BROADWAY TRAGEDY
One year ago, a phantom menace turned it into the Great Dark Way
Ben Crawford, the lead in Broadway’s long-running “Phantom of the Opera,” exited the stage for his dressing room midway through act one.
It was March 12, 2020. He didn’t know it, but the Great White Way was about to go dark.
Crawford, after performing “Stranger Than You Dreamt It” to a matinee crowd inside the Majestic Theatre, heard the grim news from the show’s stage manager. Broadway, the long-beating heart of Midtown, would shutter its 41 playhouses at 5 p.m. due to COVID-19.
The plan was for a month-long closure.
One year later, the theaters remain closed for the longest stretch in the storied history of Broadway. And the day the lights flickered out continues to cast a long shadow over the theater industry as the shutdown stretches into year two.
Broadway continues to lose an estimated $35 million in gross revenue each week. Workers struggle to find new sources of income, while at least four productions were permanently sunk by the virus as the theater community reeled.
Even worse, the dazzling shows of the Theater District are predicted to be among the last elements of city life to return in post-pandemic New York.
Back in March 2020, after “Phantom” wrapped up its last show, Crawford emptied two fridges in his dressing W. 44th St. dressing room — one flush with coconut water, the other filled with craft beer. He handed out brews, and hopped into a Lyft. The driver was sympathetic.
“I think he thought I lost my job because I was bringing so much stuff into the car,” Crawford said. He hadn’t, not yet.
And he wasn’t alone. Nobody on Broadway envisioned the nightmares of the coming 12 months.
“None of us in our wildest dreams imagined that we’d still be here a year later,” said Kathryn Gallagher, who stars as Bella in “Jagged Little Pill.”
Broadway’s signature slogan — “the show must go on” — attests to its formidable resilience. Midtown’s prestigious playhouses did not close for the 1918 flu pandemic, and they roared back just two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center.
Weeks-long strikes brought Broadway to its knees in 1975 and 2007, but no pause in history compared to this.
The bad news started with word on March 11 of a positive coronavirus test for an usher working two productions in previews: A revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and the pop musical “Six.”.
The next morning, the cast of “Sing Street,” a musical set in 1980s Dublin, gathered at the Lyceum Theatre to discuss hygiene precautions ahead of the show’s first preview later in the month.
British actor Brenock O’Connor, prepping for his Broadway debut, stepped onto the historic theater’s stage as the production began tech rehearsals.
“We sang one song and I looked at my phone, and I think ‘Moulin Rouge!’ had shut down,” recalled O’Connor, 20. “We sang another song, and ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ had shut. And we were like: ‘OK, this is going one way.’ ”
Four blocks uptown, Broadway League President Charlotte St. Martin met with 63 people — producers, general managers, theater owners — representing every show on The Great White Way. She was also consulting with the governor’s office in Albany.
In mid-afternoon, Gov. Cuomo’s office confirmed that it wanted Broadway to shutter. Sixteen shows were scheduled to open in the next two months as the Tony Awards approached.
“It was very sad, very scary, heartbreaking,” St. Martin said.
“You know the impact of how many people are going to be out of work. Not just that work directly for Broadway, but that service Broadway — the cleaners of the costumes, the costume designers themselves, and then the restaurant and hotel workers that are in the area.”
It was a particularly heartrending moment for “Six,” set to open the night the curtain fell, said Kevin McCollum, one of the show’s producers.
McCollum, a powerful force in theater for more than a quarter-century, produced the hit “Rent,” which burst back onto the stage after 9/11. “The rest of the country had energy to get to New York,” he said.
This was different. Broadway, mostly squeezed into a 12-block radius, is a uniquely tight-knit community, and its performers share crowded quarters.
And so even in the darkest COVID-19 moments, its performers gathered to remotely create reams of virtual performances.
The cast of “Sing Street” filmed a streaming, shortened version of their musical. Andrew Lloyd Webber, the giant of musical theater who composed the music to “Phantom,” held social media singalongs from isolation.
And Broadway buffs Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley began hosting titans of the stage on their daily music-infused streaming talk show, “Stars In the House,” raising more than $700,000 for the Actors Fund, a nonprofit that supports theater workers.
The stars and staffs of Broadway’s shows tackled an array of ways to stay busy.
Gallagher, the “Jagged Little Pill” star, learned to sew cloth masks, started gardening and released a pair of music albums. Dede Ayite, a Ghanaian-born costume designer who tailored shows such as “A Soldier’s Play” and “Slave Play,” became a plant mom, too. She moved from Harlem to Flatbush and started enjoying long walks.
“We need theater. We need the arts,” Ayite said. “We’re resilient people. So people have been making do, and they’ve been trying their best to survive and stay sane.”
She said she hopes the long, deep breath Broadway has taken triggers changes in the industry, including improvements in accessibility and opportunity.
She could be right. As painful as the past year has proved, it has perhaps opened a door to a more inclusive Broadway. Certainly, it has showcased that even without in-person performance, the arts can march on.
With a little luck and a lot of vaccinations, live performers could march onto Broadway’s stages in the near future as memories of the pandemic past begin to recede.
“It’s going to be so exciting,” said “Jagged Little Pill” star Gallagher. “I just keep dreaming of that first curtain call, and that first step on stage.”