Sara Bareilles Proves Broadway Cred As 'Waitress' Recoups $12M Investment

This article is more than 2 years old.

Sara Bareilles is the newest member of an exclusive club - profitable Broadway composers.

Her Tony-nominated musical Waitress recouped its $12 million capitalization, producers Barry and Fran Weissler announced today. That's a speedy turnaround - less than 10 months after it opened last spring.

Waitress is the third show in as many weeks to turn a profit, an unusual spate of good news for a notoriously tough industry. It was preceded by the plays Oh, Hello  and The Front Pagemaking it the first profitable musical since Hamilton.

As far back as August, I predicted it would turn out this way. Not only was Waitress breaking the house record over and over at the Brooks Atkinson, it's also the only new musical of moderate size - and thus moderate expenses. (School Of Rock, which is also still running, is a significantly larger production on all fronts).

Though producers declined to confirm a hard number, Waitress costs about $650,000/week to run, according to sources familiar with its finances. This means it's been in the black each week since opening - no small feat for any show, let alone a composer's debut.

But Waitress's recoupment is significant for more than its expediency. The show made headlines last season for being the first Broadway musical with a creative team helmed entirely by women: Bareilles, book writer Jessie Nelson, director Diane Paulus, and choreographer Lorin Latarro. Though the design team is largely male, the gender parity was still an industry milestone.

But as Bareilles told me last spring, the goal isn't to bludgeon people with the Girl Power angle. It's to shape a future where it won't be an angle. All-female teams, she said, shouldn't be a talking point - they should be so commonplace as not to merit a single headline.

With Waitress's success, Broadway is a step closer to achieving that. Producers can take more risks now when assembling their teams, able to reassure conservative investors of what many have known for a (frustratingly) long time: that women, too, can make millions.

Bareilles herself took the long way round to Broadway stardom. She grew up a fangirl with aspirations of being an actress, but wound up a popular singer-songwriter first. With Waitress, she has cemented her place in a community that's long been in her sights - and which has welcomed her with open arms.

And she may yet realize her starlet dream. Fans are in a tizzy over a certain rumor: that she'll take over for Tony winner Jessie Mueller as the show's lead when Mueller leaves in March, if only for a brief stint.

Official sources (including Bareilles herself) have tried to nip this bit of buzz in the bud, but it's persistent. And given the permeable gossip-membrane between industry fans and insiders, it's not out of the question until a firm "no" is heard from the folks at the top.

But even if Bareilles doesn't take the stage, Waitress may still add a certain notch to her belt. Though nominated five times already, she has yet to win a Grammy, and the Waitress cast album is up this year. There is no category favorite, unlike Hamilton in 2016, which gives her a good shot at yet another milestone.

Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website.