When I was twelve years old, in the summer of 1959, my parents took me to see my first Broadway show, the musical Destry Rides Again.
By the fall of 1959 I was going to Broadway without my parents. The first show that I saw without them was Gypsy.
Little did I know that this would turn out to be the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of Broadway musicals. I'm glad I'm old enough to have seen Ethel Merman in Gypsy, Richard Burton in Camelot, amd Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
I still go to the theater, but without the enthusiasm that I had close to fifty years ago.
Mostly, I see revivals. I can't wait to see Audra McDonald next season in 110 in the Shade, the original production of which I still have fond memories of.
Updated On: 5/27/06 at 06:13 PM