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Copyright © 2010 Andrea Langworthy
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The Theater District is completely aglow again as theaters affected by the almost three-week stagehands’ strike reopened their doors. What a bummer it would be to plan a trip to New York City and miss out on the experience of a lifetime that is Broadway.
When my husband and I lived in New Jersey in the 1970s, we were smitten with everything New York. Most weekends, we packed the children into the VW Bug and made our way through the Lincoln Tunnel to sightsee. We ate in Chinatown and Greenwich Village. We bought hot dogs and Italian ices from street vendors and visited the Central Park Zoo. We grabbed every bite of the Big Apple while we could and that included Broadway.
Our first show was a musical. We had no idea we were watching a phenomenon that would be turned into a movie starring John Travolta. The only tickets available in our price range had been in the back of the theater but still, the floor trembled as our dancing feet joined everyone else’s. No one could sit still. Grease was the word.
Tickets to a play about Sherlock Holmes were less costly. I secured front row seats on the aisle. When a bad guy dropped a knife on the floor and it skittered across stage and pointed right at us, our two grade-schoolers were wide-eyed. We knew it was a prop, didn’t we? During intermission, we ate peanuts, sipped colas and tried to solve the thrilling mystery.
I’d been introduced to the theater by my own parents when I was young—the Edyth Bush in Saint Paul, the Old Log Playhouse in Excelsior. When I was a high school freshman, I returned home from boarding school one weekend a month. Often, my parents met my bus in downtown Minneapolis. We ate spaghetti at the Di Napoli, then walked down the block to see a play. Those evenings, plus a fortuitous babysitting job that found me and my two charges in the balcony when Robert Preston marched through town in The Music Man, got me hooked.
I wanted my own children to love live performances, too. When they were very little and we were very poor, we attended free dress rehearsals at some of the local colleges. From there, we graduated to performances at the College of Saint Thomas and St. Catherine’s.
Broadway broadened our scope. By the time we returned to Minnesota to live, grease paint was in our blood. A Christmas Carol and Taming of the Shrew at the Guthrie beckoned. As did Hello, Dolly! with Carol Channing and many other plays at the Orpheum. Now, it is the grandchildren’s turn to fall in love. When my teenaged granddaughter whooped it up during Rent at the Ordway, so did I.
I may never return to Broadway, but I kicked up my heels to learn the strike was over. In an Associated Press article, 34 year veteran, Michael Van Praagh, said the settlement meant stagehands were “finally getting the respect we deserve on Broadway.” (How could there be a play without stagehands?) I clapped my hands for people like Steven Haywood and his wife, Claire. According to the AP story, the British couple was in New York for a 20th wedding anniversary celebration and had not known of the strike. It settled, though, and they were able to garner tickets to Hairspray, Chicago and more.
As Haywood said, “This is Broadway! It’s a part of New York. It’s the razzmatazz!” Well scripted. Cue the orchestra. Break into song. The curtain is up on the Great White Way.