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Broadway stagehand strike disappoints tourists

Tourists watch as stagehands walk a picket line outside the St. James Theater in New York on Saturday. PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE

As if the Grinch really had stolen Christmas, children cried and parents were crestfallen. Confusion, surprise and anger played at ticket windows, and dispossessed theatergoers shared the sidewalks with grim pickets on Saturday as the stagehands' strike shut down most of Broadway's plays and musicals.

Up and down the Great White Way and in the side streets where Broadway's theaters are clustered, marquees fell dark, and the electric playland of Times Square -- normally pulsing with anticipation for Saturday matinees -- was a canyon of gloom in Midtown Manhattan's petrified forest.

Crowds of both US and foreign tourists, busloads from suburbia, throngs who had come by train or cab with children or grandchildren were caught off guard by the walkout and abruptly drawn into chaos: scrambling for refunds, seeking tickets to the few shows that remained open and in desperation looking for other attractions to ease their disappointment.

"I definitely understand that people work hard and need an increase because of the cost of living," Jacqueline Giangola, 37, said as she stood outside the shuttered red doors of the St. James Theater on West 44th Street with her daughter, Jessica, 6, and a woebegone crowd of adults and children with tickets to Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical.

The show's 11am performance was the first to close as 25 stagehands formed a silent, circling picket line under the marquee.

"I just feel bad for the kids," said Giangola, who rode the Long Island Rail Road into the city from her home in Island Park.

To salvage the day, she planned to take Jessica to Ripley's Believe It Or Not, and then to the big Hershey's candy store.

As security officers handed out fliers explaining ticket refund or exchange policies, Patrick Page, who plays the Grinch, emerged in a long black coat, apologized to the crowd and, to assuage bruised feelings, sang one of the production's popular songs, You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.

It seemed to brighten the mood.

"Some of the kids are crying," Page said. "It makes them smile a bit."

At dozens of theaters and at the TKTS discount booth at 46th Street, crowds stood about in frustration and bewilderment.

"It's very disappointing," said Linda Partner of Port Royal, Pennsylvania, who rode four hours on a bus with her three sisters and their two children to see The Little Mermaid at the Lunt-Fontanne at Broadway and 46th Street. "We don't have a clue where to go or what to do."

Carmen Fox, 39, her mother, Phyllis Frank, and her daughter Kaylee, learned of the strike when they arrived from Maryland to see a show.

"I had no idea this was going on," Fox said as she strode up Broadway toward the discount booth, where tickets were still on sale for Cymbeline, one of eight Broadway shows still open, and for a dozen off-Broadway productions.

Geoffrey Hastead, 58, and his wife, Anne, 56, retirees from Liverpool, England, had arrived on the Queen Mary with tickets to see Les Miserables at the Broadhurst on West 44th Street.

"We decided to stay a couple days just to see the show," he said. "We're very disappointed. For tourists, particularly, it's not good."

Outside the Broadway Theater at 53rd Street, where The Color Purple had been closed by the strike, a busload of students and staff members from a women's dormitory at Howard University in Washington were parked and trying to decide whether to go shopping or sightseeing.

They had been riding since 7am. A police officer told the driver to move along.

"It's affecting my day in a big way," said Kathy Harris, a retired teacher from Bethany, Conneticut, who planned to celebrate her 60th birthday tomorrow by seeing Avenue Q on Broadway at the John Golden Theater on West 45th Street.

At the box office where she had expected to pick up her tickets, she found only a sign about refunds.

Her friend Mary Press, a medical technologist also from Bethany, said she supported the strikers.

"They say it's a billion-dollar industry, and I don't find that hard to believe," she said. "These are the little guys that are on strike, and I can empathize with the little guys."

Outside Young Frankenstein, at the Hilton Theater on West 42nd Street, one of the shows that was still open, a stream of ticket-hungry out-of-towners barraged a security officer, Paul Yule, with questions about ticket availability.

"I haven't seen a feeding frenzy like this before," said Yule, 45. "It's like crazy," he said.

The only tickets available, he said, were premium seats that run US$350 to US$400.

Four people had just purchased those seats at full price, even though the seats were split up about the theater and the friends would not all be able to sit together.

It appeared that a scalper ticket market was developing outside some of the other theaters that were still open.

Mary Poppins, at the New Amsterdam on West 42nd Street, sold out quickly.

"I'm really disappointed," said 16-year-old Maddie Nosseck, who was visiting the city from Payson, Arizona, with her mother and some friends.

As for the strike -- coming weeks before Broadway enters its busy holiday season -- Page, the actor who plays the Grinch, voiced support for the stagehands, but insisted he was not taking sides in the strike.

"Hopefully, it will end quickly. There's way too much at stake here," he said.
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