Sometimes I play a game for my own amusement. I sprinkle references to musicals into my conversations and lectures and wait expectantly to see if anyone notices. A few years back a student returned to class after an absence and as I took roll, he asked facetiously if I missed him.  I said, “I cried and cried until the tears came down and I could taste them.”  No response. Then I added, “I love to taste my tears. I am special. I am special. Please, god, please… don’t let me be normal.”

After I got no response, I announced the name of the musical I quoted and asked if anyone had ever heard of it. Still no response. Then one of my brightest students, a fearless and flamboyantly “out” gay man, answered “No, I’m not that gay.”

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Tags: Broadway Fred by Fred Siegel
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I read in Playbill that Broadway’s original Harold Hill, Robert Preston, had a ritual whenever he went to a Broadway show. Just before the curtain was to go up, Preston would roll up his Playbill, place one end to his wife’s ear, and whisper “I love you” into the other. Damn. I wish I had thought of that.

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Tags: Broadway Fred by Fred Siegel
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I was not born Broadway Fred.  I was, however, born into a family in which the elders liked Broadway shows.  After a brunch at Ratner’s- a now defunct blintz, lox, and whitefish emporium staffed by suffering waiters with Old Country accents-we met the paternal uncles and their families at Duffy Square.  Emissaries from each branch waited on the TKTS line and made a quick decision and purchase. With giddy expectation, we walked past giant posters and street hustlers and fancy marquees and urban blight, found our theater and were shown to our seats.  We weren’t all together, but the cousins could wave at each other from a few rows apart in the balcony.

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A few minutes before the play begins actors enter wearing not Elizabethan, but Edwardian apparel. Gradually, they populate a stage setting dominated by a ticker tape machine, towering abacuses, and walls that appear to be assembled from exquisitely sharp blades. These blades form a cool steel fortress in which those who belong can do business and from which those who are reviled can be shut out. While it may seem irrelevant in 2010, I feel compelled to mention that in this play the reviled ones are my ancestors. And bizarre as it may sound, I can’t help feeling that if this play could prick us, my ancestors and I would bleed.

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Tags: Broadway Fred by Fred Siegel
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In 1975, on the most magical day of my fourteenth year, my father took me to New York. First, we went to Tannen’s, the largest magic shop on the east coast, where I got the birthday present of a hippie puppet with long yellow hair and flowered clothing. After a turkey sandwich at Howard Johnson’s, we went to the Cort Theater and saw a matinee performance of The Magic Show, a musical comedy starring the amazing Doug Henning.

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Tags: Broadway Fred by Fred Siegel
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I define my Broadway adolescence as my fifth through fifteenth shows*.  During this period I remember feeling an exhilaration similar to that of my first boy/girl parties at which I learned that girls’ waists felt tingly when you danced with them, that hearts could literally ache, and that the words “I love you” could be uttered with perfect sincerity to a girl in your class whom you wouldn’t have even noticed the year before.  Am I smearing it on too thick?  Well, imagine this:

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Tags: Broadway Fred by Fred Siegel
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Last March I was at the TKTS line with my wife, Gail, and my sister-in-law, Helaine, and we were trying to figure out what to see.  Nothing on the board grabbed us.  What we really wanted was A View from the Bridge, but with the ecstatic reviews and the movie stars Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson in the lead roles it would be absurd to imagine that seats would be available for half price.  We contemplated walking to the box office and seeing if there might be three seats left at the absurd full price, but Gail suggested we ask one of the TKTS line people if it ever appeared on the board.  In the interest of a harmonious marriage, I have learned to not roll my eyes at my wife’s foolish ideas.  So we asked. [Read more →]

Tags: Broadway Fred by Fred Siegel
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In recent years I have developed a small obsession.  With the help of the Internet Broadway Database, I have compiled a list of Broadway shows I have seen. 

I don’t mean road companies.  I don’t mean local productions of shows that appeared on Broadway.   

As I type this I realize I must sound like something akin to a bagel snob. [Read more →]

Tags: Broadway Fred by Fred Siegel
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You take a train to Penn Station, make a left onto Seventh Avenue and fight uptown through the crowds until you hit the TKTS line at 47th Street. You wait on what used to be the Howard Johnson’s side but which is now the Roxy side. You figure you’ll be on line for an hour or so and you inch forward. You and your companion take turns moving up front to check the board, which used to be narrow signs slid into slots but now is LED’s. You lament the fact that the shows you want to see the most are not up there. Too new. 

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Tags: Broadway Fred by Fred Siegel
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