Broadway not rushing into life after intermission
Great White Way sees September as logical reopening
Gov. Andrew Cuomo says that most pandemic capacity restrictions will ease. Mayor Bill de Blasio says he wants the city to fully reopen on July 1. But Broadway, a beacon for tourists and an engine for the economy, is not quite ready to turn on the stage lights.
Most shows are not planning performances until September or later. But there are signs of life: Cuomo said last Wednesday that Broadway shows would start selling tickets for full-capacity shows with some performances starting Sept. 14.
Why the four-month wait? With as many as eight shows a week to fill, and the tourists who make up an important part of their customer base yet to return, producers need time to advertise and market. They need to reassemble and rehearse casts who have been out of work for more than a year. And they need to sort out and negotiate safety protocols.
But the biggest reason is more gut-based: individually and collectively, they are trying to imagine when large numbers of people are likely to feel comfortable traveling to Times
Square, funneling through cramped lobbies and walking down narrow aisles to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers. Most Broadway shows lose money even in the best of times, so producers say there is no way they can afford to reopen with social distancing, given the industry’s high labor and real estate costs.
“We’ve never done this before,” said Victoria Bailey, executive director of TDF, the nonprofit which oversees the
TKTS ticket-selling booth in Times Square. “The last time the theater industry opened from a pandemic, Shakespeare was still writing new plays.”
Broadway’s emerging timeline, which is constantly being re-evaluated, serves as a reminder that New York’s rebound from the pandemic will be slow and gradual. Edicts from elected officials are only one factor in reopening: every economic sector will have to figure out when and how to restart, and every individual will have to figure out when and how to reemerge.
About 30 shows are currently planning to begin performances on Broadway before the end of 2021 — about half starting in September, and the rest spread out across the year’s final quarter.
Among the first to go on sale following the governor’s announcement: “The Phantom of the Opera,” Broadway’s longest-running show, which said that it would put tickets on sale in anticipation of resuming performances Oct. 22. “Emphatically: Yes, we are coming back,” said the show’s composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The three juggernaut musicals that were the biggest box office grossers before the pandemic — “Hamilton,” “The
Lion King” and “Wicked” — have been planning to jointly announce that they expect to reopen in mid-september.
A number of other musicals are also hoping to open in September, including the long running “Chicago,” the David Byrne concert show “American Utopia,” Disney’s “Aladdin” and the inspirational Canadian hit “Come From Away.” Each is confident they can find an audience even as some forecasts suggest that it could be several years before tourism fully recovers.
A handful of shows are not expected to return until 2022. The most prominent among them is the two-part play, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which is rethinking its length and structure before deciding how and when to reopen. And plans for a pair of shows produced by Scott Rudin, “To Kill a Mockingbird” and a revival of “West Side Story,” are unclear following his decision to step back from active involvement after a series of news reports detailed his bullying behavior toward employees and collaborators.
Expect at least four new Broadway musicals to open this fall, including “Six,” the concert-style British pop show about the ill-fated wives of Henry VIII, which was just 90 minutes from opening when theaters closed, as well as “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Diana” and “Flying Over Sunset.” And a fifth new musical — “MJ,” about a chapter in the life of Michael Jackson — is planning to start performances late this year.
The lead producer of “Phantom,” Cameron Mackintosh, said the return of theater is essential for the cultural and economic life of both New York and London, but acknowledged that much is unknown.
“No one is taking this for granted, and no one is assuming we’re going back to what it was PRE-COVID,” he said. “We need to be completely optimistic, but also pragmatic, because none of us have been in this situation before.”