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Broadway Reopening: Live Updates from NYC - The New York Times

Broadway Reopening: Live Updates from NYC - The New York Times

Broadway Reopening: Live Updates from NYC - The New York Times
Sep 15, 2021 11 mins, 19 secs

Watch Lin-Manuel Miranda sing ‘New York, New York’ outside the ‘Hamilton’ theater.

Some of the biggest shows in musical theater, including “The Lion King,” “Wicked” and “Hamilton,” resumed performances on Tuesday night, 18 months after the coronavirus pandemic forced them to close.

They were not the first shows to restart, nor the only ones, but they are enormous theatrical powerhouses that have come to symbolize the industry’s strength and reach, and their return to the stage is a signal that theater is back.

And no one knows how a long stretch without live theater might affect consumer behavior.

And the crowds who packed into shows all over Broadway Tuesday night were grateful to be there.

“We were open to anything,” said Erica Chalmers, interviewed at the just reopened TKTS booth Tuesday afternoon, “just so I could have that experience of a Broadway show.” She opted for a play, “Lackawanna Blues,” that had its first Broadway performance Tuesday night.

The reopening of Broadway comes as a variety of other performing arts venues, in New York and around the country, are also resuming in-person, indoor performances: In the days and weeks to come the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, Carnegie Hall and the Brooklyn Academy of Music will all start their new seasons.

“Broadway, and all of the arts and culture of the city, express the life, the energy, the diversity, the spirit of New York City,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference Tuesday.

So, this is a big night for New York City’s comeback.”.

Those attending shows on Broadway are finding the experience changed: every show is requiring proof of vaccination (patrons under 12 can provide a negative coronavirus test) and every patron must be masked.

The returning blockbusters opening tonight were joined by “Chicago,” a beloved musical which this year marks 25 years on Broadway, and a new production of “Lackawanna Blues,” an autobiographical play by Ruben Santiago-Hudson.

He was there to lead a group of Broadway performers in a rendition of “Theme From ‘New York, New York,’” the anthem popularized by Frank Sinatra, creating a sort of mood-setting overture for the night ahead!

“Get a mask, get vaccinated and come see live theater!” said Miranda, who also played Alexander Hamilton in the original Broadway cast!

It’s a big night of re-openings on Broadway… Let’s do a live #Ham4Ham show like the old days.

Four teenagers — all aspiring Broadway performers who had spent the day in class at Steps Conservatory — sprinted to the theater from the subway after they saw Miranda’s tweet.

Their spring 2020 trip was canceled because of the pandemic, so they had flown in from Colorado recently to see eight Broadway shows in six days after “a year and a half of heartbreak” while the industry was on pause.

Lindiwe Dlamini has spent 24 years of her life with “The Lion King.” She was with the show when it tried out in Minneapolis, and has been in the Broadway production for its entire run.

On Tuesday, it reopened, to a rapturous and packed house, with an audience that included alumni of Disney shows, a lot of fans, plus Gloria Steinem, Salman Rushdie and Kristin Chenoweth (who had a busy night, speaking earlier at the reopening of “Wicked,” where she had originated the role of Glinda)?

“This is like water in a desert,” Chenoweth said in an interview during intermission at “The Lion King,” her mask glittering and her eyes moist.

“It was a miracle the first time — I think I saw it at least three times,” Steinem, whose life was the subject of a film Taymor directed, said in an interview.

Taymor, in a speech to the audience before the show began, said she was appreciative of those who had braved a nerve-racking moment to come back to theater?

“I want to applaud this audience, tonight, our reopening, because you all have the desire, the enthusiasm, the courage to lead the way,” she said.

“Because as we know theater in New York is the lifeblood and soul of the city.”.

“It’s reopening night — why wouldn’t we be here.

With tonight’s Broadway reopening there are now five productions of “The Lion King” running, and by January there should be 10, in New York, London, Paris, Hamburg, Tokyo and Madrid plus four touring productions.

That brought an even louder roar from the audience, as Chenoweth, who originated the role of Glinda when the show opened on Broadway in 2003, strode out onto the stage of the Gershwin Theater.

“I also want to say that my personal favorite relationship is between the audience and the actors,” she said, “which is probably why I’m in therapy.”.

It also became the first touring Broadway production to reopen since the pandemic, beginning on Aug.

And, after the audience has filed out, the ghost light that lit the Gershwin Theater for 550+ days since the last “Wicked” show flicks back on again pic.twitter.com/upYZxALXH1.

Schwartz, the composer and lyricist of “Wicked,” said the long months of streaming have been no substitute for live theater.

“The thing about live theater is it’s a community, not just onstage, but with the audience the whole theater becomes a community, and we’ve just really really missed that,” he said.

“You can’t equal that experience on screens — on little screens or even big screens — it’s just not the same as live people and a live audience and what happens every night between them and among them in that theater?

The three creators spoke to The New York Times in a joint interview Tuesday afternoon as they prepared for their own shows to open.

They had decided to open on the same night to call attention to Broadway and to signal that the industry is open, ready for visitors and prioritizing safety (all theatergoers must be vaccinated, except children under 12, and masked).

“Broadway is a huge part of New York City — what defines New York City, and the economy of New York City,” Schwartz said.

Taymor said theater has a particularly important role to play in times when the world is confronting so many challenges.

“This is what we do as theater people, especially in the dark times,” she said.

Miranda, who not only wrote “Hamilton” but also starred in the original production, said he was relieved to see theater back.

Joe Allen, a beloved Theater District hangout known for the posters of notorious Broadway flops that line its walls and the stiff drinks atop its bar, reopened with a reduced schedule as the first Broadway shows gingerly returned in August, and added more days this week as more shows followed.

“We can’t survive without them,” Mary Hattman, the general manager at Joe Allen, said of Broadway shows.

Restaurants in Times Square were hit hard by the pandemic, when tourism sank and Broadway shows closed en masse as New York City was devastated by the coronavirus in March 2020.

The West Bank Cafe, a restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen that is popular with the theater crowd, got help from some of the Broadway stars it has long fed when it held a fund-raiser in December that raised $360,000.

Its owner, Steve Olsen, said that the fund-raiser had helped it pay off suppliers and strike a deal with its landlord to keep the space, and that he is preparing to reopen the 43-year-old institution in October after he finishes renovating his downstairs theater and adding to his staff.

A few minutes after 8 on Tuesday night, Walter Bobbie, the director of the long-running Broadway revival of “Chicago,” walked onto the stage of the Ambassador Theater.

“Eighteen months is a lot,” Marroquín, who had played Roxie Hart before playing Velma, said in an interview, coming off the stage to sit in the empty auditorium.

Tourists, who make up two-thirds of the overall Broadway audience, are especially important to “Chicago.” One of the big lingering questions is when (or if) they will start flocking back.

Holly Armitage and her husband, Albert, who live in Kansas City, Kan., have made it a practice for years to fly to New York to see shows.

“I thought this was going to be the first night on Broadway,” she said at the “Chicago” reopening.

“I just needed that — to sit in the seats, to walk on the stage,” Santiago-Hudson said in an interview this week.

On Tuesday, Santiago-Hudson got to return to theater in a big way: “Lackawanna Blues” — which he wrote and directed, and in which he plays every part — began previews on Broadway, in a Manhattan Theater Club production at the Samuel J.

At a ribbon ceremony outside the theater on West 47th Street, where ticketholders and gawkers dodged rush-hour traffic, Representative Carolyn Maloney offered an unabashed New Yorker’s defense of Broadway.

“We’re baaaack!” she said, referring to Broadway.

A Broadway production of “Lackawanna Blues” by Manhattan Theater Club had been planned for a couple of years.

Lynne Meadow, the company’s longtime artistic director, said in an interview she saw it as a celebration of “heroism,” which she said is even more apt now.

Kristin and Matt Collins, a couple from Annapolis, Md., were standing in line at the Richard Rodgers Theater on the reopening night of “Hamilton” with two extra tickets to give to anyone who wanted them.

“Either he’s telling the truth or we’re being kidnapped,” said Trivers, who used to go from theater to theater asking for cheap tickets before the pandemic, “and either way I’m going with him.”.

“I don’t ever want to take live theater for granted ever again, do you?” he said.

That week, more than 10,700 people scored the sought-after tickets — and then the production, with the rest of live theater, was forced to a sudden halt.

Judging by the energy of the crowd on Tuesday night, “Hamilton” fever seemed ready to pick up right where it left off.

⁦@Lin_Manuel⁩ welcomes back #Hamilton audience at the mega-hit’s first #Broadway performance in 18 months.

“It’s such a big night for New York City,” Consedine said.

Unlike “Hamilton,” “Wicked” and “The Lion King,” “Hadestown” had already put on several shows by Tuesday.

“That was really efficient, really fast actually,” said Kiana Gregorich, 18, of Seattle who said she was in New York visiting family.

2, the same night as “Waitress.” So in that sense, Tuesday night’s performance at the Walter Kerr Theater was much like any of its recent shows: André De Shields strolled across the stage, the audience erupted, and the interwoven stories of Orpheus, Eurydice, Persephone and Hades began to unspool.

How it and other big-name shows perform at the box office, and whether they can draw audiences again amid concerns about the spread of the Delta variant, will be closely watched as Broadway — and New York — looks to rebound.

“If they’re in a crowded room of people, it means they believe in live theater, and getting back to some semblance of normalcy eventually,” he said.

Hill admitted to some Covid-related jitters when plans were first hatched for the reopening of Broadway, but the on-staff epidemiologist and strict protocols — vaccination requirements, steady testing — helped convince him and Smallwood that the theater would be a haven.

Among the theatergoers going to the August Wilson Theater on Tuesday night were Rachel Tyler, 28, an English language arts teacher, and her co-worker at Democracy Prep Charter Middle School in Harlem, Mason Delman, 23, who teaches theater.

With that, the TKTS booth opened after 18 months of darkness, inviting patient theatergoers to start forming the long, winding lines that lead to discounted tickets for some of the most popular shows on Broadway

They had reached the front of the line after the people in front of them decided to leave, unhappy with the booth’s selection, but the Chalmers were not deterred — this would be their first Broadway production

“We were open to anything; just so I could have that experience of a Broadway show,” said Erica Chalmers, who decided to go to “Lackawanna Blues” on Tuesday night and to a matinee of “Pass Over” on Wednesday

Those shows and “Waitress” were the only Broadway productions offering discounted tickets at the booth on Tuesday

An audience was not due until the first preview on Friday night

In one of the more poignant examples of the pandemic’s toll on the theater, the musical’s opening night turned out to be its closing night instead: The show had been scheduled to open March 12, 2020, the day Broadway shut down

“Six” will start previews on Friday, the same night David Byrne’s “American Utopia” begins a return engagement, as Broadway’s reopening gathers momentum

This summer, in spaces in or near Midtown Manhattan, the casts and crews of Broadway shows were reconvening for the first time, preparing to take the stage after the pandemic-forced closure

We were flies on the wall at several of these meetings, all for shows that are among the first to begin performances on Broadway

“If you turn off your car or computer for 18 months and then turn it back on, you don’t know what problems you might come across,” said Guy Kwan of Juniper Street Productions, which works on shows including “Moulin Rouge!”, “Come From Away” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” “We didn’t want to be in a situation where we start finding problems after audiences come back.”

When the revival’s director, Walter Bobbie, walked onstage earlier on Tuesday night, he used the moment to pay tribute to her, calling her “the best collaborator I have had.”

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