Seven years, and it’s down to two weeks.
Moulin Rouge! The Musical plays its final performance at the Al Hirschfeld on Sunday, August 30. And for the run-out, the production has done the thing everybody hoped it would: Aaron Tveit is back as Christian, for a strictly limited 15 performances from Tuesday, August 18 through Saturday, August 29.
Tveit originated the role in the 2018 Boston premiere, carried it to Broadway, and won the 2021 Tony for it. Christian Douglas then returns to close the show out on August 30 — so the very last performance is not a Tveit performance, which is the detail people are going to get wrong when they buy.
The $49 lottery is still running, and it’s your best shot
Here’s the thing nobody expects about a closing show: the lottery usually keeps going right up to the end. Moulin Rouge‘s does.
It’s a $49 digital lottery through Lucky Seat, a limited number for every performance, limit two tickets per winner. Some winners get stage-side table seating, which at $49 is absurd.
The timing quirk is the part that costs people:
- Weekday performances — entries close 9:30 AM ET the day before.
- Weekend and Monday performances — entries close 9:30 AM ET the Friday before.
Read that second line again. If you wake up Saturday morning wanting to enter for Saturday night, you missed it by 24 hours. Lucky Seat batches the weekend on Friday morning, and it is the single most common way people miss a draw they thought they were in. More of these traps are collected in the fine print post.
My honest read on the odds: they get worse every day from here. A closing announcement plus a returning Tony winner is exactly the combination that floods a lottery pool. Enter anyway — it costs nothing but the alarm — but don’t build the evening around winning it.
What else changed on the board this week
Ragtime closed Sunday. The Lincoln Center revival played its last on August 16, which retires both its Telecharge rush and the LincTix route into the Beaumont. If you had that on a list, take it off.
Chicago got a new Roxie yesterday. South Korean pop star Ivy makes her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart from August 17 through September 6 — she’s played the part for six seasons in Seoul, somewhere around 600 performances. Tony nominee Max von Essen returned as Billy Flynn the same night. Worth knowing: Chicago runs no lottery. Its cheap seats are a $49 general rush and $39 standing room at the Ambassador box office, day of performance.
Paranormal Activity opens August 25. It started previews on the 14th at the August Wilson, and as of this morning our catalog still shows no lottery and no rush program for it. That’s normal for a show in previews — most programs launch at or after opening. If one appears, it’ll show up on the hub the day it does. Background on the production is in the previews post.
Off-Broadway, The Real Ivanov began previews Sunday at Classic Stage Company’s Lynn F. Angelson Theater, opening August 25 and running through September 19.
The rest of the closing board, and how to get in cheap
Moulin Rouge is the headline, but it isn’t alone. What’s on the clock:
- The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee — closes September 6 at New World Stages. $39 Telecharge lottery, plus a $49 digital rush at 11 AM day-of when it’s available.
- Titanique — closes September 20 at the St. James. $49 Lucky Seat lottery, limit two, same 9:30 AM weekday and Friday-for-the-weekend cutoff as Moulin Rouge. Plus a TodayTix rush.
- Just in Time — extended to October 18 at Circle in the Square. $40 in-person rush when the box office opens, limit two, and that can include standing room.
Off-Broadway is thinning out too — Are You Now or Have You Ever Been at City Center Stage I ends September 11, and it’s an MTC35 title, so anyone 35 or under gets in at $35 with a guest of any age.
What I’d do this week
If you want Moulin Rouge with Tveit, you have 15 performances and two weeks. Realistically that means three swings, in this order:
- Enter the Lucky Seat lottery every day it’s open, and remember to enter Friday morning for anything Saturday, Sunday or Monday.
- Watch the Hirschfeld box office for returns. Closing weeks generate held-seat releases that never make it online.
- Check the red steps. TKTS at Duffy Square opens at 3 PM for evening performances, and a closing show occasionally lands there in its last fortnight. Comparison of when that beats a lottery is in TKTS vs. the lottery.
And if none of it lands, that’s genuinely fine. There are still 20-odd Broadway lotteries and a stack of Off-Broadway ones running every day this week — the full live board sits on the lottery hub, and the strategy behind all of it is in the playbook.
Seven years at the Hirschfeld is a long run for anything in this city. Go if you can.
