Broadway Musicals

Entertainment in an imperfect world

Two days after I moved to New York City, the woman I was staying with finally got an extra key made so that I could go out on my own. It was late December and I was staying up in Washington Heights in Manhattan. I swung out onto the crowded sidewalk and made my way to Broadway.

Broadway!

Approaching the corner of Broadway and West 186th Street I realized my mistake. Yes, this really was Broadway in New York City but it was Broadway uptown and bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Broadway of Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. Broadway uptown is Kennedy’s Fried Chicken, corner delis that sell super lotto tickets and malt liquor, C-Town grocery stores, and those Chinese places with the badly backlit photos of questionable-looking food instead of a menu.

I stood there, shivering for a couple of minutes, shoved around by busy people trying to get past me and then went back to my friend’s apartment.

Two years later I was living in Harlem and my soon-to-be BFF, Neil took me to my first Broadway musical. I floated out of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” absolutely entranced.

From that moment I loved Broadway musicals

If one can be so generous at to call the musical an art form, it’s reached its apex in New York City on Broadway. Even kind of crappy Broadway shows (I’m talking about you, “Spiderman”) still boast the epitome in choreography, singing, dancing, costumes, stage design, lighting, and live musicians. And I live three stops away from Broadway on the subway!

If money weren’t an object I’d be at a musical every week.

As it is, over the years I’ve managed to take in many astonishing shows both on and off Broadway. Often off-Broadway musicals are more daring, experimental and fun but I still get such a jolt of anticipation as the lights go down on a Broadway musical.

Thanks to the generosity of an old friend visiting from Cleveland, I got to see the “Lion King” (Julie Taymor is a genius and her stage design was the only saving grace of that dud, “Spiderman”), as well 2002’s short-lived “Frankie and Johnnie in the Claire de Lune” which opened with Stanley Tucci, stretched out gloriously naked on a bed center stage. Edie Falco was no slouch either (strictly speaking, “Frankie and Johnny” isn’t a musical per se, but I liked it and this is my piece so it stays).

With a little help from my friends

That friend visiting from Cleveland and Neil are two of a number of generous friends who have made it possible for me to enjoy Broadway as often as I have. When I arrived in New York in 2000, “The Producers” (which I have not seen) with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, had broken the $100 ticket barrier and the prices have skyrocketed ever since. But thanks to that Cleveland benefactor I’ve seen “Spring Awakening” and “Billy Elliot” in addition to “Lion King”.

Neil is my Broadway fairy godmother, so to speak, and I don’t even want to think of the money he’s spent on Broadway tickets for us over the years. Keep in mind that theater with Neil always includes dinner, of course.

Because Neil sees theater as “mood control”, he’s not at all interested in anything that doesn’t include dancing cupcakes or starfish (“Priscilla Queen of the Desert” and “Spongebob Squarepants”). That said, he’s not averse to pushing that line with something like the 2011 revival of Sondheim’s “Follies” which we saw at the Marquis Theater. This was, I believe, my only opportunity to see Bernadette Peters in action on the stage and you can now take it from me: she is all that.

Another bonbon that Neil treated me to was the far-too-shortlived “Head over Heels” which combined music by The Go-Gos with Broadway’s first leading role for a transgender person, Peppermint, and an expectation-defying storyline with lots of deliberate gender-bending. Even with one friend going to multiple showings and dragging many of us along multiple times, the show never achieved escape velocity and closed after only 36 previews and 164 performances.

It also got New York Times theater critic, Ben Brantley, a well-deserved spanking for his misgendering of Peppermint in his review in the Times.

Another friend who’s responsible for putting my butt into several pricey Broadway seats is my used-to-be neighbor, Michelle, who moved up to the Bronx about three years ago. Michelle was an usher at the Lyric Theater and every so often I’d find a couple of tickets to a show slid under my door. It’s who ya know in this world, right?

Thanks to Michelle I’ve seen “Rock of Ages”, “Spiderman: Turn off the Dark” (Bono and Edge, stick to arena rock, k?), and the much-heralded 2014 revival of “On the Town” for free.

I hope she’s doing well up in the Bronx. I miss her. And the free tickets. I miss those, too.

If you live in New York City long enough you’re probably going to have friends in the entertainment industry and one of my oldest NYC friends, Tim Alex, has been a Broadway ensemble singer and dancer for years. I got to see him in the 2008 revival of “Pal Joey” at Studio 54 (yes, that Studio 54).

After the performance, I waited by the stage door for Tim and we took the subway together. It was a real pinch-myself moment.

More recently, my dear friend (who I don’t see nearly enough of) Sue, treated me to a matinee of “Hamilton” which continues to be a highly sought-after and ridiculously expensive ticket in this city. Just checking now I see that you can still score a ticket in Row K at the Richard Rodgers Theater for a mere $239 (and that’s a single ticket so your date is going to have to sit somewhere else, sorry) but if you’re one of those slimy parasitic 0.1%ers (the ones we’re gathering up pitchforks and torches for) go for it and blow $2,162.

And have a good time.

Theatah for the moneyed

While I’ve never had the means to be seeing this many Broadway shows what I do have are friends. So you either need to have friends with money or friends with connections or you need to have your own pile of money to see pretty much anything on Broadway.

Even off-Broadway tickets can run into the low hundreds depending on the theater (I’m looking at you, Cherry Lane Theater).

And that’s a real shame.

It’s another door that remains closed to the very people who would get the most pleasure and inspiration from these brilliantly staged productions. I wish I had an extra million dollars to toss around. I’d scoop up every inner-city teen and get them to “Hamilton”. My exposure to hip hop is mostly limited to the nasty, mean, misogynistic crap that gets played on street corners or is blasting out of cars that seem to vibrate from the volume. So I walked into “Hamilton” not expecting much.

I was blown away! It is incredibly smart and well-acted with sharp, intelligent lyrics (you can hear clearly), incredible choreography, and the story it tells of a misfit group of immigrants who take the formation of this new government into their own hands is breathtakingly original and, yes, inspirational. They don’t wait for permission. They don’t look to any established authority figures to show them what to do. This is exactly the type of “entertainment” that the kids in my neighborhood need to be seeing. And most of them can’t. It’s too expensive. It’s a closed door. That pisses me off.

It’s an imperfect world

This is one of Neil’s handy aphorisms and it’s one I reach for at times like this. We live in a world created for and by the wealthy and powerful (how kind of them to allow some of us to continue to sleep indoors and eat daily).

But we have our strategies. We have to.

Maybe the kids I nod to on the corner aren’t seeing “Hamilton” but they are making their way forward (mostly) in their own ways. Lin Manuel Miranda, writer and composer of “Hamilton”, grew up in Washington Heights and certainly counted among his running buddies kids like my neighbors. Who am I to say what will work for others?

They have friends, too. Maybe one of their friends will turn out to be the next Lin Manuel Miranda.

If so, I can’t wait for that musical!

© Remington Write 2020. All Rights Reserved.

If you’re interested in some of the history of Broadway theater: