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. 

But, wait, there’s last year’s hit and the star is still in it. Nathan Lane, maybe. Patti LuPone. Tommy Tune and Twiggy. Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller. Joe Mantegna, Ron Silver, and Madonna. Alfred Molina. John Lithgow. Kristin Chenoweth. Alan Alda. Angela Lansbury. Sometimes you don’t know the names, but those people can surprise you the most. (I didn’t know who Ken Page was. Or Donna Murphy. Or Sahr Ngaujah. )

You wonder whether or not the show you want to see will still be on the board by the time you get to the front of the line, so you have at least one back-up plan. Sometimes, something that wasn’t up there when you first looked magically appears as soon as it’s your turn to buy tickets, so you ditch your first choice and your back-up plan and go for the magic. Even though the tickets are half off it’s a lot of money, so you don’t do this often. But it’s always exciting. Energy flutters through your chest and spine and groin and you want to squeal and jump. You don’t tell your friends about this.

Later, there is a chance that you will sob quietly in the darkness of the theater. Sometimes, you feel like a sucker because the tears are a programmed response — there is a key change at just the right moment, a line of high kickers, or a sentimental declaration of love. But other times you are surprised by a beautiful, cathartic moment of truth in the plot, or your breath is stolen by the entrance of a beloved performer who is not a movie and is really there in the same room with you. 

And sometimes you tear up because they’re up there and you’re not. You don’t tell your friends about this.

In the United States of America, Broadway used to be the center of the entertainment world. It’s not so anymore. Often, I meet people who have never seen a play or a musical on Broadway or anywhere else. Nor do they want to. The late night comics mock Broadway, as if it were an odd anachronism to be enjoyed only by elderly theater party ladies and gay men who enjoy fake glamour. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, for example, covered the Tony Awards a few seasons back with humor and viciousness.

To love Broadway shows is not fashionable. So call me unfashionable.

In this column, I’ll reflect on many years of visits to Broadway theaters, where I was occasionally disappointed but was more often excited and moved and filled with joy and laughter and tears.

Next week: The list

“Broadway Fred” appears every Wednesday.

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