I'm the farthest thing from a "Broadway Connoiseur" but I the see draw. The very first traveling show from Broadway I ever saw was the Jerome Robbins classic Peter Pan, starring glassy-eyed Sandy Duncan. My mother was never again able to get me to simply go to sleep without me jumping on the bed or wishing - knowing - I could fly. Stereotypes and sentimentalities aside, the essence of possibility was on that stage for this five-year old boy who would eventually learned quickly how to crow. I remember those songs of happiness and that feeling of freedom to this day. It all makes me young again, just like Peter demanded.
Then my mother took me to see Cats. I remember being very young and in the quite-intimate Shubert theater overwhelmed with far-reaching set designs. We were unusually late despite living blocks away, and wanting to use the rest rooms. There was no more time and the lights went down and Andrew Lloyd Webber's crazy overture, intoxicating and gripping, was beginning. The dry ice began to take over the stage... slowly, ever so slowly. And it was all like a slow coaster gearing up to the top of a hill where you don't know what's going to happen and are poised simply waiting... but you really have to release.
Perhaps I could escape and return before missing much. Was there another option? I leaped from my aisle seat onto the red carpet with only faint row lights to guide my worried path. Pathetically, I was then thrown back into my seat by something furry running down the aisle. I was mortified. What was that large and mean being? It ran on stage and joined other beings as the music swept through towards the first chorus. It was shocking. I had been thrown back into my seat by a cat. I stared it down for the next two hours and I never forgave it or the felines it portrayed. They're all just like him, selfish!
My mother tried to get me to appreciate the popular musicals when they came into town. We saw Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables together, epic tales told on stage through songs created for the sole purpose of selling not only a seat in the house but a recording you could take home later and play over and over again on repeat until you could not only sing the songs by heart, but insist that the part could someone and somewhere one day be meant for you.
By the time I moved to New York, Broadway had become a reality of what a show was supposed to be for me. My first trip to New York City, in 1999, landed me here for my birthday. For years, mom or friends had taken me to see some show on that birthday. It was fitting that my wonderful darling of a host - whom I still cherish as the best thing to ever cross my path, especially after almost 10 years - took me to my first show on Broadway. That night, on my 25th birthday, the magic disappeared. Broadway's scale of intimacy catering to the masses of tourists reeled in via terrible acoustics and microphoned performances was aching. Nothing seemed magical anymore, certainly not the show, not even Les Miserables on Broadway.
I took a deep breath and didn't fret. And then I found myself, four years later, in London and jumped into a seat to see the Victor Hugo tale once more, in the theater where it had originally played. It was certain to bring back the magic. I'm not sure what was more disheartening, to see a show again, after an initial viewing 10 years earlier, and realize it had none of the magic I remembered; or to finally realize that this act of theater was in fact, to me, inexcusable.
I went home and listened to the recording, closed my eyes and remembered my own magic. It was enough to forgive.
Revivals are a whole other lot. A Chorus Line returned to Broadway a couple of years ago and, of course, it was the show I had to see. "Gotta get the part, gotta get the part"... was all I recall. That and the Doublemint gum song. Where was the part I was supposed o cherish? The part with which I was to reflect on and corolate? Paul because he was the hispanic? I was told "A CHORUS LINE is a celebration of those unsung heroes of the American Musical Theatre-the chorus dancers, those valiant, overdedicated, underpaid, highly trained performers who back up the star or stars and often make them look even more talented than they are." Hmmm, sounded like another installment of "Don't worry, second best really isn't best loser or maybe it can be, but that's ok."
As far as I was concerned, Stewart Smiley said it better.
OK, I've seen some good ones (on that same trip to London, I was impressed with The Producers, and Spamalot was pretty darned good). Juliet Taymor did a magical job with The Lion King (but a transplant coming in to do the job that no one else could do really can't count, despite the fact that it is still playing strong - and with good reason - to crowds of fans after 10 years). Then last year came something called Spring Awakening. You rarely get so much comotion from a show (here's my plug for Rent, yes I fell for that one too despite the need to be 2 rows from the stage to understand all the wailing). I didn't go see it during its entire original cast run, and I did not regret it.
A recent fad on Broadway is hiring bigger-than-Broadway-stars to attract more audiences before the show is forced to close on Broadway. They all go through it and it usually means that one thing. It's something that works and tt worked for us when the producers of Spring Awakening called in that magically handsome new actor that's graced Showtime's airwaves for three years as Silas on the fantastic show, Weeds.
(MMMMMMmmmmmmm...) And just like that we had secured our tickets...
He was great, as was the show, and again I saw the draw and why it matters that things like this are ever produced and brought to light. Sometimes it's all we have to push a thought (like the need to fly or the love of felines) beyond the grasp of reality and into the hearts and magical memories of the willing.
