Recently a family friend, Leslie, came to visit myself and my family. We saw Miss Saigon together and I decided to ask her questions about her love for Broadway and the theater.
Above: Our Miss Saigon playbills
As a native New Yorker as well as a family who loved to see shows, theater has been in her blood for a long time. Leslie began seeing shows at the age of nine, and started her Playbill collection with the first show she saw, The Sound of Music. She also has all of her dad's playbills which date back to the 1940s. When I asked what her favorite playbills were, she said they were one signed by Ingrid Bergman from The Constant Wife in London and a Wicked playbill.
Her top 5 shows she's seen (in no particular order) are:
1. The Sound of Music
2. Guys and Dolls
3. Wicked
4. Miss Saigon
5. The Producers (with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick)
Her top 5 shows she wants to see: 1. Hamilton
2. Come From Away
3. Dear Evan Hansen
4. Waitress
5. Aladdin
I also asked Leslie what her favorite memory from seeing a show was. When she saw Sleuth she met the main actor after a talk back. She asked him to signed her playbill and he didn't have a pen or marker so she gave him hers. He asked her to stay with him while he signed the rest of the playbills for the people that were there and talked to her the entire time.
She has seen theater everywhere, not just on Broadway, including regional productions and touring productions. She Book of Mormon in Dallas and Wicked on tour.
And, even thought it's still running on Broadway, she still wishes she'd seen Kinky Boots sooner. Leslie loved going to shows with her dad and still goes to shows with her sister and husband and said anytime I would like to go to a show with her, she would be there.
From the first moment the curtain rose on her very first show she was hooked on theater and it has become a very important part of her life.