I love Broadway shows. Old ones, new ones, and especially the musicals . . . I just can’t get enough of them. They are, for me, the perfect escape mechanism. I settle down in my seat as the lights dim, the orchestra charges headlong into the overture, and I feel that little thrill of anticipation as I leave my world behind and allow myself to be transported into whatever world awaits onstage. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Okay, so I’m not old enough to have seen a Busby Berkeley spectacular. My mother was, though, and I’ve seen film clips of a few of them. What they lacked in talent, they made up for in sheer numbers, beautiful costumes, and perfect timing. They were the Broadway hits of their day, and the forerunners of our Cats and Lion King.

It all began for me with My Fair Lady, way back in the late 1950s or early ‘60s. It had opened in New York in 1956, and when the road company finally came to Washington’s National Theater, my mother treated herself, my sister and me to three orchestra seats . . . at the bargain price of $4.40 apiece. I believe the New York price was a shocking $8.80. Anyway, I remember sitting there, totally enthralled at the glorious spectacle taking place before my eyes — the sights, the sounds, the color, the very energy of it. And how the entire audience roared when Eliza Doolittle belted out those memorable words at the Ascot races: “C’mon, Dover, move yer bloomin’ arse!” The movies couldn’t compete with this; these people were real! And I was hooked.

Some of my all-time favorites are also some of the oldest: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classics, Carousel, Oklahoma, South Pacific, The Sound of Music. They don’t write scores like that anymore. But so many of the more recent productions have also been nothing short of phenomenal. Such as . . .

Cats and The Lion King: I lump these two together because — aside from the glorious music — they are most memorable for the costuming and the astonishingly lifelike representations of animals. I remember a young family seated in front and a little to the left of us at Lion King. The boy and girl were probably around eight and ten years old, and the expressions on their faces as the cast of animals danced down the aisle, right past them, toward the stage . . . That alone was worth the price of admission — which, I assure you, was no longer $4.40.

Chicago: We almost missed the opening number of this one. Something had caused massive traffic jams in the city, and all the parking garages were full, also for some unremembered reason. I finally used my handicap parking tag (from an earlier surgery) to talk my way into a garage where the nice attendant made a space for me in a corner (and earned himself a big tip). I limped convincingly up the ramp to the street . . . where we then took off and ran the two blocks to the National Theater just in time to be seated before the doors were closed. Drastic times call for drastic measures. And what a show it was!

Fiddler On the Roof: What can I say? Seeing Zero Mostel in this one was nothing short of a privilege, and the music and dancing were incomparable. I couldn’t help visualizing my grandparents in the setting of a Russian shtetl (Jewish settlement, or small village), and I wept shamelessly at the end of the show as they were forced to leave and become part of the diaspora from their Russian homeland. And I’m happy to say that the later movie, starring Topol in the role originated by Zero Mostel, is also outstanding. I must have watched it 100 times by now, and I still cry as they leave their run-down little village of Anatevka. Can’t help it. (At the theater performance, I wept out loud. But so did half the audience, so it wasn’t noticeable.)

Les Miserables: Hands down my all-time favorite. When this show first came to the Kennedy Center, I didn’t want to see it. I mean, how on earth could anyone make a movie out of one of the most depressing books ever written? But while it was playing, I had occasion to go to the Kennedy Center box office to pick up tickets for another show. I happened to walk by the Opera House venue just as Les Miz was ending and the doors were being opened. When I heard the closing strains from the orchestra pit, and the eruption of cheers from the audience, I stopped dead in my tracks, turned around, and galloped back to the box office to try to get tickets for any performance. Of course, it was sold out . . . and I kicked myself all the way back to my office. I finally did see it when it returned the following year . . . and a second time at the Kennedy Center . . . and once at the National Theater . . . and the Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia . . . and at Wolf Trap Farm Park. (And by the way, the movie of this one doesn’t come close to the real thing — a poor imitation.)

It’s not all about musical comedy, though. One of the greatest thrills of all time was seeing Mikhail Baryshnikov perform Swan Lake at the Kennedy Center. And being able to attend operas at the Bol’shoi Theatre in Moscow and the Kirov (now renamed the Mariinsky) in St. Petersburg, Russia. And the concerts by Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte, and others in the ‘50s and ‘60s at Washington’s outdoor Carter Barron Amphitheater. And Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme at a little nightclub at 14th and I Streets in downtown D.C.; guitarist Charlie Byrd at the Showboat Lounge on uptown 18th Street; Neil Diamond at the Capital One Arena; and dancing to the old-time Mills Brothers at another 14th Street club; Judy Garland in San Francisco and, years later, her daughter Liza Minnelli back in Washington . . . I was so incredibly lucky to have been born when I was!

I wonder if today’s kids will look back on their good times with the same sense of nostalgia that my generation does. I hope so. Of course, didn’t our parents wonder the same thing about us?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
10/6/23