A year without Broadway: ‘It’s like missing the punchline of the city’

It took years and millions of dollars to bring the musical Six to Broadway. It took one order from the New York governor to shut it down on opening night.

It was March 12 2020 and New Yorkers were just awakening to the realisation the coronavirus pandemic had overrun their city. It fell to Kevin McCollum, the show’s producer, to deliver the news to his cast: Broadway was closing. 

“That was profoundly emotional for all of us,” said McCollum, who recalled opening the stage door that afternoon to find piles of flowers and gifts left to honour the cast and crew for making it to Broadway. “Even in the best of times it’s a very handmade business which makes it wonderful and beautiful and messy and so special.”

Broadway has withstood plenty over the years. Its theatres played during the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic and through the world wars. They have endured hurricanes, blizzards, the Aids crisis and labour strife. After the September 11 2001 terror attacks Broadway closed on a Tuesday and reopened on Thursday.

In an era of on-demand video, it had managed to persuade people to pay for expensive tickets, make the effort to arrive at a certain time and place, and then surrender to a shared experience.

But in March last year Broadway halted in a way it never has before. While flickering lockdowns have become the global norm over the past year, the stoppage in New York’s theatreland has stood out for being a total freeze.

There is a shared faith that the show will eventually go on, hastened by an accelerating US vaccination campaign and the pent-up demand of theatre-lovers. But there are profound questions about just how it will happen, and whether the past year has inflicted lasting damage.

“They’re all talking about reopening in the fall — I just don’t know how,” one producer said. “I don’t know that people are going to be ready to go diving into a room of 1,500 people, sitting shoulder to shoulder.”

There is also the question of whether investors will be willing to put up the millions of dollars needed to finance a production — a gamble in the best of times — while worrying about new Covid variants or vaccination missteps.

It’s been a time of great panic. A lot of people have lost their homes, have moved back to their [parents’] homes. Some people have given up the business

McCollum foresees Broadway undergoing an extended recovery from the pandemic — not a rapid cure. “We’re going to come back but it’s not in a year, it’s not in a year-and-a-half,” he said. “It’s truly a rehabilitation.”

In the meantime, there is a sense of loss and disorientation. One theatre owner is battling insurers for payments it says it is due for business interruption. Dancers have struggled to keep limber and actors have made do with performing monologues for friends over Zoom. Others have left altogether, unable to rely on the restaurant jobs that would have once tided them over. (If your local census worker or Amazon driver was singing a show tune recently, chances are they were a Broadway castoff.)

David Rockwell, an architect and theatre designer who recalls his first Broadway visit to watch Fiddler on the Roof at the age of 12, said the closure of the shows is “like missing the punchline of the city”.

In recent months, he has found himself haunting dormant theatres and has written a forthcoming book about them. “A Broadway theatre really is an inert form without the many people who bring it to life: actors, stagehands, managers, audiences, ushers. The amount of people it takes to spend months or years crafting the two-and-a-half hours you experience in the building is phenomenal,” Rockwell said. Without them, “the buildings are just hardware”.

Among the artists is Brian Stokes Mitchell, a Broadway star who was, himself, stricken by Covid in April. After recovering, he took to serenading healthcare workers from his apartment window each evening with his Tony award-winning baritone.

“It’s been a time of great panic,” said Stokes Mitchell, who is also president of the Actors Fund charity. “A lot of people have lost their homes, have moved back to their [parents’] homes. Some people have given up the business.”

His organisation typically doles out about $2m a year to help struggling artists. This year it has given $20m while helping many to find other jobs.

$1.5bn


support for Broadway and US regional theatres from the Biden stimulus package

Before the pandemic, Broadway was enjoying another banner year. Revenues for the 2018-19 season topped $1.8bn on record attendance of 14.7m theatregoers. Almost a fifth of those were international tourists.

If nothing else, the shutdown has revealed an appreciation among elected officials that Broadway is not just a cultural ornament for the city but a vital economic engine. It accounts for 97,000 local jobs, according to the Broadway League — from costume markers to union hands who load equipment, as well as the surrounding restaurants and hotels.

“If Broadway is not running, those jobs don’t exist,” said Charlotte St Martin, the league’s president.

The Biden stimulus package is set to give Broadway and hundreds of regional theatres roughly $1.5bn of support. The hope is that those funds will allow them to make it to the other side of the pandemic. It is a journey that no one expects to be straightforward.

Shows may have to be recast because talent has left. Marketing campaigns to create the buzz to fill seats will need to be fired up. “We’re not a restaurant. We can’t just flip our lights on and start serving customers,” said producer Ken Davenport. “We need months of runway.”

There has been feverish speculation about when shows might restart. Most of the talk now focuses on the autumn, which would allow shows to capture the vital holiday season. Some see smaller productions that require less money going first while others believe it will be juggernauts, such as the musical Hamilton, that can guarantee an audience even without foreign tourists.

One of the first new shows to receive a commitment from a theatre during the shutdown is Thoughts of a Colored Man, by the black playwright Keenan Scott II. No date has yet been confirmed. It is, many hope, a sign that a more inclusive Broadway will emerge. 

We’re all hoping for the roaring ’20s — that people are brave and come out dancing and want to do things. But I don’t know

But questions loom over health and safety and the willingness of audiences to return. Broadway executives talk about having theatregoers stagger their arrivals, pre-order intermission cocktails and other tweaks to limit congestion. By and large, though, they do not believe social distancing is viable for more than a short period.

“If you’re running at 50 per cent capacity on Broadway, you’re closed,” said Davenport. “The economics just don’t support it.”

To Robyn Goodman, producer of such hits as Avenue Q and In The Heights, social distancing also undercuts the magic of theatre. She saw that when the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where she is executive director, recently put on a show for 60 people in its 425-seat theatre. “Boy, it’s hard to do comedy when people are sitting that far apart,” she said.

Goodman’s income from the shows in which she is an investor, including Hamilton, has dried up. “For me, it’s been a dead stop,” she said. After the early, frantic days of changing plans, she found herself falling into despair about six months ago.

“People are so depressed, especially the artists,” she said. “We’re all hoping for the roaring ’20s — that people are brave and come out dancing and want to do things. But I don’t know.”