my first show was Beauty and the Beast and it was just a magical experience. i don't remember much of it but i do remember how magical it was.
the first show i truly appreciated was Wicked. it was the frist show that i knew who the actors were, learned the soundtrack, and if i was abit older i would have definitely staged door.
Picture it. June, 1970. A ten year old visiting from the midwest with his family. Broadway! The hustle and bustle, the huge names in lights towering over the theater district. Marquis to marvel at: KATHARINE HEPBURN IN COCO, RICHARD KILEY IN MAN OF LA MANCHA, CLAIRE BLOOM in THE INNOCENTS! And then the curtain goes up on Promises, Promises with Jerry Orbach and Jill O'Hara.
Mary Martin in what was arguably her last tour of HELLO DOLLY, at the Dallas Summr Musicals. I was 12, sitting in the last row of the orchestra with my aunt Lorraine. The train came on stage. The audience stood up and applauded.
Let me underscore that moment: they applauded the train.
And 12 year old me sat there and thought, "Man, this would be such an easy gig....."
And guys? Let's cut the OP some slack. I've seen misspellings on this board that make "frist" look like a spelling bee winner.
And even if such a thing is old hat to the majority of us, it's clearly something important to this poster. Let's respect his/her love of the theatre and move on to yet another "perfect castin" game entry.
The FIRST show I remember seeing was the national company of MY FAIR LADY with Leland Howard and Gaylea Byrne. It was the last leg of the tour before the making of the film. A few years later, I saw Howard play Higgins opposite Dorothy Collins in summer stock. He was late on his entrance for "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face" both times.
My first Broadway show was HELLO, DOLLY! with Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway. This should be everyone's first Broadway show. It was also my first night in New York. During her curtain call around the runway she was, as usual, shaking hands with the audience. With a teenager's first-Broadway-show fervor, instead of simply shaking her hand, I kissed it. She looked out, gave out a loud "WHOOP", pulled my face up and gave me a big kiss full on the lips- in front of a screaming, sold-out house at the St. James Theatre. (I still have her lipstick smears in my program.) My fate was sealed.
First show: Dog Sees God First Appreciated (that I saw live): Urinetown First Appreciated (that I saw on DVD): Into the Woods First Appreciated (that I never saw): Follies
First show: CATS, 1992. Performance that changed my life: PROOF, with the original cast, August 2001.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
My first show was Beauty and the Beast...and I definitely appreciated it because, at the time, I was obsessed with the movie (give me a break, I was 6).
Also because my second show was Cats, and I'd never be able to say I appreciated that
My first show was a National Tour of Annie. I don't know who was in it, but I was 7. I was electrified from beginning to end. Something came alive inside me that was dormant. I adored every moment. I am so grateful to my dad for taking me.
It was probably the moment I realized I was gay too. I thought Miss Hannigan was so funny and just divine and I wanted to be Lily St. Regis. My dad bought me the record album and I used to pretend I was Lily St. Regis. I'm sure he was thrilled.
"The sexual energy between the mother and son really concerns me!"-random woman behind me at Next to Normal
"I want to meet him after and bang him!"-random woman who exposed her breasts at Rock of Ages, referring to James Carpinello
Hm, Tarzan made me want to become an actor (yes, I loved it) but I guess the first show I appreciated was Curtains, there was something about it, that to this day, I can't describe.
The first show I saw was a regional production of Carousel. I was too young (7) to know that that the production was lousy, so I loved it anyway.
As funny as it sounds, though, the first show I really appreciated was CATS. I was 9 when I was it, and it opened up the whole world to me and I I never bought or listened to anything but musicals after that.
Isnt that how it is, ChiChi? My very first exposure to opera was a production of AIDA that had four lanugages used — Italian (Aida), Spanish (Radames), Russian (Amneris, who also brought her own costumes), and English (everyone else). My aunt Lorraine took me to see it, and I was hooked. I'd never seen anything like it. I was maybe 8, so I had no clue about the language thing, and I'm sure, knowing the FWO's budget, the physical production was probably ugly as sin... but y'know, I sure didnt care.
This I'm sure is sick and wrong, but I we sat very close and I just fell in love with the man who played Billy. Buddy Ebsen of The Beverly Hillbillies played the Star Keeper and Kathy Fitzgerald from The Producers was in it. This would have been in 1988.
first show was Les Miserables. I was in second grade.
I appreciated it tremendously- but not until The Lion King/ Legally Blonde did I find my passion of musical theatre design.
I mean, when that curtain rises, and there is a sorority house standing there and girls popping out of windows singing a freaking amazing song. . it does something to you
This is unbelievable to me. The very first post I made on this forum was in the Porgy alternate endings thread and then you posted directly afterwards (although not in direct response). For some reason I clicked on your profile and saw your last post was in this thread, with a reference to the My Fair Lady tour with Gaylea Byrne.
How many of you saw that?
I saw that tour with her performance. It was the first professional performance of a Broadway musical I ever saw. I have never, will never, can never forget that evening's performance. I went behind boxes and dug out my souvenir program. Ronald Drake was her Higgins, Victor Charles was Doolittle and Eric Brotherson was Pickering. I think this was the very last leg of the famous first national tour but I'm open to correction as always.
I have handwritten in the back of the program "With Grandma Fritz, April 1, 1963. Magnificent." This was in Greensboro, NC. I was *very* young, hehe. We went with my father, who could have cared less about a Broadway musical but agreed to drive us. I had totally forgotten that my Grandmother had taken us. She had seen MFL on Broadway and wanted me to see it. I can never forget it now.
My father enjoyed it so much he agreed to take me to see the tour of How to Succeed which came to Greensboro afterward. It starred Hal England and Jeff de Benning and recreated the B'way sets, costumes and choreography (as had MFL, with the exception of the revolving stage). I still remember that evening vividly too. I hated the film after seeing this fine reproduction of the original. I remember my father laughing continuously during the first act and telling me during the intermission that the show was exactly the way things really were in his office. That dead-on but dead-pan satire is what was missing from the film and the revivals.
As for the magnificent MFL production, ah, where do I start. I will quote this from Gaylea Byrne's page in the program: "Miss Byrne is the only child of non-theatrical parents, and lists two Yorkshire terriers as part of her family. The name of one? Higgins; trained to fetch her slippers she claims."
And I will tell of a performance incident I still vividly remember also: In Act Two, when, after the ball and Higgins and Eliza were having their confrontation in Higgins study, as she sat down on the settee there was a hugely loud sound of "R-I-I-I-I-P" as she sat. She had obviously ripped the back out of her shimmering Cecil Beaton gown. It was supposed to be a very dramatic moment and the audience laughed hysterically for an extended period. The two actors remained in position and when the laughter finally died down they simply resumed the scene.
It is one of the most magic and wonderful evenings of my life.
Forgive an aging man his memories. I doubt I'll post again. Full moon, you know.
Amazing post. noname! Don't hesitate to share your memories on any thread here. We who missed the golden age can only live vicariously through your valuable recollections.
My first Broadway show was Fiddler on the Roof in '67 (Harry Goz had replaced Zero), followed by a '69 touring company of Man of La Mancha.
But the transformative moment when passion turned into my life's work was seeing Boris Aronson's screens of painted birch trees move like elegant dancers across the stage of "A Little Night Music" on New Year's Eve in 1973 (from the last row of the mezzanine). After having watched that blessed birch grove through all of Act I, suddenly at the peak moment in "A Weekend in the Country" the screens slid apart like a magician's hands to reveal Madame Armfeldt's magnificent chateau upstage center. But not a real chateau, just a suggestion of windows, doors, and mansard roofs that melted into the yellow sunset of Tharon Musser's groundrow strip lights. Pure magic, that was more than surpassed in Act II when Glynnis Johns wearily sat at the edge of her lovely bed with the empire tester and joined that plaintive clarinet in the first notes of "Send in the Clowns". The simplest verses of the entire night were the most potent. I was a 17-year-old kid who knew nothing about middle-aged regret but I was in tears.
Every new show I see on Broadway, I'm always praying for a repeat of that trick with the screens, and that trick with a clarinet.
