(Above: Reviewers in London and New York raved about SIX, a delirious 90 minutes with Henry VIII’s six wives reinvented as pop stars. Oddsmakers predict it has the second-best chance of winning the Tony for best new musical; SIX on Broadway social media)
Native Eugenean, lifelong Oregon Duck, and former Register-Guard reporter Janelle Hartman is thrilled to be exploring New York City and indulging her Broadway habit again after a pandemic break. For 22 years on the East Coast, Janelle has been telling people that her favorite thing about living in the Washington, D.C., area is being three hours and 15 minutes by train from NYC.
By Janelle Hartman
Broadway isn’t just back, it’s jumping for joy and ready to party.
Speaking for every theater buff who considers Tony night a religious holiday, so are we.
Bring on the season’s reigning queens, the six wives of Henry VIII resurrected as pop-star divas — “divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived” — outdoing each other with their tales of palace misery.
Let the Boy from Oz bamboozle us as Professor Harold Hill. Make way for the sterling company of Sondheim’s Company — a revival I savored for eight full minutes before the performance came to a screeching halt.
Serve up an amuse bouche from the wealth of shows I missed altogether as I tiptoed back into my habit of escaping Washington, D.C., for the playground of New York City.
As Sunday night’s Tony Awards extravaganza plays out at Radio City Music Hall, I’ll have ticket-buying sites at the ready online for my next pilgrimage a week from now.
But the winning shows and actors are the Tony’s subplot this year. Broadway’s triumphant return is the best reason to tune in, a storyline with no losers.
When the Theater District went dark on that fateful Thursday in March 2020, the shutdown was expected to last a month. As the virus exploded across the city with lethal force, mid-April gave way to July 4. Then Labor Day. Then January 2021. And so on.
For 18 anguishing months, actors, musicians, stagehands, and the tens of thousands of others who comprise and support the Broadway community wondered if they’d ever return. How many of its 41 theaters would survive? Would theatergoers feel safe inside them?
I wondered, too. Even inoculated, it was hard to fathom being shoulder-to-shoulder again in those tyrannically cramped rows.
Craving a fix, my anxiety took a back seat when Broadway’s lights started to flicker again last fall. I hadn’t seen a show or set foot in my favorite (non-Oregon) city since late December 2019. Before Covid, three or four months without a trek to NYC was a long stretch.
Productions were restarting gradually and on abbreviated schedules — four or five performances a week instead of the standard eight. Planning a trip with the optimal convergence of preferred train, hotel, and theater tickets was trickier than usual. But I nailed it in near record time.
Five days later, the second Friday in October, I made my way to an aisle seat in the mezzanine of the Nederlander Theatre.
It was the end of a long day that began with a cranky Amtrak conductor and the sorry spectacle of looking like a lost tourist when I disembarked at the new Moynihan Train Hall — a poorly signed marble temple that I hated instantly. Penn Station across the street is a dank, grimy maze of rabbit holes. But I’d know my way around it blindfolded.
Vexed by other frustrations, I decided the reawakening city wasn’t ready for primetime. But sitting in the dark theater that evening awaiting The Lehman Trilogy, I was back in my element. It felt normal, notwithstanding my N95 mask and vaccine-check hand stamp.
The show, nominated for eight Tonys including best new play, masterfully spans the humble 19th-century origins, explosive growth, and catastrophic collapse of Wall Street’s infamous Lehman Brothers. Who knew all that treachery sprang from two Bavarian immigrants with a fabric shop in antebellum Alabama?
Critics ran out of superlatives for the spellbinding performances and storytelling — three actors narrating their complex characters in the third person, breaking occasionally to give voice to other characters in pop-up vignettes.
Regrettably, the show was a limited run that closed in January and isn’t touring. But it may, and undoubtedly other theater companies will pick it up once the rights are available. We should get a glimpse of it, at least, Sunday night.
As for the safety protocols, Broadway wasn’t messing around. Unlike some restaurants that looked the other way, theaters strictly followed the state’s vaccine and mask mandates and remained vigilant even when those rules were relaxed.
When I saw SIX and The Music Man in April, staff still dutifully checked vaccine cards against ID and enforced mask-wearing with vigor. Ushers paraded up and down aisles carrying signs and issuing verbal warnings. Some masks may have slipped below noses, but by and large people complied.
Since then, many theaters have dropped vaccine checks. But not all. And with the city on “high Covid alert” again, the Broadway League is continuing to require masks through June 30.
Full houses suggest that theater lovers have decided it’s a small price to pay — in fact, they’ve been willing to shell out staggeringly large sums for the privilege.
It pains me to say that I hit a new personal high with The Music Man. But even that was a coup.
Starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster at the storied Winter Garden, it’s been the hottest ticket in town since theaters reopened.
I wish it weren’t. Delightful as it is, the fact that it’s selling out at a larcenous $600 for most orchestra seats is nothing to celebrate.
Used to be that a hundred bucks was a major splurge. At TMM’s last revival in the 2000-2001 season that’s what an Oregon friend and I paid for last-minute center-orchestra seats through a broker. Happily, we got our money’s worth.
The abundant charm, humor and rapturous song and dance is back, with the addition of Jackson’s star power and Foster’s playful take on Marian the librarian.
For a still-criminal but relative bargain of $279, you can enjoy it from Winter Garden’s mezzanine — if you can snag a ticket.
I hit the jackpot while planning a birthday weekend in April. When I clicked on the seating chart for Saturday’s matinee, a single blue dot one stared back at me from the third row, dead center. An impossibly perfect seat was literally the only one unsold.
Aside from parting with nearly $300, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. And I didn’t know the half of it.
Two weeks later, I scooched past knees, handbags, and other obstructions to get to my coveted seat. The theater was jam-packed as always. Standing-room-only lines and new secondary markets for ticket holders who can’t make it mean that sold-out shows virtually never have empty seats.
Yet that afternoon, as the minutes ticked down to curtain and the overture began, no one sat down in front of me. All through the first act, I fully expected a tall latecomer to spoil my miraculous view.
The woman to my right was similarly blessed. Some poor couple simply hadn’t made it to the theater. Surely someone behind us would hijack the seats at intermission. Right before act two, my seatmate whispered, “Looks like we’re in the clear!”
I shared in her glee and quickly told her how I’d lucked out being there at all. Which is when the woman to my left explained why.
“You got my daughter’s seat,” she said. A visitor from Alabama, she and her husband had planned a family trip. But in the process of purchasing The Music Man seats, their teenager realized the weekend conflicted with junior prom.
And in that fleeting moment, I got her ticket.
Sometimes Broadway smiles upon you. And sometimes it dishes out other kinds of surprises.
For thousands of theatergoers over the winter and early spring, that meant cancelled shows with scarcely any notice due to cast members testing positive for Covid.
The weekend before Christmas. I had tickets for the two shows now competing with The Music Man for best revival of a musical — Company, starring Patty LuPone, and the sublime Caroline, or Change.
At least seven major shows had shut down that week, including Hamilton and Radio City’s famous holiday spectacular starring the Rockettes.
With every show at risk, the Friday night audience inside the Bernard Jacobs Theatre was giddy just to be there. When the neon-lit curtain rose on the reimagined version of Company, cheers signaled mass relief.
It lasted eight minutes. Abruptly, a disembodied voice announced that they had to “pause” and instructed the actors to move upstage.
Soon, a cheerful Patty LuPone came out to chat, saying all was OK. There was a “situation” but an understudy was getting ready to step in. She joked with fellow castmates, answered audience questions, and sang a cappella.
After 15 minutes and LuPone’s gracious thank-yous for the audience’s patience, it appeared they were ready to resume. But the delay grew until the voice from above returned to say the show couldn’t continue after all. Someone was ill, he said — not with Covid, but food poisoning.
It was half true. The inevitable backstage leaks revealed that the actor tossing his dinner couldn’t be replaced because so many understudies were out with Covid.
To my astonishment, Telecharge promptly refunded my money without being asked. Company remains on my to-see list, along with most of the contenders for best new musical. Some seasons I’ve seen them all. Ironically, of the six nominees this year, I’ve only made it to SIX.
But those brash Tudor queens pack more bang for the buck into 90 minutes than many fine shows manage in two and one-half hours: a dynamic all-female cast and band, sassy, laugh-out-loud lines, and sparkling plastic-and-foil attire that a friend described as “Victoria’s Secret meets the 1500s meets the Spice Girls.”
Whether SIX wins or not — it’s up for eight Tonys — its performance Sunday night is sure to have eyes popping in living rooms everywhere.
You could watch it your phone or tablet, of course. But don’t. From start to finish, the Tony Awards are worthy of the biggest screen in your home.
Time: 5 p.m. PDT/8 p.m. EDT on Sunday, June 12, on CBS; livestream on Paramount+
Questions about visiting New York City or seeing a show without breaking the bank? Write Janelle at JanelleOnBroadway@gmail.com
Celebrating Broadway’s robust return, the 75th-annual Tony Awards will showcase a wealth of new plays and musicals and classic revivals. Nominees in 26 categories are vying for the coveted Antoinette Perry silver medallions, which will be presented Sunday night at Radio City Music Hall. Photo: American Theatre Wing/Tony Awards.
