(Above) A view of a Broadway theatre. (Below) Sara Ramirez, a cast member of Spamalot

Maybe it?s the air-conditioning or the advertising or even ? imagine this ? the entertainment, but Broadway is sizzling. Eight weeks into the 2005-6 season and despite an oppressive blanket of heat flopped over the city, box-office sales are up by nine per cent over last summer, with a five percent increase in attendance, making for the industry?s fastest start ever.

Through Sunday, no fewer than six major Broadway musicals were playing to full capacity, with several, including The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Monty Python?s Spamalot, and The Lion King, selling standing-room tickets.

So torrid has been the summertime appetite for show tunes that even older musicals like Beauty and the Beast and Phantom of the Opera have been at or near capacity for several weeks. The attendance and box-office figures, which include sales through Sunday, put Broadway on track to set records for both attendance and gross sales, good news for an industry that saw negligible growth last season.

Bullish Broadway executives say much of the summertime boom is the result of a current crush of tourism, including many overseas travellers drawn to the United States by the weak dollar. In any given year, 40 to 60 per cent of Broadway?s audience is made up of visitors from outside the metropolitan area.

?The equation is very simple: if tourists want to come to New York, they will want to go to a Broadway show,? said Jed Bernstein, president of the League of American Theatres and Producers, Broadway?s leading trade group. ?The number one thing that tourists want to do is see an artistic and cultural event, and Broadway is the number one cultural event they want to see.?

That surge of tourists has come despite terrorism fears because of the London subway bombings and unfortunate photo opportunities, such as a police SWAT team storming a bus near Times Square on Sunday afternoon.

This month Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg predicted a strong summer for tourism, with 12 million expected between Memorial Day and Labor Day, a record. The figures bear out those predictions: through June, hotel occupancy in the city was more than 90 per cent, compared with 87 percent in June 2004 and 81 percent in June 2003, according to NYC & Company, the city?s tourism organisation.

A scene from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Woman in White

Cristyne F. Lategano-Nicholas, the president of NYC & Company, said several factors could be adding to the increase in tourists, including an increase in the number of hotel rooms (and thus a decrease in price) and aggressive marketing campaigns in England, Germany and Japan. ?I think a lot of savvy visitors know they can come to New York and not spend an arm and a leg,? Lategano-Nicholas said.

Bernstein also said Broadway is enjoying the fruits of a very successful spring in part because four major musicals opened and continue to thrive ? three comedies, Spamalot, Spelling Bee and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and the romantic drama The Light in the Piazza. (All four were also nominated for the Tony Award for best musical; Spamalot won.)

?The message is, breadth of shows sells tickets,? he said.

On the drama side, meanwhile, Doubt, the 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winner for drama and Tony Award-winner for best play, continues to set records for sales at the Walter Kerr Theater, while commercial productions of new plays like The Pillowman and Primo are also holding their own.

But the Broadway boom is not being directly echoed in other artistic mediums. Hollywood has been struggling with sluggish sales all year, with its summer blockbusters doing little to break the streak.

Best leading actors and actresses, from left, Norbert Leo Butz of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Cherry Jones of Doubt, Victoria Clark of The Light in the Piazza, and Bill Irwin of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, at the Tony Awards

Stephanie Lee, the chief executive of Group Sales Box Office, a Broadway ticket agency in Times Square, said her business usually lays off a few employees every summer, but not this year.

?The trend is that we?re dead in the summer, but we?ve had to hire extra people,? said Lee, adding that the strength ? and diversity ? of last season?s major musicals was helping sales across the board. ?It sends a message out that these shows are here to stay, and that there?s something for everyone.?

Whether Broadway can keep up its torrid pace is a question. September is traditionally a tough month for the commercial theatre as tourists go home and children go back to school. Still, a look at the fall schedule does not reveal any slam-dunk hits, except the revival of Neil Simon?s comedy The Odd Couple, which has virtually sold out a six-month run.

But Lee said sales were strong for two musicals to open in the fall ? Andrew Lloyd Webber?s Woman in White and an adaptation of The Color Purple by Alice Walker ? as well as for a new show by the dance queen Chita Rivera. ?We?re booking into the fall and spring,? she said. ?We are very, very busy.?

NYTNS