "one block" is really two short walks with Broadway in between. Plan for six minutes, not one.
West 48th: two lotteries across the street from each other
Walter Kerr, 219 W 48th — Hadestown, $49 Lucky Seat, plus $39 standing room. Longacre, 220 W 48th — Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), $48 lottery, $42 rush.
Enter both. They are a dollar apart, they are forty feet apart, and the draws run on different systems, so a loss on one tells you nothing about the other.
West 49th: the monthly draw nobody enters
Ambassador, 219 W 49th — Chicago runs a box office rush and standing room, neither with a published price. Call the house. Eugene O'Neill, 230 W 49th — The Book of Mormon has a $49 Lucky Seat lottery, all-in including fees, and a $15 monthly drawing that closes at 11:59 PM on the 14th of each month with winners drawn by 3 PM on the 15th. Fifteen dollars. Once a month. Set a calendar reminder and forget about it.
West 52nd: the all-in pair
Neil Simon, 250 W 52nd — MJ, $49 Broadway Direct lottery that itemizes its fees honestly: a $2 facility fee and a $5 handling fee are inside the number. August Wilson, 245 W 52nd — Paranormal Activity, $40 Lucky Seat stated all-in, plus a $40 TodayTix rush. These two are across the street from each other and both tell you the real price, which puts them in a very small club.
West 46th and West 47th
Richard Rodgers, 226 W 46th — Hamilton's $10 weekly draw. Entry opens Friday morning and closes the following Thursday at noon, covering every performance of the next week. Still the cheapest ticket on Broadway and it always will be. Marquis, 210 W 46th — Stranger Things: The First Shadow, $45 Broadway Direct, one entry, two tickets, closes 2 PM the day before.
One block north: Lena Horne, 256 W 47th — Six, $45 Broadway Direct with a 6 PM close the day before, which is later than almost anything else on the platform and is the single most useful piece of trivia on this page. Friedman, 261 W 47th — School Girls has no lottery, only a $49 TodayTix rush, and MTC's under-35 program.
West 43rd
Sondheim, 124 W 43rd — & Juliet is one of three running shows with no lottery at all. It compensates with three rush doors: $49 digital, $49 in person from 10 AM, and $45 standing room including fees. Lyric, 214 W 43rd — Harry Potter and the Cursed Child runs the Friday Forty at $40, a weekly TodayTix draw you enter any time between Monday just after midnight and 1 PM Friday for the following week.
The singletons
- Belasco, 111 W 44th — Maybe Happy Ending, the Club 2064 lottery at $20.64, prime orchestra or mezzanine. The cheapest lottery on Broadway that is not Hamilton.
- Nederlander, 208 W 41st — Schmigadoon!, $45, with an unusual 10 AM to 2 PM entry window.
- New Amsterdam, 214 W 42nd — Aladdin, $35, winners get sixty minutes to pay.
- Circle in the Square, 235 W 50th — Just in Time, no lottery, $40 rush at box office opening.
- Gershwin, 222 W 51st — Wicked, $55, the most expensive lottery on the board and more than its own $45 rush.
- Studio 54, 254 W 54th — The Rocky Horror Show, $30 lottery, $30 rush, half-price student rush thirty minutes before curtain. Cheapest walk-up on Broadway.
- Palace, 1564 Broadway — The Lost Boys, $45.
- Broadway Theatre, 1681 Broadway — The Great Gatsby, $45 lottery, $40 rush, $25 student rush.
The route
If you are doing this in person on a weekday, start at 10 AM on West 45th. The Jacobs, the Golden and the Lyceum all sell rush when the box offices open and they are inside a five-minute walk of each other. Strike out on all three and you are two blocks from Studio 54's $30 window. The full walk-up map is in the in-person rush guide.
If you are doing it from your couch, enter the day-before draws the night before — most of the Telecharge houses open entries at midnight — and remember that Six holds until 6 PM when everything else has closed at two or three. The full lottery board, the how-to-win guide and the platform breakdown cover the mechanics.
And since you will be standing on these blocks anyway: the block-by-block dinner guide is organized the exact same way. Curtain is 7, so eat at 5:45.
