Outside a Stage Door (11.1.22)

Some years ago, when I was a hotshot stage manager, I considered moving to New York to work on Broadway. I knew people there, and I settled for three weeks in a friend’s empty apartment on the upper east side, and started calling and wandering around. I was invited to see shows. I was invited to watch from backstage. And I spent considerable time near the stage doors, watching the companies go in and out, and trying to get a sense of what working life was like on, yes, The Great White Way. It looked, I must say, pretty hard-bitten. 

If you wanted to be swept away by the romance of Broadway, there was no better show to see than 42^nd Street, the stage chock full of giggling chorus girls and boys and pounding tap shoes, lit by garish neon and the loving representation of every Broadway trope, right down to getting off the bus from Allentown and becoming a star. In a sense, I was thinking about getting off the bus myself.  

I watched from out front, rapt. Went out under the white-lit marquee at the intermission to be part of the street scene. Rose to my feet with everyone else when Jerry Orbach, all magnetism and power as the Big Producer Julian Marsh, led the entire company into the signature song. “Hear the beat of dancing feet”, he trumpeted. “It’s the song I love the melody of…42^nd Street!” And the tap shoes took over.

(Yes, you know Jerry Orbach. The original company of The Fantasticks. The original Billy Flynn in Chicago. And twelve years as detective Lennie Briscoe on television’s Law and Order. What a presence!)

After the show, I came out with the crowd, walking slowly away and across the boulevard in a backdrop of real-world traffic, horns, lights, lit buildings. We were, I seem to recall, very close to the actual 42^nd Street. I heard a familiar voice behind me calling out  “Taxi!” and turned in time to see Mr. Orbach, arm still raised, rushing toward a taxi swerving toward the curb.  He ducked in – he was tall – and was rushed away.  And I thought…well, that was the real working life. Spotlights and tumultuous applause, then quickly out of costume, out the stage door, and hailing a taxi. I still think of it as a distillation of everything New York, along with eating leftover Chinese food for breakfast, and chatting up the bag man at Grand Central. A working stiff taxi driver was hailed by a Broadway star. Cab and star zoomed away into the bright night traffic. Could there be anything more New York than that?

Photo by Lexi Anderson | Unsplash