Spiderman > Turn off the dark — Page 2

Anyone alive will only remember them as porn cinemas!

Wholesome.


Here they are in all there faded glory.
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The bright marquee with white lines above it on the left of this picture is the New Amsterdam Theatre now home to Disney.
The Lyric can be seen just off centre right and the Victory cinema is now the New Victory Theatre for children.

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The New 42nd Street signed a 99-year master lease, during May 1992, with the City and State of New York for six theaters known as the Apollo, Liberty, Lyric, Selwyn, Times Square and Victory. (The Empire theater came under The New 42nd Street's master lease once it was fully restored in April 2000.) In July 1995, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed for the Apollo and the Lyric Theaters between The New 42nd Street and Livent, a Toronto based theater owner, operator and producer, and a lease was signed in August 1996. Construction on the project to join the two theaters to form an 1,850-seat Broadway musical theater began in August 1996, and on December 26, 1997, Livent opened The Ford Center for the Performing Arts with the New York premiere of Ragtime. In August 1999, SFX Entertainment Inc. purchased Livent, and became the operator of the Ford Center for the Performing Arts. Subsequently, Clear Channel Entertainment purchased SFX and assumed operation of the theater.

Updated On: 6/15/09 at 08:11 PM

The problem is is that The Hilton is a barn of a theatre and has very aqward and very large a seating area. I think had Wicked played there rather then The Gershwin then that would have been the only show that would have even come close to being a hit there.

And, I am not sure that you can count The Grinch considering that that was planned to be and was a limited holiday engagment.

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I can see from Mama pictures how much of a sordid area that part of 42nd street was, could thing the Hilton project is!

Great points raised by Winston and Matt.

Superman has to be a very very very very long run, just to recoup.

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42nd Street is glorified in the 1933 movie and was brought back again to the publics attention in the Broadway musical of the same name in 1980.
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My visit to this 'golden thoroughfare' was in 1981 after the matinee of my first Broadway show (Lauren Bacall's last matinee in 'Woman Of The Year') and it just seemed like the thing to do, 'to walk 42nd Street'!- WRONG!
My god, this street, that is no longer than Old Compton Street, was the most frightening experience i could ever have imagined.
Yes, there were hookers on every doorway, needles on all the pavements and dealers, aggressive ones too, attacking you for all their worth.
It took us 3 or 4 minutes to return to the relative normality of Times Sq.
Times Sq, again, was an absolute hellhole of an area and you really would only find yourself there to see a show and get out ASAP.
Thankfully, though many try to say different, Soho in London was never like that.

I still feel uncomfortable on 42nd Street even today, it has an air of danger about it that is so unwelcoming.

Even the shows designer couldn't get the theatres on the correct side of the street.... lol
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Updated On: 6/17/09 at 11:58 AM

So getting the opinion that the 42nd Street re-development was a good thing, which reclaimed The New Amsterdam Theatre and made one theatre out of the 'Apollo' and 'Lyric' which were just porn houses and made a new theatre called 'The Hilton' which when I saw Young Frankenstein there, I thought it was a great house.

I understand they are going to pedestrianise Times Square, like they did with Trafalgar Square wh?ich I really love, so should really work well for Times Square?

I get a understanding now how Times Square was very squalid and sordid?

with Alan Cumming now cast in this I have suddenly become ALOT more interested!!!

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Piccadilly has lighting and signage similar to Times Square, but you would really need to combine Piccadilly and Leicester Square to get more of the feel of Time Square's crowds, theatres and touristy kitsch (though Times Square is far tackier).

They have already blocked off Times Square for the summer to create a pedestrian zone, but filled half of it with cheap lawn chairs for some odd reason. It's in the experimental stages to see how it will be used by tourists and to gauge the traffic congestion in Midtown. I hope they can work it out and make it permanent (including the seating, which I hope is just a placeholder for a better idea). Times Square, especially in the summer, has gotten so ridiculously crowded with mobs of slothy tourists blocking entire sidewalks by moving at a crawl or simply standing in groups to chat and take photos, we usually have to walk in the street if we want to get anywhere in the area within two hours.

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I think this will be the big movie to stage transfer for Broadway next year!

'Spiderman' can go swing!

Updated On: 7/17/09 at 06:22 PM

I'm looking forward to this since I like a lot of the people involved, but for some reason I imagine that before too long "TURN OFF THE DARK" will turn into "TURN OFF THE HYPE".

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