The highly-popular Broadway musical “Hamilton” opens next week in Des Moines and the three-week run is nearly sold out.
Denise Smithson Green, director of ticketing for the Des Moines Civic Center, says devoted fans can take part in a digital ticket lottery for every show. The first of the daily lotteries starts Monday for opening night, which is next Wednesday.
“The lottery will open at 11 AM and then it’ll close at 9 AM the next day,” Smithson Green says. “The show will do their drawing, notify the winners, and they can purchase up to two tickets. Those tickets will be $10 each.” That’s an extremely discounted price, as the “Hamilton” tickets still for sale range from around 200 to $375 each, before fees. The ticket lottery, like the show, is expected to be a big hit.
“For most of our performances, the first week, the seats are a little bit scattered but they’re still fantastic seats,” Smithson Green says. “The second and third week, they are the second and third row. There’s 40 seats available and to get a ticket for $10 for one of the hottest shows on Broadway is pretty amazing.”
“Hamilton” won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2008. It’s the story of America’s founding father Alexander Hamilton who became George Washington’s right-hand man during the Revolutionary War and was the new nation’s first Treasury Secretary. The civic center has hosted several major touring Broadway shows over the years, including “Wicked,” “Phantom of the Opera” and “The Lion King,” but Smithson Green stops short of saying “Hamilton” will be the venue’s biggest-ever draw.
“We only have a certain number of tickets, so if you sell out, you sell out. The excitement around this one is fantastic, but it’s a different show so to compare it to any other Broadway show isn’t really fair,” she says, laughing. “It is a really big deal to have Hamilton here on its first tour out.”
A sales event was held back in November that sold out all available tickets, tens of thousands of them, but more tickets were “released” recently for sale through Des Moines Performing Arts. The show runs June 27th through July 15th.