Broadway Theater - New York travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises spa and resorts

Broadway, as its name implies is a big, wide avenue that runs the entire length of Manhattan in New York City. It passes through the middle of the Theater district concentrated around Times Square and has lent its name to those spectacular musical productions known as the Broadway play. No visit to New York City would be complete without seeing at least one Broadway musical production.

People flock to New York City to see a real Broadway show and there’s nothing to beat the total experience: the hustle-and-bustle on the streets, pre-theater dinner, the opening curtain, the buzz at intermission and maybe an after-show stroll down the Great White Way to a post-dinner cocktail or supper. New York City Theater is contained within a thin strip of Manhattan, from 53rd to 42nd streets, between 6th and 8th Aves, called the Great White Way. There are approximately 36 theaters crammed into this small area of the city, most of which host world famous productions nightly. Total Broadway attendance in 2005 was just under 12 million. This was approximately the same as London’s.

The Broadway Theatre at Broadway and Fifty-third Street is one of the few legitimate theatres that was built as a movie house. B.S. Moss, a mogul who operated a chain of movie houses that also featured vaudeville, built this theatre in 1924. Designed by architect Eugene DeRosa, the house had one of the largest seating capacities (1,765) of any theatre on Broadway, thus making it ideal, in later years, for the staging and performing of musical comedies.

Late in 1946 Duke Ellington’s version of “The Beggar’s Opera,” which he called “Beggar’s Holiday,” opened, with book and lyrics by John Latouche. It starred Alfred Drake and featured Avon Long and Zero Mostel; it was not a success. The year 1948 brought a revival of “The Cradle Will Rock,” also starring Alfred Drake, which moved from the Mansfield. Leonard Bernstein appeared in this as a clerk. The Habimah Players from Palestine presented a repertory of “The Golem”, ” The Dybbuk,” “Oedipus Rex,” and other plays in 1948. Many of the musicals that you think of as “Broadway musicals” were first presented Off-Broadway, such as a “Chorus Line”, “Ain’t Misbehavin”, “Hair”, “URINETOWN” and Little shop of horrors. And, of course, the world’s longest running musical, “THE FANTASTICKS”, is an Off-Broadway classic.

It’s been a good year for the Great White Way. Flush with the success of such musicals as “Spamalot” and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” Broadway will close the books on 2005 with its biggest box office take for a calendar year. That’s an estimated $825 million through year’s end, up 10% from 2004’s $749 million, according to data from the League of American Theatres and Producers.

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