story by Kayte Deioma
On Broadway
Year’s ago, I took some of my siblings to see Blood Brothers on Broadway during a weekend getaway to the city. They only went along to humor me. There was a universal attitude among them of “What’s the big deal? We’ve seen lots of plays.” After the performance, my sister Ellie looked at me with her eyes still lit up and said, “Now I get why you love Broadway!”
It’s a completely different phenomenon than community and professional theatre across the country. You’ll see it in the caliber of the performances, the size of the venues and the energy that comes from having so much of a good thing all in one place.
Even seeing a Broadway touring company with the original cast is not the same as seeing the show on Broadway. The tours usually perform in massive auditoriums and concert halls with 2,000 to 3,500 seats. Most theatres on Broadway are relatively small in comparison, with 580 to 1000 seats. Even the largest Broadway theatre, the Gershwin, seats a mere 1,900 people. So when you see a show on Broadway, it’s more intimate, and more vibrant, than when you see the same show on the road.
On my recent trip to the Big Apple with Ellie and her three kids, we wanted to find just the right 
production to introduce them to the magic of Broadway.
Theatre has become much more accessible for kids with Disney now having half a dozen productions on Broadway. As wonderful as The Lion King may be, I wanted the kids to see a musical that was fresh content, not created from a movie they had seen a dozen times. I was also looking for something that wasn’t based on a bunch of old hit songs. That seems to be the craze of the last decade.
I was looking for something more original, where the story and music would be fresh and new, so we’d have no preconceptions. Ellie and I agreed on the award winning musical “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” playing at the 623-seat Circle in the Square. Even though the age recommendation was 10 and up, we decided the content looked innocuous enough, and our 7 and 9-year olds are relatively
sophisticated.
Fortunately, the song My Unfortunate Erection – lamenting why the character Chip was distracted and missed his spelling word – went pretty much over the girls’ heads. It also took a little while for them to realize that they weren’t supposed to understand the crazy spelling words. Nevertheless, they were captivated by this live production, that took place not only on the stage, but had characters roaming among the crowd, and audience members roped into being contestants in the spelling bee. The 16-and-over members of our group found it hilarious.
An Off-Broadway Staple: The Blue Man Group
In addition to the Broadway experience, another New York original production that’s worth a visit, especially when traveling with kids, is the Blue Man Group. This New York spectacle is still better in the 300-seat Astor Place Theatre in the Big Apple than at any of its giant spin-off homes around the world.
If you’re sitting in the first few rows, you may feel the need to don the complimentary rain ponchos to protect yourself from the potential paint
spattered with the beat of a drum or spit skillfully onto a canvas. They manage to keep most of the mess miraculously on stage, but some flying substance that bore a strong resemblance to macaroni and cheese did manage to reach Becca in the fifth row. She was blissfully clad in plastic, so she was immune to the yuck factor.
The zany rhythmic antics of the mute blue-headed trio of Blue Man Group kept our whole crew mesmerized and laughing with delight from beginning to end.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Circle in the Square
235 W 50th St/1633 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
www.spellingbeethemusical.com
Blue Man Group
Astor Place Theatre
434 Lafayette Street
New York, NY
(212) 254-4370 or (212) 307-4100
www.blueman.com
Read more Reviews of Blue Man Group on Tripadvisor.com.
Madame Tussauds was the one thing that my nephew Derick really wanted to do in New York, and he’d been such a good sport about American Girl Place, that we made the effort to squeeze it in on our last day.
Marie Tussaud’s mother worked for a doctor in France who had some skill in making wax models. She learned the craft from him and on his death inherited his collection of wax figures of notable people. She began to exhibit his figures with some of her own in a traveling exhibit and opened the first permanent Madame Tussaud museum in London in 1835. Until 1971, when Madame Tussauds opened in Amsterdam, you had to go to London to see the French woman’s original collection (remade from original molds after shipwrecks and fires).
It was fun to watch the kids get excited about having their photos taken with favorite movie stars and other notables. I was amazed how many movie stars 7-year-old Sarah knew by name. She claimed me as her personal photographer as the others went on ahead
. “Take my picture with Whoopi! Take my picture with Julia Roberts! Take my picture with Robin Williams!”
Derick got right up close to Usher to take a photo, and we could hear the music playing, but we were unaware that this was an interactive exhibit that lets you play DJ by changing the music choices.
If you look closely at the refrigerator in Rachael Ray’s Kitchen, magnetic letters spell out “LOOK INSIDE.” I didn’t see this until I zoomed in on the photo of Ellie in the kitchen, so we didn’t realize we could or should open the fridge to find a touch screen monitor with Rachael Ray trivia. In the photo, I also noticed a sign on the oven that says “See What’s Cooking” with an arrow, so there’s probably something interesting in there too.
The best participatory exhibit was the American Idol karaoke stage with a wax Simon Cowell critiquing singers. The live KJ crooning between volunteers gives this one away. The karaoke area, which is also the snack bar, was pretty quiet when we came in, so Becca and Sarah stepped right up to sing “The Start of Something New” from High School Musical. Derick grabbed some ice cream dots and joined Ellie and me and a wax gentleman in the audience.
People gathered as they sang and they got a nice round of applause after they finished. The voice of the almighty Simon sounded from overhead: “That performance can be summed up with one word. Congratulations!!!…” Since Ellie videotaped the performance with her own camera, we skipped buying the DVD.
The Musče Mčcanique is a great place to entertain yourself and the kids for a rainy hour or a day depending on how many quarters you’re willing to part with. Even if you’re not a fan of the usual arcade games, you can admire the craftsmanship of the antique mechanical wonders and read up on the history of carnival and beach boardwalk culture.
You can have your fortune told by a wizard or a carnival gypsy, have your palm read by the Mystic Ray or let the Kiss-O-Meter tell you just how hot you are in a range from blah to burning to uncontrollable. For a quarter, the Mystic Ray tells me “You are very prudent, never taking a move without lengthy deliberation
”
Most of the mechanical tableaus were much grander and had lots of action going on. A carnival scene has hundreds of moveable parts that come to life with the insertion of a few quarters. The Ferris wheel turns; sideshow characters come to life and jungle animals perform. The Unbelievable Mechanical Farm is even more complex with farm animals, a saw mill, hay barn and dozens of characters doing everything from plowing to shoveling coal, from baling hay to reading the newspaper with lots of folks just sitting around chatting.
Puppets in glass cases dance, sing and ring bells. A whole array of mechanical instruments and music boxes from the turn of the century play a wide variety of tunes – so many in fact that there are three CDs of tunes played on these instruments available in the gift shop or online. Some are straightforward player pianos, others, like the Orchestrion, include a multitude of instruments within a single case.
two opponents against each other operating a precursor to Rock’em Sock’em Robots. In the Marathon Cycle Race, two players race bicycles around a vertical track. In Zelinsky’s own 1989 creation, The Hammer, two people can match strength by trying to use a lever to lift a heavy hammer and ring a bell. An Arm Wrestling machine warns of the mechanical arm’s “superhuman strength” and gives you two tries to best the machine for a quarter. There are also more modern games of agility, speed and ingenuity from a Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine, to early Atari arcade games and Super Chexx table hockey.
A lot of the machines are too tall for little kids to play easily, but the traditional mechanical horse is always popular and there are step stools around to give the little ones a boost. Some of the machines are definitely PG – especially the giant Laffing Sal and her smaller laughing buddies who have been giving kids nightmares and inspiring horror films for generations.