Just had to sing some praises! (Despite the fact the coma on my keyboard isn’t working. Pardon the dashes!)
‘Daddy Long Legs’ is the little show that could. It just celebrated 200 performances at the Davenport Theater!
If you’re in the NYC area – spend a matinee or evening with this lovely story filled with heartbreaking and life affirming beauty. Plus – real married couple and stars Megan McGinnis and Adam Halpin are a couple of cuties. Lovely all around!
Because I am slightly obsessed and love to champion good creative work -the producer’s team kindly gave me a discount coupon to share with family and friends. Please click through and grab a seat or two!
I am absolutely smitten this morning. Smitten with technology and live performance converging into new ways of bringing theater into the comfort and convenience of your own home.
Last night (depending on where you live), the off-Broadway show ‘Daddy Long Legs’ streamed a live performance straight from the Davenport Theater in New York City. The show stars real life (and adorable) husband and wife Megan McGinnis and Adam Halpin who are just damn delightful.
As a New Yorker living on the west coast, it’s difficult for me to make it back to see shows. Although I did see this wonderful performance just a month and a half ago on my whirlwind ‘World Series Halloween Marathon’ weekend, there are many shows I wanted to see that were unaffordable, sold out or did not have time for, such as ‘Something Rotten’, ‘An American in Paris’ and ‘Hamilton’ (cough…cough..sold out until the sun becomes extinct).
Sadly, as with the case of 2006’s ‘Sweeney Todd’, a superb show I allowed to pass me by, so many great performances close and thousands of hopefuls with no access to New York Public Library’s Lincoln Center Branch’s Broadway video archives, never get to see them. Instead, they are tempted to view them on bootlegs via YouTube, where one feels dirty watching an illegal cut, shot through someone’s coat buttonhole. (I imagine the hateful glare of Patti LuPone on my shoulder as she watches me watch her duet with Michael Cerveris on “A Little Priest”, recorded on a jiggly Flip camera one hundred feet from stage.)
Yes, a cast recording is very nice, but how great would it be to see a staged show recorded for posterity? They did it with Sondheim. They did it with ‘Elaine Stritch Live at Liberty’. The National Theater in London has been doing NTLive for a while now, where Hamlet with Benedict Cumberbatch was just recently seen in select movie theaters. Network television is redefining the live staged experience by broadcasting ‘Sound of Music’ and ‘The Wiz’ live, the ‘Grease’ to follow on Fox.
But for actual off/on Broadway shows – think of the coverage. Think of the continuous revenue flow that will continue to contribute to a show’s ledger long after it has closed. Think of how amazing it would be to see ‘Fun Home’ or ‘An American in Paris’ in your pajamas when you are never going to get to New York in that season?
Some purists scoff at the idea of digitally streamed Broadway. Being in a theater and feeling the energy come off the stage as you join hundreds of other people watching the same story unfold before you is a magical experience. The smell of the plush seats, the greasepaint, the velvet ropes and hushed or crackling energy you feel from actors breathing the same air.
But let’s face it, for those who can’t afford this experience, seeing in the comfort of your own home for a nominal fee is better than not seeing it at all.
Ken Davenport, Producer of ‘Daddy Long Legs’ and owner of The Davenport Theater, where the show lives, is a staunch supporter of bringing live Broadway to the 21st Century by use of streaming technology. He facilitated, along with BroadwayHD, the debut of last night’s streaming of ‘Daddy Long Leg’, and it was indeed a major breakthrough, a step in the right digital direction. Twitter was alive with “Daddy”. The hastag #DaddyLongLegsLive was trending nationally on Twitter and commentary, weighing both pros and cons, were bandied about on the internet. Imagine an SVOD platform to house these live shows…
Thanks to BroadwayHD, a new Netflix type company created by Broadway producers Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley, live streaming Broadway is slowly becoming real and lucrative. The fledgling company has already acquired 100 titles to stream on their SVOD platform. Not all titles are new nor particularly desirable. Most are already available on DVD and other online sources, but it’s a solid start.Remember iTunes and Netflix started out with limited supply and built their library over time.
Once Broadway understands the need for digital streaming, there will be more fresh material to subscribe to, making this venture a successful one to Broadway nerds out there.
Last weekend, I attended an off-Broadway show called ‘Daddy Long Legs’. It’s a little charmer, now running at the Davenport – a small intimate theater with a big heart on the edge of the Great White Way.
The show is about an orphaned girl – now a young woman on the verge of adulthood – and the young wealthy man who anonymously pays for her education. Through letter writing, they fall in love. Megan McGinnis (who plays Jerusha) and Will Reynolds (who played Jervis the day I was there) are so wonderful in bringing on the heart ache.
It’s a divine little play, and I highly recommend it! But there was something that really intrigued me – so much so, I was compelled to do something…odd.
The crew of ‘Daddy Long Legs’ has a little marketing plan that was equally has sweet, and indeed – charming.
Within the show program, there was a postcard promoting the show with a little note encouraging audience members to write to a loved one to tell them how much they loved it. They would pay for postage. The little mailbox was in the lobby for posting.
I didn’t know of any addresses off hand – despite my dying iPhone containing a bunch of contact info barely accessible since my battery kept going flat twice a day.
So, I thought of the one address that is forever ingrained in my head. The one address I used since the day I was born until the year I graduated college and my family moved somewhere else.
My childhood home.
It’s always been something I’ve wanted to do – to write to the inhabitants of the house where I grew up to say hello and to mention how it’s always been in my dreams.
The house was small, not entirely well kept, and could have been loved more than it was. There were so many things going on with my parents and there were times it wasn’t a very bright and wondrous place. Family issues, arguments, dark times and bleak corners.
But I loved the home. I loved the village that remains the center of town. No matter what – I always felt safe and loved in that house. I’ve longed for that feeling since. I’ve moved and moved and transferred across country — yet never found that same sense of home.
Our next door neighbors – the ones who lived there when my family was in the house – still reside there. I continue to be friends with their eldest son – one of my best friends during our young days. Apparently the family who moved in after us are still there – having moved in when we moved out — 1986.
Which means – they have lived in my childhood home longer than we did. Yet, my memories and dreams still linger within it’s old walls. Walls that have now been expanded and updated as far as I can see via Google.
So, hopefully that strange little postcard I sent from this small little theater just off-Broadway was a little bright spot in their day. I simply wrote, “I don’t know why I’m doing this, but I used to live in your house and still love it today. Hope it still contains a little of that love.”
Strange! Theater inspires us in ways we least expect. Writing that anonymous postcard was congruent to Jarvis and Jerusha’s correspondence. Both were acts based on universal love.
If you’re in New York and want to see ‘Hamilton’. Forget it. That show is sold out forever. There are other wonderful opportunities to see great intimate and emotionally moving theater – like ‘Daddy Long Legs’ at the Davenport Theater.
Please check it out. It just might inspire you to do something amazing.
Order of the Good Write 