Just One Memory

[Highland Guy]

Posted: 12/26/19 at 7:09pm

If you could share just one theater/entertainment-related memory, what would it be?  Here's mine.

1966, sitting next to my mother in the audience of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" starring the wonderful Jane Powell.  Two weeks later I left for U.S. Navy Boot Camp, and three months would pass before we saw each other again.  So long ago, but the memory remains vivid..  

[YvanEhtNioj]

Posted: 12/26/19 at 8:43pm

I remember seeing The Color Purple revival and being surrounded by so many other black people that I started to tear up even before the show started. Typically I’m like 1/10 blacks at a show and to see the theater packed with my fellow black folks, it was really a unique experience.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 12/26/19 at 8:46pm

January 16, 1964. Opening night of HELLO, DOLLY! at the St James Theater. Carol Channing stepped off the "horse drawn open car" in the first scene and changed my life forever.

[BalconyClub]

Posted: 12/26/19 at 9:12pm

I'll jump on the Hello, Dolly! bandwagon.

I caught Bette Midler and that great cast, orchestra, and sets twice during the week of Opening Night. I had a seat in the front row of the high Shubert balcony for Tuesday and Saturday nights.

What I loved most was seeing ALL the Shubert Alley supersized show signs changed out for Thursday's opening from individual show titles to Hello, Dolly! in every 3-sheet window.

Maybe the idea happens for other openings, but it was the first and only time I had ever seen that visual treat.

[SisterGeorge]

Posted: 12/27/19 at 1:19pm

My first visit to NYC ( we lived in Florida) was with my parents. We were there just one night to visit relatives. We drove crosstown a few blocks north of Times Square and as we crossed Broadway and/or 7th I could see the lights of TS and even some marquees. It was thrilling and mesmerizing to be so close, but also infuriating and depressing to be denied what would have been my first Broadway experience.

I've made up for lost time and seen a bazillion shows since, but that desperate memory of NOT being able to see a show -- any show -- has stayed with me always,

[yankeefan7]

Posted: 12/27/19 at 8:44pm

Sitting in the front row of "Annie Get Your Gun" and Bernadette Peters looked right at me and smiled, it made my night .

[temms]

Posted: 12/27/19 at 10:25pm

The FOLLIES revival at the Belasco. I got standing room in previews and was at the last spot at the end of the center section. The seat directly in front of me on the aisle was empty and I pondered grabbing it but thought maybe it was reserved. About ten minutes into the show Sondheim sat down in the seat directly in front of me, pulled out a yellow legal pad and took notes on the show.

Most everyone didn’t care for that revival but for me, I watched Sondheim watch FOLLIES and so it was an utterly magical experience. He really seemed to love Judith Ivey’s Sally, and he visibly cringed every time someone in the orchestra played a sour note, which happened a number of times. I couldn’t read the legal pad but he scribbled furiously throughout. He was swarmed at intermission and I didn’t join in, figuring I’d rather take my chances and meet him in a professional setting, which I finally did years later. But for me it’s probably my favorite FOLLIES, for reasons beyond what I was seeing onstage.

[magictodo123]

Posted: 12/28/19 at 5:36pm

Sorry this is more than one BUT....Being able to go to opening night of Waitress, seeing Bernadette Peters in Hello Dolly! and the closing night of Anastasia. 

[PatrickDC]

Posted: 12/28/19 at 6:01pm

I grew up in a very small “one horse town” in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Zero culture aside from the Christmas pageant at the church. Didn’t even have a movie theater. But once every summer my parents took me to Stockton — the nearest big city — and Delta College which at the time produced a summer musical. It was mostly local talent, but they’d get one or two C level Broadway stars for the leads. 
 

The first show I saw was MAN OF LA MANCHA. I can still feel the red plush seats in the Atherton Theater, but what I most remember was the curtain rising on the prison. These enormous stone steps and background all in matching grayish color. It was nothing short of magical to me, to be sitting in a modern theater yet looking at a prison in Spain several centuries old. It not only ignited my passion for live theater, but set design in particular. 
 

I also easily recall during “I’m Only Thinking of Him,” as the actors debated, the stage was lit as a chess board, with the actors variously moving to different squares. Yes, a simple effect, but to member it over four decades later it made quite an impression on my young mind. 
 

I don’t remember the rape scene, and honestly would have been too naive to grasp it anyway, but given these were intended to be family friendly productions I’m sure it was staged modestly.