Student Blog: First Previews and Final Performances — An Unmatched Experience

What’s more enjoyable than seeing a Broadway show? This might be a difficult question for many people, including myself. I’ve figured out the answer, though:

First previews of Broadway shows. Closing performances of Broadway shows. Opening nights sound cool too, but those are infamously hard to attend… and they’re not actually the first or last performances of a show.

The energy in a theatre before a show starts — which is already considered to be “unmatched” — becomes even more unmatched when the live audience knows that they’re about to see the Broadway premiere or final Broadway performance of this production. So whenever I realize a production is opening or closing soon, especially one that I haven’t seen, I make it a goal to find a way to get tickets for that performance.

The first time I saw a first preview/closing performance was on January 15 of this year. It was the final performance of Mike Birbiglia’s solo show, The Old Man and The Pool, at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre. You could tell some of the people in that audience had seen the show several times. In fact, the loosely-scripted nature of the comedy show actually allowed Mr. Birbiglia to acknowledge an audience member in the front row who had seen the show seven times before, and was returning for her eighth and final time. Am I one to see a solo, scripted comedy show eight times during a two month run? No, but I respect the dedication.

After loving the energy of the audience, I made these special performances a habit of mine to go see. Less than a month later, I was at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre for the final performance of Anthony McCarten’s The Collaboration, which I adored and thought deserved more at this year’s Tony Awards. Jeremy Pope, in particular, was madly captivating as Basquiat. The Beaumont has actually become (albeit only twice) a sort of “closing-night only” venue for me. Last week, I attended the final performance of Camelot there too, just like I did with Mike Birbiglia’s show, and those are the only two productions I’ve seen there.

I’ve also seen two first preview performances of shows this year, which, though just as exciting, have a totally different type of energy: the audience doesn’t know what they’re about to see.

That is, unless the production is a transfer from a different venue, and the content of the show is already very public. That has actually been the case for the two first previews I’ve seen, but I’m still intent on attending a “world premiere” first preview at some point in my life.

The first-first-preview I saw was Peter Pan Goes Wrong at the Barrymore Theatre, which recently played its final performance. Though I didn’t love it as much as I did its creators’ earlier work, The Play That Goes Wrong, the comedy was clever, and the whole “first preview: things will likely going wrong” disclaimer really worked in their favor given the premise of the production (that is, unless a strictly choreographed dangerous stunt that’s designed to look like an accident actually was performed wrong – thankfully, that didn’t happen).

Most recently, on June 30th, I saw the first preview of the highly anticipated Back to the Future, which had some of the most impressive effects I’ve seen on a stage (and I’m still saying that after seeing Life of Pi), along with a strangely catchy score. The last minute or so of the show (which I won’t spoil) was unlike anything I’d seen in New York. They even gave out limited-edition first preview playbills!

And tomorrow, July 30th, which has probably passed by the time this article is live, I am going to the final performance of New York, New York. I wasn’t planning on seeing the short-lived production, but I won the Lucky Seat lottery for the final show and couldn’t pass up adding another final performance to my collection. It should be a great time. Go catch a first preview or final performance if you can!

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