Gone

Feeling blue. Ten minutes of a fabulous documentary on Broadway's past conjures memories, and I now must wax nostalgic.
My youth wasn't there for no Golden Age of Broadway, to be sure. But New York theater was still alive and still running along the tracks of the great days. I never saw the original Streetcar or Salesman. Never saw the first Kiss Me, Kate. But I was in time to catch Rex Harrison and Julie Harris in a Terence Rattigan play. I made it for Pippin (awful show, but fun), and the original and gorgeous Night Music. Deborah Kerr in a new Albee play. Opening week of Chorus Line, too. (Really terrible show but, Christ, it was an event.)
Understand: I saw a whole bunch of plain crap, too. Yet, as the city was different then, so too was the theater and there was a personal element to those streets that made even crummy shows worth the experience. Little things, like real, small tickets in different colors. Theaters still named the Morosco, the Belasco and the St. James. Prostitutes. The Marlboro man, puffing. People dressing up to see a show and no fucking kids anywhere, because going to the theater meant getting a sitter.
Now, to immerse myself fully in bitchy old man bathwater, it's pitiful. Nathan Lane as a great Broadway star? $400 per seat? No hookers, and theaters renamed in honor of corporate investors?
Sigh. It is obnoxious to say but: if you weren't there, you can't know what a kick it was.
PS Sorry for this indulgence. But I just feel SO CLOSE to y'all, now...