WICKEDLY ENTERTAINING

What’s New York without a Broadway show? The musical,

WICKED, has been entertaining audiences at the famous Gershwin Theatre since 2003, and is still going strong, with no end in sight. WICKED set a box office record for the Gershwin Theatre when the production grossed US$3,201,333 over nine performances for the week ending December 29, 2013, resulting in the highest one-week box office gross income made by any show in Broadway history, until that time. How could we pass this one up?

Magic began the moment we entered the theatre, which is also home of the American Theater Hall of Fame, where inductees are given their own plaque during an official ceremony. Designed in a modernist art nouveau style, this particular theatre first opened as the Uris Theatre in 1972 before it was renamed in 1983 in honour of the legendary brothers, composer George Gershwin and lyricist Ira Gershwin. It boasts a seating capacity of 1,933 seats, the largest of any Broadway theatre. It also has one of the largest stages, making it an ideal venue for very large musical productions such as

Porgy and Bess in 1976 and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express in 1987, just to name a couple. Its lobby walls are graced with portraits of alltime greats like Fred Astaire, Tallulah Bankhead, Ethel, John and Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Lauren Bacall, Pearl Bailey, Kevin Kline, Cicely Tyson and more. I could have spent hours here just gazing at the stars.