Play it again
B’way superfans see same shows time after time
HOW much does Vivian Carlson love “Come From Away”? Let’s just say she’s seen it more than 25 times. That isn’t easy on an office manager/ photographer’s salary, which is why Carlson relies on $25 to $50 rush and standing-room tickets to revisit that musical, about stranded 9/11 travelers embraced by a small Canadian town. “I first saw it in Washington, DC,” the 24-year-old tells The Post, “and was completely blown away by its message of kindness.”
On Friday, she’ll get to see at least part of it again, for free — at Stars in the Alley, the Broadway League’s annual theatrical smorgasbord in Shubert Alley. This year’s edition, the 26th, promises nearly two dozen musicals, old and new, plus appearances from the stars of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and other plays.
“You get to see all those shows in one place, and it’s free,” Carlson says. “I can be part of Broadway without shelling out for a ticket!”
The show doesn’t start till 1 p.m., but JayneLynn Sullivan plans to be there at 8 a.m. to guarantee a good view of the stage. “I’m usually the first in line,” says the 19year-old college student, a political science major who’s seen Stars in the Alley twice before. Like Carlson, she relies on those rush tickets. So far, she’s seen “A Bronx Tale” five times (“It’s one of the best adaptations of a film I’ve ever seen”) and “Hello, Dolly!” four (“Pure joy,” even without Bette Midler). She hopes to see “Mean Girls” again too (“So much fun!”). For theater superfans, some shows never get old. “I can’t even begin to tell you how magical it is to sit in an audience . . . anxiously waiting for that overture to start and for the lights to dim,” says Crystal Lee Montalvo. The 22-year-old saw her first show, “Bring It On,” at 15, thanks to a program that distributed free tickets to high-schoolers who couldn’t afford them. Since then, she’s played the ticket lottery, winning discounted tickets 10 times for the Idina Menzel musical “If/Then.” (She saw it 15 more times.) She’s also seen “On Your Feet” (23 times) and “Waitress” (15), and has the Playbills and ticket stubs to prove it. “When I first started seeing shows, my mom didn’t understand it,” says Montalvo, a college student and health-food-store cashier who, like the heroine in “Waitress,” struggles to make ends meet. “I told her I’ll do extra chores, anything — I just want to be in my happy place. She said, ‘If you love it, and I love you, do it.’ ”
Jerry and Gayle Stone of Randolph, NJ, know all about doing what they love. The couple just made their sixth trip to “Escape to Margaritaville” and their 10th to “The Play That Goes Wrong.” They saw 2015’s “Something Rotten!” so many times — 20! — that the stage manager knew them by name, and cast members recognized them on the street. So why do they keep coming back for more? “When you hit a show you really enjoy, you just can’t help it,” says Jerry, 75, a re- tired telecommunications engineer.
He saw his first show, “Mamma Mia!,” after marrying Gayle, 82 — it’s the second marriage for both — and says they’ve gone to the theater nearly 600 times since they married 15 years ago, relying on discount tickets from the Theater Development Fund and its TKTS booth in Times Square to keep them in stitches.
“We love to laugh,” says Gayle, a retired school principal who majored in theater.
They’ve never been to Stars in the Alley, but plan to check it out. As far as they’re concerned, there’s nothing like live theater.
“You go to a movie twice, you see exactly the same thing,” Jerry says. “You go to a show twice, somebody does something a little different. It’s never the same.”