Your first Broadway show?
Your first Broadway show?
MerrilyWePostAlong
Swing Joined: 1/27/25
#1Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 11:35am
Was curious what everyone's first Broadway (or touring) show was - or the one that got you to fall in love with theater. Mine was Grand Hotel - such an unforgettable experience.
Updated On: 8/27/25 at 11:35 AM
KevinKlawitter
Broadway Legend Joined: 1/21/20
#2Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 11:38am
I saw Once while I was visiting New York during a college choir tour. It was lovely.
#3Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 11:40am
My first Broadway show was "Starlight Express," July 1988. Got a ticket at TKTS, and then had dinner before the show at Sizzler - where Ellen's Diner is now. Loved the show. Just so much fun. I had a fantastic seat, way down front, inside the figure 8. Each time the skating would start, the glass walls would come up and the sirens would start.
I also saw "42nd Street," "Broadway Bound" with Joan Rivers, and "Speed The Plow" on that trip.
Auggie27
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/13/03
#4Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 12:16pm
First Broadway show: Zorba, last row of the Imperial mezz, June 1969. I had grown up in suburban DC, and seen My Fair Lady at age 7, Music Man at 9, and Camelot at 12. But the Imperial at 17 - the great Lorraine Serabian’s “Life is,” was genuinely life altering.
"I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me." Garry Shandling
#5Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 12:42pm
My first show on Broadway was Beauty and the Beast. Andrea McArdle was Belle and Stephen Blanchard was the Beast.
Beauty and The Beast was also my first movie, so it was magical to have that be my first Broadway experience as well.
"Anybody that goes to the theater, I think we’re all misfits, so we ended up on stage or in the audience.” --- Patti LuPone.
Updated On: 8/26/25 at 12:42 PM
mshalo18
Featured Actor Joined: 10/29/22
#6Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 12:51pm
Thieves in 1974 or ‘75. I saw it on a school trip- it played at the Broadhurst and starred Marlo Thomas and Richard Mulligan.
#7Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 1:02pm
Mine was THE MUSIC MAN with the original cast. So many years ago but I still remember it like it was yesterday.
#8Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 1:18pm
My first Broadway show was the revival of Chicago with Bebe Neuwirth, but the show that made me fall in love in with theatre was Phantom of the Opera.
"Michael Riedel...The Perez Hilton of the New York Theatre scene"
- Craig Hepworth, What's On Stage
Ceej
Stand-by Joined: 3/30/07
mar6411
Broadway Star Joined: 9/19/09
#10Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 1:28pm
Woman of the Year - 1981. My first visit to NYC.
Prior to that, I had seen local and touring productions.
#11Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 1:46pm
Before seeing a show on Broadway I saw the touring production of "PURLIE" with Robert Guillaume, Patti Jo, Sherman Hemsley and Helen Martin.
My first Broadway show was "The Wiz" at the Majestic Theater with the OBC. (I saw it two more times after it moved to the Broadway Theater)
Just give the world Love. - S. Wonder
BentleyB
Featured Actor Joined: 4/4/17
#12Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 1:47pm
My first Broadway show was “Grease” when I was in junior high. It was a life changing experience for me.
#13Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 2:04pm
My first show was the Toronto company of Beauty and the Beast. I didn't make to to NYC until I was a teenager, where my first show was the final performance of the original cast of Legally Blonde.
Side note: the Palace theatre is extremly special to me, as it was the first theatre on Broadway, but it also hosted my 3 favourite things in life: Beauty and the Beast, Judy Garland, and Sharon, Lois & Bram (a famous Canadian childrens entertainers). I have such fond memories of the dark, chocolate brown single male bathroom in the balcony of the Palace
"Ok ok ok ok ok ok ok. Have you guys heard about fidget spinners!?" ~Patti LuPone
schubox
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/16/16
#15Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 2:33pm
First show on Broadway was Avenue Q back in 2005. I am not sure I remember my first touring produciton, but my parents took us to a ton of regional theater, outside in a local community park growing up which I assume fostered my love of theater. Didn't take in my brother though
Malinda5000
Stand-by Joined: 6/19/16
#16Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 2:45pm
Applause… back in 1971…saw it when Anne Baxter replaced Lauren BaCall. Either way it was an awful show. It gained its cult wings in later years but at the time the critics were not kind.
Updated On: 8/26/25 at 02:45 PM
#17Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 3:04pm
My first was a touring company production of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" at a theatre-in-the-round with the glorious Jane Powell. This was in 1966, I was 19 years old, and my mother sat next to me. Two weeks later, I left home for U.S. Navy Boot camp to begin my military career.
Non sibi sed patriae
#18Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 3:09pm
Cats, Broadway, 1983 with the Original Cast
Slotted spoons don't hold much soup
jagman106
Stand-by Joined: 7/17/19
#19Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 3:53pm
Pippin, first row mezzanine at the Imperial, January 9, 1974. I was a sophomore in high school, age 15, and went on a high school field trip. It was a Wednesday matinee. We had a snowstorm the night before, and although schools were closed that day for a snow day, we still made the trip from northern NJ because the roads were cleared by the time we had to leave for the show. Ben Vereen was out of the performance that day, but it was a great experience. I wore out the LP within a year after that day.
merle57
Understudy Joined: 9/9/24
#20Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 4:04pm
My first Broadway show was the San Francisco tryout of Mary Martin's Peter Pan on August 20,1954. Next I saw the touring companies of My Fair Lady, Unsinkable Molly Brown with Tammy Grimes and Harve Presnell, Redhead with Gwen Verdon & Richard Kiley, then Flower Drum Song with Juanita Hall, and so many other tryouts, touring shows, and revivals that played SF.. My first New York Broadway show was High Spirits with Bea Little and Tammy Grimes, and the next night Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl. I was bit by the theatre bug the moment Mary Martin flew in the window of the Darling Home -- still breathtaking remembering it.
#21Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 4:23pm
First Broadway show - Chicago with Gwen and Chita. The next day I saw The Wiz and A Chorus Line.
First live show (that I remember, anyway) was Snow White at Shady Grove Music Fair when it was still a tent, sometime in the mid-60s when I was in elementary school.
#22Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 5:34pm
The first national tour I saw was 42nd Street when I was about ten years old. Due to a strike, it was performed without scenery, and in any event it's not the kind of show that has ever interested me. It's amazing I ever gave live theater another try. 
But I did, and I became a major ALW kid, and my first Broadway show was Aspects of Love in April of 1990. I had already become obsessed with the score via the London cast recording, and my obsession only grew (for a time). In the late 1990s I even created my own website dedicated to the show, with detailed analysis of the lyrics and music. Today I recognize that the show as a whole leaves a lot to be desired, but I still think the score is completely ravishing, and I still listen to the (excellent and very complete) recording on a regular basis.
#23Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/26/25 at 5:48pm
"The Wiz" was the first, quickly followed by "A Chorus Line" in 1977.
"The cat's in the bag, and the bag's in the river..."
fray3
Swing Joined: 2/13/25
#24Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/27/25 at 10:21am
My older sister took me to see mary poppins at some local theater. apparently i hated it...
#25Your first Broadway show?
Posted: 8/27/25 at 10:31am
Cats, when I was still young enough to be in diapers. But the first show I have strong memories of was Beauty and the Beast (OBC, summer 1994).
"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
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