Slowly but surely the world appears to be working its way out of the global pandemic and at least stateside things are starting to work towards something like normal. Movie theaters and theme parks are largely open, even if they're only seeing partial capacity, but the biggest news that has come recently is that Broadway theaters are now making plans to reopen. This is certainly big news for those who have been holding on to tickets to shows, but it's even bigger news for one Hugh Jackman, who was supposed to be starring on Broadway right now.
Hugh Jackman is set to play the lead in the latest revival of The Music Man on Broadway, and with the recent announcement that several Broadway shows, including Hamilton, are planning to reopen in July, Jackman is likely getting ready to jump into rehearsals. He posted a video to Instagram of himself singing a rousing rendition of "New York, New York" saying he was warming up his instrument, as Jackman is going to be doing a lot of singing for the foreseeable future.
It might have been a bit more on brand if Hugh Jackman had been singing "Ya Got Trouble," but I suppose the message he was trying to convey here was more the opposite of that. It's great news to see Broadway reopening. New York City has been one of the stricter places in the country when it came to the pandemic so the fact that the city is ready to open Broadway theaters can only be seen as good news. Broadway reopening may not mean that much practically to a lot of the country, but the symbolic reopening certainly means something, even to people who aren't planning to take in a show anytime soon.
Of course, as somebody who actually was planning to go see Hugh Jackman in The Music Man in October 2020, and now is planning to see him play the role in March of 2022, I'm especially happy to see Broadway opening up. The Music Man was delayed twice during the pandemic, but with theaters now opening this summer one expects things to be pretty close to business as usual by early next year.
And that will be a very good thing as tickets were sold to these shows assuming that every seat could be filled. It's one thing to not be able to sell every ticket in your theater, it would be quite another to have to move around peoples tickets to a Broadway show because only a fraction of the seats that had been sold could now be used. The mechanics of moving dates around would almost certainly be a complete nightmare for the theaters.
And of course, there's the potential that the reopening of Broadway will mean more to a lot more people going forward. Considering the success that Hamilton was on Disney+, musicals performing means the potental of musicals being filmed so the rest of us can see them.
