You're best surprises of B'way theater? — Page 2

Definitely If/Then for me. Beforehand, all I heard were the mixed-to-negative reviews and I didn't feel like seeing what sounded like Sliding Doors the Musical. I was dragged to it by a friend, but me and a group of us seriously enjoyed it and related to it quite a bit.

Great topic! My biggest surprise was Hedwig. It was 98 and very early in Hedwig's run. I knew nothing about it, but I'd seen so many posters around the city. When I looked it up, all it said was a rock musical about a botched sex change operation--I thought, this sounds up my alley! I knew NOTHING else about the show. I can't stress that enough. Aristophanes speech in Plato's Symposium was one of my favorite things since I was a junior in high school. We read it in my humanities class. A few days before we saw Hedwig, randomly, I read the story to my boyfriend at the time.. I'm sure he wasn't listening or interested. When we got to the theatre, I noticed a Hephaestus quote in the playbill--I was big into mythology at the time, so I liked that. Seemed promising. When she started singing "Origin of Love," I lost my mind. Started elbowing my bf emphatically, shout whispering, "I just read this to you." That was it! I was done! Saw it 18 times at the Jane and 7 times on Broadway. I was at Neil's first preview and JCMs first night on Broadway. It's still my favorite thing ever.

Updated On: 8/22/17 at 10:23 PM

Jekyll & Hyde (1997) - Went to this show with little expectations, only went because my wife wanted to see Robert Cuccioli who she knew from her HS days. Not only was he amazing (Confrontation scene was incredible) but two unknown ladies to me (Linda Eder & Christiane Noll) just blew me away with their beautiful voices.

Updated On: 8/23/17 at 12:35 PM

Both of my shows share the theme of, "I didn't really do much research into the show before I went"

Into the Woods (Early 2000's Revival)
At the time that, I was still young and was not as involved with doing much looking into shows before I saw them. I didn't use the internet back then for keeping up to date on show news like I do today. In fact the only reason I got tickets for this show was because we were in New York seeing another show and we happened to walk by the theatre. I saw the poster area and said, "Oh hey, I have heard of that from my friend Angelina. She said it's really good." So we decided to get tickets for the heck of it. And that was literally ALL I knew of that show going into it. My friend liked it. I had no idea just what I was about to see. Heck I didn't even know that it was about Fairy Tales. How naive and young I once was. So by the end of act 1, I was impressed but confused as to where it could possibly go in act 2. By the end of act 2, I recall just having this look of shock and awe on my face. I had been to plenty of shows before that one that had dark twists and turns in them before but nothing like this.

Wicked
Once again this was another case of being on one trip, looking for tickets for something for our next trip, seeing an ad on the street, going "I've heard of that," and buying the tickets. It's hard to think of a time when Wicked was not a well known show. I went before the cast recording was even out so all I knew about it at the time was "it's about Oz." Another show that really took me on a ride of really interesting unexpected twists in the road. I suppose that is a theme between the two as well. On one hand, I'm glad the show grew to be as big a phenomenon as it has become. On the other hand, I miss that feeling I had when the show was new and had not really taken off with fangirls and boys yet. I liked being in that early groups of people that saw it because it made the show feel so much more special then. Now? Not as much when every other person knows it upside down and inside out and they have not even seen it yet.