"Broadway Blues" Rue Experts: Biz Down 2 Seasons in a Row: Average Ticket Price: $101. Count Me Out

 There to buy or look?  Some young tourists over Broadway's Half-Price TKTS concession

When I started training to Gotham around 2005, I'd pride myself on cramming in five Broadway shows in not that many days.

Was fun while it lasted - while the half-price tickets were closer to doable than damnable.  But as the prices have skyrocketed,  I've become a resentful participant, turned off by outrageously overpriced shows, not all of them dynamic darlings, a lot of them, in fact, over-dressed turkeys.

Last show I think I saw was the oddball revival of West Side Story, to which I put down nearly $70 for a half pricer.

No more.

The best musicals usually tour in first class road companies, and they all flock to San Francisco.  If you're coming from the far east, or just from the East Bay, be careful crossing that old precarious S.F. Bay bridge, eastern section, while they try to pre-repair the new one, itself already under attack for faulty giant bolts, something like that.

So to heck with 42nd Street on Baghdad by the Bay. I can see Broadway's "best" (and worst) in local productions nearly as good, virtually as effective on the smaller boards of semi-regional theatres around these parts.

My first introduction to the stage version of Cabaret was up in Santa Rosa a the Sixth Street Playhouse.  Brilliant direction and cast.  The show sold itself.

So, Broadway, next time I visit New York I'm skipping you for other things, like museums and wherever your subways rattle me towards, for your great park, and I'd still like to check out Carnegie Hall.  Why did you ever allow your symphony to move up the street?  Shame on you!

Your hills and rills, streets and beats are still alive with the sound of music, yes, but not inside any Broadway playhouse.  I can still get my Big Apple fix, a few blocks away from Crimes Square

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photos by Showbiz David