So here’s the thing . . . last week wasn’t great . . . when you compare it to summer, or Thanksgiving or even the soon-to-be-here Spring Break weeks.

But last week was up a whopping 30% over last year. And as I look down the line of grosses below, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such strength from so many shows in January. Yes, the heavy hitters are still making up a lot of that giant jump from last year. Usually, shows are bleeding money about now, but they suck up the losses because better times are ahead that make up those shortfalls and then some.

When I scroll through the list below, I don’t see many, if any, shows that are in the red. And that’s something to blog about.

In fact, and we’re checking on this, but I suspect this could have been a January with the least amount of closings on record (usually there’s a big drop off after the holidays).

Why are we up? Well, yes, we’re still in the midst of the Broadway Week promotion (only one more week, folks!), but we had that last year too. And yes, this was a soft fall for new shows so there isn’t as much competition. But mostly I credit the stability in the shows to our smarter pricing strategies, both increasing and decreasing ticket prices to face demand.

This coming week is the biggest test of all (The Super Bowl should be a national holiday for goodness sake), but I think we’re going to get through it better than we think.

And if January is this decent, imagine what the spring holds.

Here is a list of last week’s Broadway grosses: