Northeast Scene: 19 new shows run the gamut of theatrical experience this fall on Broadway

Native Eugenean and former Register-Guard reporter Janelle Hartman says the best thing about living in the Washington, D.C., area the past 20 years is being 3 ½ hours by train from New York City and its Broadway theaters.

Years ago in an off-off-Broadway black box, I was mesmerized by the portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr.’s changing relationship with LBJ during the escalation of the Vietnam War as the battle for civil rights raged at home.

Between the storytelling, acting and intimacy of the 99-seat theater, The Conscientious Objector grabbed me with such intensity that I wrote an enthusiastic letter to the cast. A few weeks later, I took my visiting brother, sister-in-law and astute 12-year-old nephew to see it. We met some of the actors afterwards and I was tickled to hear that my snail-mail letter was hanging on their bulletin board backstage.

In a venue 12 times the size, I spent last Saturday night with the same historical figures in the same turbulent political era, 1965 to 1968. The Great Society was thought-provoking and at times superb, though critics’ reviews were mixed when it opened this week.

Mostly it was 2½ emotionally taxing hours. I walked away from Lincoln Center without the spring in my step I’d had leaving the tiny home of The Conscientious Objector in 2008.

The nation then was just months away from doing what would have been unimaginable to the play’s characters. Four decades after black men and women in the South were brutalized and killed fighting to exercise their right to vote, an African-American was on the verge of being elected president. “Hope” wasn’t just a campaign slogan.

Amid a vastly different political climate 11 years later, I was looking for inspiration in The Great Society. After all, it was what President Lyndon B. Johnson called his ambitious domestic agenda tackling discrimination, poverty, health care, education and a long list of other reforms.

Through his legendary arm-twisting and political maneuvers, Johnson compiled an impressive record of legislative victories. But they were starved for oxygen on stage as the show exploded with wrenching scenes of racist violence and war trauma. The title’s “Great Society” turned out to be painful, historically accurate irony.

Its story is at the weightier end of 19 shows opening on Broadway this fall, including an improv hip-hop musical from Lin-Manuel Miranda that opened to rave reviews Wednesday night; The Inheritance, an epic two-part play from London about three generations of gay men; a Tina Turner musical; Jagged Little Pill featuring Alanis Morisette songs; and a revival of West Side Story. Not to mention another 15 plays and musicals on the calendar in early 2020 and the many longer-running shows that still sell out.

Both The Great Society and its thrilling predecessor All the Way, which won the 2014 Tony Award for best new play, premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

On Broadway, All the Way starred Bryan Cranston in a stunning embodiment of LBJ pushing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress. The story built to a crescendo, ending in triumph. Its sequel sent me crashing back to earth.

Highly acclaimed Scottish actor Brian Cox plays Johnson in The Great Society and won raves from my seatmates in Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. As good as he was, his performance couldn’t compete with Cranston’s Tony-winning tour de force, so powerful that I returned to see it a second time.

The Great Society’s limited run is set to end Nov. 30. Whether you’re able to see it or a future show at the Beaumont (home to some of Broadway’s cream of the crop each season) here’s a tip: The 1,200-seat theater is a half-circle with perfect views of the stage from every section. I was far stage right in the orchestra, eight rows up, and it was one of the best seats I’ve had in any theater.

Usually, I like to be closer to center stage, even if I’m higher up. That’s rarely an issue at the Beaumont, or at theaters in the round like Broadway’s Circle in the Square. But staging can vary by production. Check seating charts and ask questions (box office, message boards, social media) to avoid sight-line obstructions before buying tickets.

You’ll rarely have to worry about that in off-Broadway theaters (100 to 499 seats) and never in off-off Broadway houses that by definition have no more than 99 seats. Shows as celebrated as Hamilton began off-Broadway. And gifted actors from theater, TV and movies regularly turn up in smaller venues. The Conscientious Objector, probably my favorite off-off show, featured veteran actor John Cullum as President Johnson and D.B. Woodside of 24 fame as Dr. King.

Choosing good seats without going broke in larger Broadway theaters can be tricky, even when you’ve had lots of practice.  I didn’t do as well as I’d thought in July with a center, upper-mezzanine ticket for the stage version of the 2001 cult-hit movie Moulin Rouge!. It was one of the few seats left for weekends to come that didn’t require a second mortgage.

The Al Hirschfeld Theatre has been turned into the famed nightclub and its Parisian surroundings at the turn of the 20th century, a spectacle of excess that immerses you in red velvet and grandiose décor from the moment you step inside.

You’re at the foot of bohemian Montmartre, where the racy cabaret enticed the city’s playboys and socialites inside, past penniless street artists, buskers, prostitutes and opium addicts. Replicas of a red windmill and bejeweled elephant that punctuated the real Moulin Rouge’s exterior flank the stage.

Eyes popping, I pulled out my iPhone and said a silent thank-you to Jordan Roth, the youthful, rule-breaking owner of five Broadway houses who decided after booking Bruce Springsteen in 2018 to let people take photos of his theaters’ stages and the casts’ bows. Performances, of course, are still off-limits.

Arguably, only the set of 2016’s  Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 has matched the extravagance of Moulin Rouge! in modern Broadway history. Garish, maybe, but impressive, with similar staging jutting out into the orchestra.

Seating-wise that’s a problem at Moulin Rouge! if you’re above the pricey front rows of the mezzanine. Prepare to lean forward and strain your neck to get a glimpse, if that, as actors disappear from view. Also aggravating: The beam from a high-wattage spotlight that frequently bathes the center mezzanine in ambience-killing brightness.

Moulin Rouge! entertained me, but it felt disjointed, its parts failing to add up to a cohesive, rewarding whole. With its endless snippets of pop music — many more than the movie’s — it seemed like a very expensive version of Name that Tune.

But I was an outlier. For millennials obsessed with the movie, the show is a pilgrimage. Young women shrieked and cried and sang along with fervor the night I went, most of them dressed to the nines in nightclub attire. More common audience fashion on Broadway ranges from business casual to couch potato.

My ambivalence left me looking forward that much more to the next day’s show, the revival of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.

But that night the lights went out on Broadway. Forty floors above street level in my hotel, not yet twilight with barely 10 minutes to curtain, all I knew was that the elevators weren’t working. A mechanical problem, I figured. It had happened there before.

My only choice was a furious 40-flight dash down the stairwell. At the fifth-floor landing, I learned the neighborhood had lost power and some nearby theaters were closing. With no idea how widespread the outage was, I raced two blocks north to find West 44th Street jammed with sweltering, thwarted theatergoers.

Broadway and much of Midtown West had gone dark, but not the mood. Unlike the city’s infamous 1977 blackout that happened on the same date, July 13, there were no injuries, vandalism or arrests reported.

Just thousands of mostly smiling people snapping photos and competing for bandwidth to tell their friends about a crazy night in New York City.

Questions about visiting NYC, Broadway shows, buying tickets and more? Drop Janelle an email at JanelleOnBroadway@gmail.com

The set of Moulin Rouge! from the mezzanine; photo by Janelle Hartman