Watch Broadway Shows at Home

A week or two ago, I heard that they were going to stream a performance of a current Broadway musical live. The musical in question? She Loves Me, a revival of a production that’s based off the same play You’ve Got Mail and The Shop around the Corner were based on. It was one of the shows I’d been thinking about going to this summer, and I had been sad to hear it was closing July 10th, so I wouldn’t be able to see it.

Given the chance to stream it at home for $10? Yes, please. I wasn’t sure it would actually work, but considering going to the show in person would have set me back about $100/person, then it was definitely worth a shot. I marked the date on my calendar and investigated how best to view it.

It turns out that the service (BroadwayHD) has an app for the new AppleTV, which I just happen to own. So I downloaded it and subscribed for a month of the service ($15, non-recurring payment, it appears). I wasn’t sure if I’d have to pay an additional $10 on top of that fee to live stream the show, but again: bargain. (It turned out I didn’t need to, though from what I read, maybe that wasn’t supposed to be the case? Not sure.)

So last night, Denisa, DC, and I watched the whole show in our pajamas. (TRC showed up for the second half, primarily because I’d told the kids that anyone who stayed up to watch the show could stay up past their bedtime, and there was no way TRC was going to let DC stay up later than he could.)

We loved the experience. It was a little bumpy at first (I imagine because it was the first time they were trying to pull this off), as the video and the audio kept glitching, But after restarting the stream once or twice, it kicked in with no further difficulties. (We missed part of the first number, but that was it.) The picture and sound were fantastic, the camera work was great. I was really impressed they were pulling it all off live.

The musical itself was a delight from start to finish, with great music and acting and singing. All of us really enjoyed ourselves, and for $15 for that experience (plus a whole month of streaming other recordings on BroadwayHD), it really is a bargain. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, and I hope they were super successful with the experiment. Broadway is a long way for most of us to travel, and this would be a great way to see the shows.

Is it as good as seeing it in person? No. And I think that’s to the service’s advantage. I could imagine many people spending $10 on a live stream and then deciding they’d like to see that show in person when they get to Broadway. It must do wonders for the soundtrack as well (I’m always much more likely to want to own a soundtrack if I’ve seen the musical in question.)

In any case, if any of you are even remotely curious about this, I encourage you to check it out. I couldn’t recommend it more, and you can see the recorded version of the live stream this very instant (the actual show starts about 12:30 minutes in.)