BROADWAY BOUND

Did you ever wonder how Broadway came to be? More than 250 years ago, two ambitious and forward thinking entrepreneurs, Walter Murray and Thomas Kean began presently plays by Shakespeare and ballad operas like The Beggar’s Opera. The site was a Theatre on Nassau Street, in New York City, holding 280 patrons and, thus, Broadway was born. Today there are 41 buildings, each with 500 or more seats, that qualify for the title Broadway theaters, stretching for 13 miles across Times Square, Herald Square, Madison Square and Union Square. This popular tourist attraction boasted almost 15 million visitors, spending almost $2 billion in 2018-2019 alone. Broadway musicals, an enormously popular American pastime, help make New York City or the Big Apple the cultural capital of the world. By the late 1800’s, most theaters had moved uptown where the land had been used for farms and family homes. Theaters like the Hudson, Lyceum and New Amsterdam have been in existence since the early days. The first musical, all 5 and 1/2 hours of it, arrived in 1866. The Black Crook played for 474 performances. This was followed by vaudeville, burlesque, musical comedies and operettas. When white lights were installed on electric signs outside the venues, Broadway was nicknamed The Great White Way. The First World War, the advent of motion pictures and the Great Depression took a toll on Broadway but the blockbuster Oklahoma!, running for 2212 performances starting in 1943, opened the stage door for a new era. In 1982, Joseph Papp established The Public Theater and led a campaign to “Save the Theatre” and designate the area as an historic district. Due to the pandemic, Broadway theaters closed March 12, 2020 with venues slated to reopen September 14, 2021. Springsteen on Broadway resumed on June 26, 2021 with Hadestown set to follow, with the Tony Awards soon thereafter. While I love the excitement of the Great White Way, Connecticut is blessed with entertainment centers from Norwalk and New Canaan to New Haven and Hartford and Storrs, all across our state. As a theater reviewer, I cannot wait to find my orchestra seat, with notebook and pen, and share the newest offerings in my blog, The Balcony and Beyond, the Connecticut Critics Circle, The Middletown Press and the West Hartford News. My Technicolor world is about to open again and I am so anxious for the curtain to rise. Come join me for the fun and joy.