New York City (Fodor's, 2012) - Fodor's [107]
In a magnificently restored century-old performance space, the New Victory Theater (209 W. 42nd St., between 7th and 8th Aves., Midtown West | 10036 | 646/223–3010 | www.newvictory.org | Subway: 1, 2, 3, 7, A, C, E, N, Q, R, S to 42nd St./Times Sq.) presents an international roster of supremely kid-pleasing plays, music, and dance performances. Be dazzled by the likes of Canada’s Circus INcognitus; Mabou Mines’s Peter & Wendy—featuring Bunraku puppets and Celtic music; Mischief, a brilliant U.K.-based introduction to dance—with the inspired help of giant foam noodles; and Australian puppet madness, in The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy.
Count on reasonable ticket prices ($17 is the average), high-energy and high-class productions, and the opportunity for kids to chat with the artists after many performances.
Playwrights Horizons (416 W. 42nd St., between 9th and 10th Aves., Midtown West | 10036 | 212/564–1235, 212/279–4200 tickets | www.playwrightshorizons.org | Subway: A, C, E to 42nd St./Port Authority) is known for its support of new work by American playwrights. The first home for eventual Broadway hits such as Grey Gardens and Wendy Wasserstein’s Heidi Chronicles, this is where you will find the latest work from Craig Lucas, Doug Wright, and Edward Albee.
Signature Theatre Company (Peter Norton Space,555 W. 42nd St., between 10th and 11th Aves., Midtown West | 10036 | 212/244–7529 info and tickets | www.signaturetheatre.org | Subway: A, C, E to 42nd St./Port Authority) devotes each season to works by a single playwright (August Wilson, Horton Foote, Sam Shepard, and Tony Kushner among them), or an entire tradition, such as the seminal works of the Negro Ensemble Company.
All tickets are $20 for a show’s first run. Come 2012, when, at this writing, the theater’s new Frank Gehry–designed digs one block east are expected to be complete, the same ticket policy will be in place.
Moorish Revival in style, the St. James (246 W. 44th St., between Broadway and 8th Ave., Midtown West | 10036 | 212/239–6200 tickets | www.jujamcyn.com| Subway: 1, 2, 3, 7, N, Q, R, S to 42nd St./Times Sq.; A, C, E to 42nd St./Port Authority) went up in 1927, and has been running legit at least since the late 1930s. Home of Mel Brooks’s juggernaut The Producers in its heyday, and where a Tony-laden revival of Gypsy held sway late in the first decade of the 21st century, the St. James is where Lauren Bacall was an usherette in the ’40s, and where a little show called Oklahoma! premiered, with a rousing score and choreography to match, and changed the musical forever.
UPPER EAST SIDE
Music
In its Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium (and occasionally in the Medieval Sculpture Hall and the Temple of Dendur) the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 5th Ave., at E. 82nd St., Upper East Side | 10028 | 212/570–3949 | www.metmuseum.org | Subway: 4, 5, 6 to 86th St.) offers a rich year-round music program with concerts by leading classical and jazz musicians.
Also part of the Met, and well worth the trip farther uptown, is The Cloisters (Fort Tryon Park, Washington Heights | 212/650–2290 | Subway: A to 190th St.), which has matinee performances of sacred and secular music from the Middle Ages. It all takes place within a 12th-century chapel that was brought here from Spain.
Opera
Dicapo Opera Theatre (184 E. 76th St., between Lexington and 3rd Aves. Upper East Side | 10021 | 212/288–9438, 212/868–4444 tickets | www.dicapo.com | Subway: 6 to 77th St.) may be in a church basement (albeit that of the distinctively French Provincial St. Jean Baptiste), but the 204-seater’s boffo reputation—and its thoroughly modern facility—belie its humble-sounding setting. Productions range