{"id":115351,"date":"2020-11-19T03:33:15","date_gmt":"2020-11-19T00:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/new-york-wont-really-live-again-until-broadway-is-back\/"},"modified":"2020-11-19T03:33:15","modified_gmt":"2020-11-19T00:33:15","slug":"new-york-wont-really-live-again-until-broadway-is-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/new-york-wont-really-live-again-until-broadway-is-back\/","title":{"rendered":"#New York won’t really live again until Broadway is back"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#New York won’t really live again until Broadway is back<\/strong>”
\n<\/p>\n

\n Not even a year ago, impregnable crowds and stained-costumed Elmos and wannabe John Mulaneys with their three-by-five-laminated-card invitations to comedy-club open-mic nights had made Times Square one of the most irritating, nerve-wracking places in the Western world.<\/p>\n

What I wouldn\u2019t give for my nerves to be a little more wracked now that the legendary bow-tie where Broadway and Seventh Avenue meet is deserted, barren, haunted.<\/p>\n

Times Square was the epicenter of the New York tourism boom over the past 25 years. Its reclamation, refurbishment and reconstruction over the course of the Giuliani years was the key to Gotham\u2019s renaissance.<\/p>\n

And the key to Times Square\u2019s distinctive allure is the Broadway theater. Remarkably, either by coincidence or by some kind of suggestive magic, Broadway itself had a creative and financial explosion just as the city staged its own dramatic comeback in the mid-1990s.<\/p>\n

This is the story that WOR Radio\u2019s Michael Riedel, a longtime theater \u00adreporter for this paper, tells in his absolutely wonderful new book, \u201cSingular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once a glamorous business on the perpetual edge of bankruptcy and flameout, the Broadway theater not only became a centerpiece of the civic revival of the Giuliani years and beyond, but a cash cow whose profits were generated by a series<\/a> of fresh and pathbreaking shows that brought a new dazzle and gleam to the Great White Way.<\/p>\n

The creation of these shows forms the narrative spine of \u201cSingular Sensation\u201d \u2014 and they represented a second American revolution against the British. Throughout the 1980s, Broadway was dominated by Euro-spectacle musicals, especially those by Andrew Lloyd Webber. But when an eye-popping revival of \u201cGuys and Dolls\u201d opened in 1992, it \u00adreminded people of how much sassy fun our own theater could be at its best.<\/p>\n

Then Webber\u2019s \u201cSunset Boulevard\u201d came into town in 1994, after years of creative tumult, and it seemed like an exhausted relic. Meanwhile, an East Village tyro named Jonathan Larson was busy writing a rock-opera-musical-something-or-other titled \u201cRent\u201d that opened in 1996 off-Broadway only days after its creator died tragically and dramatically at the age of 35. And when it hit Broadway and went off like a rocket, \u201cRent\u201d killed off the British invasion of Broadway for good.<\/p>\n

In the same year, a modestly conceived revival of a mostly forgotten show from the 1970s, \u201cChicago,\u201d wedded the darkness of \u201cRent\u201d with the pizzazz of \u201cGuys and Dolls.\u201d The two shows made Broadway hip in a way it hadn\u2019t been in decades. They followed the culturally significant \u201cAngels in America\u201d \u2014 a two-part work I revile but whose attention-grabbing qualities helped make Broadway a home for provocative non-musical plays again.<\/p>\n

In 1997, the astonishingly \u00adinventive stage version of \u201cThe Lion King\u201d opened and made Broadway safe for families. It went on to become the most successful single presentation in show business history, grossing more than $8 billion over the course of 23 years. And over the following decade, \u201cThe Producers,\u201d \u201cHairspray, \u201d \u201cAvenue Q\u201d and \u201cThe Book of Mormon\u201d all restored the \u201ccomedy\u201d to the \u201cmusical comedy\u201d form.<\/p>\n

Riedel says he was intending to end his book with \u201cHamilton,\u201d which is really the capstone of the \u201ctriumph of Broadway\u201d his subtitle describes \u2014 but realized it would have to await another volume. This one is a sequel to \u201cRazzle Dazzle<\/a>,\u201d from 2015, which tells the equally wonderful story of Broadway\u2019s escape from the pit into which New York had fallen by the mid-1970s.<\/p>\n

Think of this. The year 1980 was considered a boom time for Broadway with about 6 million attendees and not quite $500 million in sales. In 2018, Broadway theater earned about $1.8 billion, with 15 million in attendance. And its positive effect on the city\u2019s coffers was even more dramatic. According to the Broadway League, \u201cthe Broadway industry contributed $14.7 billion to the economy of New York City and supported 96,900 jobs\u201d that year.<\/p>\n

Riedel is convinced Broadway will rise again. After all, Elizabethan theaters opened and closed constantly due to threats of plague in London. Alas, I\u2019m not so sure. A decisive break in a cultural habit can have lasting consequences \u2014 and the way it\u2019s going, Broadway will end up having been shuttered for at least a year, if not longer. Will it return in force, or will it return in a zombie state, only to rise again to a weakened condition?<\/p>\n

One thing is for sure: Until Times Square is irritating and claustrophobic once again, New York will continue to be a shadow of its former self.<\/p>\n

jpodhoretz@gmail.com <\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#New York won’t really live again until Broadway is back” Not even a year ago, impregnable crowds and stained-costumed Elmos and wannabe John Mulaneys with their three-by-five-laminated-card invitations to comedy-club open-mic nights had made Times Square one of the most irritating, nerve-wracking places in the Western world. What I wouldn\u2019t give for my nerves to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/11\/broadway-dark.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[80418,17209,29467,1545,70344,72707,70756,71470],"class_list":["post-115351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-11-18-20","tag-books","tag-broadway","tag-coronavirus","tag-coronavirus-in-ny","tag-musicals","tag-times-square","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}