Give My Regards to Broadway
Tonight, the Broadway community will get together for the one award show I look forward to, and watch from start to finish. The Tony’s!!
A Chorus Line will be opening the show, which, as I guess most people know by now, I’m kind of obsessed with. When I was a kid, my parents had a record of the A Chorus Line soundtrack. They still don’t know WHY they had it, but they did…and I listened to it over and over and over. They also had Annie and Pirates of Penzance, which I listened to, but it was A Chorus Line that captivated me and truly turned me into a Broadway baby at a very young age. My 13th birthday present was tickets to the show on Broadway, and getting to go into NYC with a friend (no parents!) for the first time. I knew every word to the show, and was absolutely enthralled. I’d seen other shows by then, but even then, it was all about A Chorus Line.
I freaked out when I heard it was coming back, and saw the show this last November for my birthday. I spent most of the show in tears, I was so excited to see it again, and I clearly wasn’t the only one in the theater who felt that way - the reactions from the crowd were wonderful. No screaming like you get at Rent or something, just clear love of the show, and thrill that we were all seeing it again after all this time. The new production is fairly close to the original, which was exactly what we wanted. Don’t play with perfection, right?
A Chorus Line is like no other show on Broadway. It has an incredible history, and the story of its creation is amazing…the stories in the show are, for the most part, the life stories of the original cast members. I still love other great musicals, but the feeling will never be the same.
Tonight I’m looking forward to seeing A Chorus Line perform (and win best revival!), as well as Mary Poppins, and Legally Blonde. That’s really what the Tony’s are to me - an opportunity to see a number from shows I’ve seen and loved, and see new shows to figure out what I want to see. They’re also the one time that I can feel like I’m not the only one who loves Broadway - love, well, a slight obsession with musicals is not a common thing these days. It’s all about the musicals to me, I watch the scenes from the plays on the Tony’s, but I rarely go to see them. I’d always rather see a bad musical than a good play.
Soo, while today itself is going to be no fun, I have lots of unpacking left to do and am determined to get rid of this land of boxes I’m currently living in, at least I have something amazing to look forward to tonight. Three hours of Broadway. It doesn’t get much better than that.
