Broadway ends its highest grossing season

New York

BUOYED by a rising stream of tourists, the unexpected popularity of an adolescent with Asperger's syndrome, the star power of Larry David and Helen Mirren, and the enduring appeal of a lion named Simba, the Broadway season that just ended was the highest-grossing ever.

The Broadway League, a trade organisation that represents producers, said on Tuesday that the 40 Broadway theatres had sold a record US$1.365 billion worth of tickets in the year that ended on Sunday.

Although the grosses are not inflation-adjusted, and although part of Broadway's financial success is thanks to premium…