There's kind of an interesting bond that forms between an audience, the cast and the crew of a live theatre show. Everyone is there to engage in the experience. The connection is incredibly strong, but it is rarely tested. Opening night of The Skylight Music Theatre's production of Avenue Q was a beautiful and beautifully fleeting show of he strength of that bond.
Somewhere in the early part of the first act, the bulk of the cast was engaged in a big number. A fire alarm went off...completely drowned out the song. (Evidently there was an issue with a smoke detector and a smoke machine if I heard the story right.) No one was ever in any danger at all...(I'm guessing that a theatre as organized as the Broadway Theatre Center is probably one of the safer public places in town, actually.)
The cast continued through the song. As did the orchestra. The audience patiently waited. Nobody flinched. The alarm was silenced at the perfect point in he song to underscore some of what was being sung about, I believe, in It Sucks To Be Me and everything got back to normal. But only after the audience erupted in applause. There were more applause after he song. There was never any doubt that the show would go on without interruption because we were all here to experience this thing. Maybe it's all in my head, but I could've sworn there was an implicit sense of trust and unity between everyone there. It's one of those rare moments when you really see the strength and integrity of the live stage assert itself.
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Cast crew and audience opening together at one moment and as the rhythm of the show progressed to further into the first act, you could almost tangibly feel a stronger sense of community from everybody. (Again, maybe it's all in my head and maybe I'm reading too much into this but . . . ) I doubt that many people remembered the experience by the end of the Performance because it was also well orchestrated. What people pay for in a Broadway play I imagine what people pay for in a touring Broadway show is the beauty of seeing a huge production run very, very smoothly. The Skylight offers the opportunity to see that up close and personal--and in a space much more intimate than one would find in the types of venues that show touring Broadway shows. This was my third time seeing a production of this show. And it was by far the best. Part of the reason for it was seeing how smoothly everything ran that close to the stage. And a good part of it was that sense of community that came from seeing it on a night where conditions had conspired to make sure that everything didn't go perfectly. It's that type of accident, that type of flaw that reminds me why I love theatre so much in the first place.
And I'm sure that there will probably people involved in the production were very upset but that happened. (That sort of thing happens once in the run of a show at most.) But every now and again it's important to be reminded of that sense of community. And that's what a humble fire alarm did for me opening night of the show. That sense of community was perfectly in line with the type of unity that the ACLU is looking to foster by partnering with this production. So nice to see such a beautiful synthesis in another divisive election year.
The Skylight Music Theatre's production of Avenue Q continues through October 14 at the Broadway Theatre Center. For ticket reservations, call 414 – 291 – 7800. A concise, reasonably comprehensive review of the show runs in the next issue of the Shepherd-Express.
