Broadway: Where Pop Culture Goes to Die
It feels like it was in recent memory that the New York theatrical scene (yes, including Broadway) was the pinnacle of the dramatic arts. It strived to challenge audiences and asked the tough questions, all while giving you occasion to stomp your feet and shout YEE-HAW. But gone with the interesting characters of the Old Times Square (the hookers, the johns, the druggies, the New Yorkers, and all those who tried to save them) are also the interesting characters once found on the stages there. Giuliani's Disnified Times Square is instead dominated by Abba, Billy Joel, the Beach Boys, and now Elvis.
On the plus side, it appears that theater criticism is reaching new heights of artfulness, or at least bitchiness. And this review can't touch the one for Good Vibrations.
Labels: observations
posted by Dan G @ 8:11 AM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
Let me share with you a soft, fuzzy story of the old Times Square - When I was a wee boy I took a trip with my father to visit the city (dad was a native New Yorker). One afternoon, while having lunch in a small coffee shop on 42nd street we were gazing out the window watching the hustle and bustle of Old Time New York, drinking in the sights and sounds of authenticity, when a hooker stepped in front of us, hiked up her skirt, and (butt facing impressionable 10-year old) bent over and removed her soiled panties to throw them in the garbage.
So give me Abba, (well, maybe not Abba) give me Disney, (well Lion King, not Aida) just don't give me a hooker's dirty bum.
See that? Old Times Square was even educational. Thank you, Matt, for demonstrating my point. That's what you were doing, right?
Arrggh! Like a sneaky twister of words you . . . .um . . . twisted my words!
I swear if the druggies and hookers ever come back to Times Square I'm going to start passing out flyers advertising the free drugs and wealthy johns that make up the fabled hooker/drug friendly land known as . . . Sunnyside!
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