Buying "Hamilton" and other theater tickets is a whole new challenge
“Hamilton!” is coming to Connecticut.
But not for a while and not without challenges for fans who desperately want — as a song from the show goes — to be in “the room where it happens.”
Hartford’s Bushnell theater recently announced the Broadway blockbuster will have a three-week run in its 2018-19 season. Renewing subscribers next spring — there are about 6,000 in the current season — will get first dibs for the first week of the run, followed by new subscribers. In the third wave of selling, subscribers will get the first chance at single tickets. (The exact number they will be allowed to purchase is still to be established.)
The rest of the inventory — the tour’s producers insist 50 percent will be available — goes on sale to the general public. A total of more than 66,000 seats will be available for the run.
The show’s tour recently began in San Francisco and presenting houses booked for the 2017-18 season are already reporting a jump in subscription sales by 30 percent. That’s no surprise because getting tickets for “Hamilton!” since its Broadway opening in 2015 has been a Herculean task. The stratospheric prices for premium seats — $750 tickets for the Broadway show (and higher from scalpers and ticket agencies) — has made many theater consumers feeling, as another song from the show goes, “helpless.”
Part of the reason is that buying tickets to a hit show has become in recent years as confusing as purchasing an airline ticket. That’s because “dynamic pricing” — first mastered by Disney productions — has come not only to Broadway, but to many of the state’s nonprofit presenting and producing houses.