http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/nyregion/25move.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin
The Shows Must Go On, but Not Until They Change Theaters
By GLENN COLLINS
The NEW YORK TIMES
Published: April 25, 2008
The computer-controlled lights and the fog machines were waiting in the wings. More than 600 props – including the maroon queen-size pullout couch and the Zippo lighter – had been packed away. The sets that weren’t being bashed into shape to fit new stages had been muscled onto scenery trucks.
And as the week wore on, a brigade of carpenters, electricians and sound and prop people performed a chaotic symphony for hammer, saw and drill.
Getting from Point A to Point B has always been daunting in Manhattan, but rarely has any New York moving van saga been as operatic as the simultaneous transfer of two hit Broadway plays to new theaters on the same day.
This year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “August: Osage County,” a sprawling drama about a dysfunctional family inhabiting a rambling Oklahoma home, is moving to the Music Box Theater from the Imperial Theater next door. And “Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps,” a witty, quick-change take on the 1935 movie thriller, is migrating five blocks to the Cort Theater from the American Airlines Theater.
The Broadway-to-Broadway transfer of even one play is more rare than a total solar eclipse. According to the Broadway League, the last time was nearly eight years ago when “Waiting in the Wings,” starring Rosemary Harris and Lauren Bacall, segued from the Walter Kerr to the Eugene O’Neill in May 2000.
But the strange coincidence of two plays transferring on the same day “is almost stratospheric,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the executive director of the Broadway League.
In both cases, their theaters had been booked for other shows; but because they were unexpected hits, their producers decided that the expense of a transfer was worth the gamble.
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Alfred Hitchcock’s THE 39 STEPS resumes performances on Tuesday, April 29 in advance of a May 8 opening at the Cort Theatre (138 West 48th Street).
