How to score cheap Broadway tickets
If I hadn't just happened to have turned on the TV and started channel surfing, I might have missed the 2017 Tony Awards altogether, except that I eventually would have noticed the stream of text messages that were making my phone buzz. I am in a group text with my daughter Lawler, my niece Rosalie and my sister Janelle, and we were chatting up a storm, like we were in the room together. That is, until I got my hand slapped by Lawler when I expressed excitement about Kevin Kline winning for Present Laughter. "Please recite the alphabet before texting results. I'm streaming it!" Remember this in the future, when you are talking or texting with millennials during things like the Superbowl or live awards shows. They do not have cable so they either stream special events on their iPads or watch them in a bar. If they are texting with you, chances are they are not in a bar. So that means they are streaming and you are responsible for calculating a delay. That's where the singing the alphabet thing comes in. And it gets very tedious singing the alphabet over and over and over again before you can type another message. Trust me.
Lawler and Rosalie both know a lot about the Tonys and who is who and what is where and what is hot and what is not and they had some sort of wagering game going on but I never did figure out what they got points for. It went like this:
See? She wrote "T and me," not "T and I." Correct grammar in a text message. My little budding anal grammarian. This makes me very proud!
That's right - Spongebob Square Pants is coming to Broadway. And chances are you heard it here first. So I should get 1 point for that.
After a while we wondered why we weren't hearing anything from my sister Janelle. She tends to fall asleep while watching TV but it was three hours earlier in California where she lives, so that didn't seem like a good reason for her being so quiet. Turns out she had been out at a matinee performance of Jersey Boys. When she got out she had 172 text messages. And she knew better than to read them before watching the Tonys.
THE OPENING NUMBER
For the last few years the opening number at the Tony Awards Show has been epic, so I was happy I didn't miss that. I hadn't heard that Kevin Spacey was the host, so that was a surprise. He seemed... old. And that pains me to say, given that he is a little younger than I am. I saw Dear Evan Hansen the last time I was in New York, so I knew what the wrist cast with the hashtag and the dorky clothes were all about. Anyone who knows me knows I love a song parody, so I was riveted the moment I heard "You Will Be Found" being parodied. It was good, in a pathetically self-deprecating way. Yeah, we get it that Kevin Spacey was not their first choice, but the continued references to the fact that he wasn't the first choice felt a little bit like an attempt at winning by losing. As the opening number continued, I recognized less and less of the music and thought the same thing I always do when watching the Tony Awards show: Who, besides my daughter and my niece, has actually seen these shows and understands the obscure references that are being made about them? Eventually I thought the opening number was meh, but you can judge for yourself:
Over the years Kevin Spacey has become somewhat known for his impressions of other actors, and he performed several of those during the awards show, but I'm guessing not all were well-appreciated by a youthful audience. I mean, what person under 30 even knows who Johnny Carson was, let alone what he sounded like? But I do remember seeing K.S. interviewed by James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio several years ago. He was challenged to offer impressions by a handful of actors and really did a notable Katharine Hepburn and Al Pacino. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a look.
My favorite Tony Awards Show opener is the one Neil Patrick Harris did in 2013. It has great song parodies, great dancing and even a little bit of magic. It's no wonder it was so good - it was co-written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tom Kitt and it raised the bar for every show that would follow. That's the hard thing about creating great stuff: You keep raising expectations about the quality of what comes next. So take it easy and don't be so amazing in the beginning. Give yourself somewhere to go. Anyway, if you haven't seen the Neil Patrick Harris opener from 2013, you need to. Watch it now:
HOW TO SCORE CHEAP BROADWAY TICKETS
I promised I would tell you how to get cheap tickets to sold-out Broadway shows and if you have good luck and follow these instructions you might not be disappointed. When I go to the internet to look for Broadway tickets, I am always overwhelmed by the number of options. You just don't know who you can trust, right? So I am offering you, faithful readers, the inside scoop. If you want to know how to score unobtainable Broadway tix for cheap, who better to ask than a New Yorker with a limited income? I have a direct line to one of those (okay, direct except for the alphabet-singing delay). According to my daughter, here's how you go about getting same-day tickets for sought-after Broadway shows:
For general information about the different ticket policies and links for tickets for all shows, go to broadwayforbrokepeople.com.
lottery.broadwaydirect.com is currently offering lotteries for tickets to Aladdin, Cats, Hamilton in NYC and Chicago, On Your Feet!, Sunset Blvd, The Lion King, War Paint and Wicked. And if you haven't seen Cats yet, you really should so that you will understand why it is so unbelievable that it was once the longest running show on Broadway.
my.socialtoaster.com currently has a lottery for The Great Comet starring Josh Groban.
luckyseat.com currently has Book of Mormon, Groundhog Day, Kinky Boots and Present Laughter on Broadway, and Hamilton in San Francisco.
The TodayTix app runs lotteries for The Public Theater, Sweat, 1984, Little Foxes, Roundabout Theater Co, Sweeney Todd, etc.
Obviously, if you have nothing but money and a well-planned trip, you should buy the tickets in advance. But if you are like me and just can't bring yourself to plan anything more than 3 months in advance, these lotteries are a good option.