NEW YORK — The Broadway Museum has opened its doors to the public in New York’s most theatrical district, home to the theater and music halls that constitute one of the distinctive features of the Big Apple.
How is it possible that no one had yet had the idea of summarizing the history of New York theater in a museum, and also charging for the tour?
Priced from $43 to $53, the new museum is an immersion into the magic of New York theater through several historically ordered rooms, where murals from hundreds of plays are reproduced along with original costumes, period dressing tables, old theater seats…
But the most original thing is that, as special chapters within the tour, scenes from some of the musicals that have marked an era and fascinated millions of spectators are reproduced, which then become films or were born from a feature film.
A bar counter with its West Side Story jukebox (1957), a cornfield where Oklahoma (1943) is set, psychedelia where Hair (1968) exploded or a patch of jungle where The Lion King (1997) roams. some of the specimens of this museum with attention to the smallest details.
It is not an “immersive experience” that is so fashionable at the moment, but in each of the thematic rooms the songs that have had the most success in each of these works and that today everyone associates with them, be it “Money money”, from Cabaret, or “Let the sunshine in”, by Hair.
CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
Through the itinerary, which winds over three floors, the museum also tells the story of the United States of the twentieth century: the creative explosion between the two wars, the years of prohibition, the arrival of blacks in the world of Broadway in roles that not mere subordinates, the Vietnam war, the struggle for civil rights, the AIDS epidemic… all these phenomena have had one or more dedicated works.
At the same time we can also see the evolution of the musical genre itself, born as a frivolous and evasive genre to the point of constituting a small universe where music and dance do not prevent religious (Jesus Christ Superstar) or political (Hamilton, Cabaret) themes from be addressed. , or some tragic ones like the AIDS epidemic (Angels in America).
Naturally, the walk through the history of musicals is accompanied by a multitude of objects recovered from all the theaters that helped give birth to the genre: Aladdin’s lamp, an original jacket from West Side Story, masks from The Phantom of the Opera , the wig that Evita’s character wore or the chandelier with which Les Miserables was lit.
There are also handwritten letters, original screenplays or audio recordings from the authors who gave stature to the genre, such as Andrew Lloyd Webber, Bob Fosse, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein… authors who in turn revolutionized a way of doing and opened new basis for musicals.
The tour ends with a reconstruction of what could be the backstage of any musical, where the whole world of the scenography that supports these works is reproduced in a very realistic way: ropes, ladders, cables, notes attached to the wall or colored spotlights, and next to them dressing rooms where the artists put on their make-up or pianos where they try out their works.
So that going out onto the street – after having passed through the shop-museum – one has the impression of having passed through one or more spaces of magic. Or as Oscar Hammerstein, one of the great authors of the genre cited in the museum says: “You must have a dream. Because if you don’t have it, how are you going to achieve it?”
