On Broadway

Hugh Jackman,Helen Mirren,Christine Baranski,Alec Baldwin

A late 1960s to present day 2019 history of Broadway is presented, with an epilogue added of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 literally shutting the theater scene down in its entirety for however long public health orders related to the pandemic. That transition over the fifty years saw musical theater be arguably the center of American popular culture in providing the popular songs of the day and successful Hollywood movie adaptations of both of musicals and plays up until the counter-culture era of the 1960s, to a more narrowly defined but still very lucrative form of entertainment for those associated with the few hits that become global spectacles. People associated to Broadway, including many actors, talk about their relationship to Broadway in a holistic sense. The discussions are not only about the theater scene, but how specific shows changed the face of theater, including the way that shows are produced, how the built environment, especially along 42nd Street and around Time Square, has in turn affected the face of Broadway in that holistic sense, and the effects of certain specific global events such as the AIDS crisis, 911, and the aforementioned COVID-19 pandemic. While many producers have tried to capitalize on the successes of the day, it is the arguably the surprise hits that come out of nowhere approximately once every five years that fundamentally do change how theater is viewed. Those shows mentioned include the musicals of Stephen Sondheim beginning with "Company", "A Chorus Line", "Cats" which was the first true mega-hit of the British musical invasion, the ten plays of August Wilson each story covering a different decade of the twentieth century, "Rent", "The Lion King" which was different even from the other Disney animated musicals that preceded it, and "Hamilton". Also discussed is the change from the mid-twentieth century where going to see a Broadway show was an affordable regular local night out on the town, to where it is in 2019 generally unaffordable to the general population in its commodification.—Huggo