Hamilton is returning to the San Francisco theater this August where it was still being performed last March before the pandemic shut down all theaters on and off Broadway.
While Broadway shows are planning their restarts in mid-September, San Francisco will beat them to reopening with an August 10 restart for Hamilton. BroadwaySF, the organization formerly known as SHN, announced the reopening of Hamilton on Tuesday, and tickets for the limited, four-week run go on sale Wednesday morning at 10 a.m.
"The Bay Area has always been a special place for Hamilton after audiences embraced the launch of our first national tour," says producer Jeffrey Seller in a statement. "We are thrilled that Hamilton will reopen in San Francisco and play for four final weeks before continuing on as a West Coast tour."
The limited run will go from August 10 to September 5, and tickets will be available between $49 and $179, with premium seats going for $199 to $299.
Hamilton closed last March along with all Bay Area theater productions, two and a half months shy of its planned closing date of May 31, 2020. Having been playing in San Francisco on and off for the past five years, tickets went from impossible to get for the first and second tours, to relatively available in its latter months, leading the team to start offering some seats by lottery for just $10.
But demand for live theater is no doubt back in full force, and while some entertainment venues may reopen later this month as public-health restrictions are lifted, it hasn't been clear when the first theater productions would make it back open here.
"There’s no clearer sign that San Francisco is coming back to life than seeing live performances returning to our stages," says Mayor London Breed in a statement. "Everyone has sacrificed so much over the past year to keep each other safe, and that meant that we couldn’t enjoy the shows and events that make our city such a special place. Now, with case numbers low and our vaccination rate approaching 80%, we’re excited that Hamilton is coming back to the Orpheum Theatre for our residents and visitors to enjoy once again."
Earlier this year, BroadwaySF was acquired by Britain's Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG), the same company that was putting on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Curran. The New York-based Nederlander Company decided to back out of San Francisco entirely and sell the Orpheum and Golden Gate theaters to ATG — which means that the Brits currently control all three major Broadway tour houses in SF.
Broadway SF originally announced a postponement of its season to this June, but those dates have moved around further and some of the shows have since changed. Now, following the run of Hamilton, Jesus Christ Superstar will open at the Golden Gate on October 13 for a three-week run, and My Fair Lady will open at the Orpheum on November 3. The Mean Girls musical is no longer coming to town.
Besides a production of A Christmas Carol — which will apparently be competing with ACT's annual staging of the classic this holiday season — the rest of the 2021-2022 season from Broadway SF moves into next year, with Broadway touring productions Tony winners The Band's Visit, Moulin Rouge!, Hadestown, and Oklahoma! all playing here in 2022.
The two-part Harry Potter play, which had just begun a planned two-year run at the Curran when the pandemic shutdown occurred, is scheduled to restart performances around the holidays this year, on November 28.