Battle of the theatre districts: West End v Broadway

By Mal Chenu

Theatre has always been big in London, except for a brief few years when the Puritans were in the ascendancy and the first incidence of cancel culture prevailed. From Shakespeare to Boris Johnson, London has a proud history of make believe, and the West End has been in the limelight throughout.

There are around 40 theatres in the West End (aka Theatreland), depending on your geographical definition of "West End". The first, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane opened in 1663, which was even before the poms kicked the Dutch out of what was then New Amsterdam and renamed the city. Broadway was still centuries away.

The West End theatres upstage Broadway, not just in their correct spelling of "theatres" but also in tradition and history. Many are Victorian and Edwardian heritage buildings with grand facades and ornate interiors, and the chance to plant your bum on a seat that has accommodated so many historical bums simply enhances the experience.

And most of the great shows run in the West End before eventually making their way across the Atlantic and opening on Broadway, billed as a "hit on the West End".

In a case of the show must go on - and on and on - Agatha Christie's classic whodunnit The Mousetrap has been running since 1952, and always ends with a plea to keep the murderer's identity a secret, maintaining the world's most enduring spoiler alert.

We've been able to hear the distant drums of Les Misérables since 1985 and The Phantom of the Opera has swung from the chandelier since 1986. Mamma Mia! has been thanking Abba for the music since 1999, the same year as The Lion King taught us to hakuna matata. Cats purred on in the West End for 21 years. And Broadway won't give you the chance to catch The Great British Bake Off Musical, even on off-off Broadway.

If you fancy dinner and a show (and who doesn't?), you'll find excellent restaurants of most ethnicities in nearby Covent Garden, Soho and Leicester Square. The post-show buzz keeps the bars in Shaftsbury Avenue in particular heaving until the wee small hours. Or you could sample the myriad retail therapy opportunities in Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street.

There's a discount ticket booth in Leicester Square offering last-minute bargains, and in June each year, a free two-day outdoor concert called West End Live showcases songs from the current musicals to thousands of fans in Trafalgar Square. While Broadway is generally more expensive, at least you are likely to sit next to someone dressed in a Knicks singlet, track pants, sneakers and backwards baseball cap with a crinkling packet of chips.

Whichever way you look at it, from overture to encore, Broadway is just an understudy to the West End.

By Amy Cooper

The neon lights are bright on Broadway. Every night, they glitter and gleam all around you, your standing ovation for just being there. Those megawatt billboards and marquees are a show all their own. That's the thing about NYC's Theater District - it always feels like one big production. While the West End sprawls over several neighbourhoods, Broadway's 41 theatres are tightly choreographed within a 12-block grid in midtown Manhattan, connected by ... Broadway. You can't miss it.

And you shouldn't - because Broadway is more than a bucket list tick. It is New York; the all-singing, all-dancing, names-in-lights emanation of a city with showbiz in its DNA. Whether you're there for a blockbuster like Hamilton or exploring fringe talent off-Broadway or off-off-Broadway, or just wandering the glittering Great White Way, with its street performers, hot dog stands and bustle, you're plugged into New York's vital creative energy source.

Last year, on my first post-pandemic visit to NYC, I went straight to the Theater District to check that the night was still lighter than the day, and that the show would go on. Broadway is New York's heart monitor. The lights go out in the worst of times - terrorist attacks, war, pandemic - but they always blaze back, dazzling and defiant. Just two days after 9/11 it was showbusiness as usual.

Now Broadway is boosting New York's spirits again, with a surge of optimistic creativity. There's huge anticipation for this month's opening of New York, New York, from Lin Manuel Miranda. A rebooted Sweeney Todd is delivering "peak Sondheim" with a 26-piece orchestra, and Broadway legend Bob Fosse's Dancin' is back for the first time since its original 1970s run.

There's an exciting new movement of big stars appearing in intimate, accessible settings at cabaret venues such as 54 Below and the new Green Room 42 at YOTEL Times Square. The new Museum of Broadway in Times Square is packed with storied objects like Patti LuPone's Evita wig and a Jets jacket from West Side Story, and nearby newcomer Civilian Hotel is a gorgeous love song to Broadway, filled with 350 pieces of art and memorabilia, including drawings of all 41 Broadway theatres and miniature stage sets of current productions.

The Theater District's bars and restaurants are an endless encore of Broadway mythology. In legendary joints like Joe Allen (we saw Al Pacino!), Orso, Sardi's, The Lambs Club and Chez Josephine, famous faces beam down from the walls, and might just as easily pull up a stool next to you. Need an interval? You're just a soft-shoe shuffle from Central Park, the Empire State Building, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rockefeller Centre.

There's no business like showbusiness, and there's no place for it like Broadway.