THEY come dreaming of “Mamma Mia!” – and, more often than not, leave clutching two-fers for “Cabaret.” Or “Phantom.” Or any of four dozen other plays, on Broadway or off, available at half-price at the TKTS booth in Duffy Square.
Thirty years and thousands of “Cats” tickets later, the Theater Development Fund’s discount operation still draws tourists and New Yorkers alike, all of them bent on a bargain.
“The word ‘center’ is known in every language,” says Mike Kane, TKTS’ assistant treasurer. “That and ‘more cheaper.’ “
Kane and the rest of the TKTS crew have heard it all: the awkward, halting requests for “Smokey Joe and the Bandit” (“Smokey Joe’s Café”), “Dancing on Lou Gossett” (“Dancing at Lughnasa”), “Planet of the Opera,” “Man of Manchuria” and “A Tourist Line.”
More recently came the clamoring for “Salami” – as in “Salome: The Reading” – and whispered, shame-faced pleas for “Puppetry of the Penis.”
Then there are the requests that make no sense at all:
“Some guy once asked for a cheeseburger and fries,” recalls Kane.
“We sent him to McDonald’s.”
The lines are always longest after the Tonys, says TKTS treasurer Jim Gatens – but if you go expecting “Hairspray,” fuggeddaboutit. Ditto “The Lion King.” And whatever tickets they did have for “Nine” and “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” Gatens says, disappeared after the shows finished previews.
What you can find most days are dozens of other shows, new and old, along with the occasional ticket to the ballet or the Philharmonic.
The choice is yours. “We don’t make recommendations,” Gatens says. Instead, the crew will wave you off to the tables out front.
That doesn’t stop people from trying.
“Can I see it without my glasses?” a woman asked the other day, of an 18th-row center seat to “Phantom.”
Deborah Bannahan of Houston looked at the flyer someone handed her for “Master Harold . . . and the Boys.”
“Will this depress me?” she asked no one in particular. “I don’t want to be depressed.”
Meanwhile, another woman grappled with “Take Me Out.”
“A gay baseball player?” she echoed, dubiously.
“It won a Tony,” someone told her.
Not everyone on line is a tourist. Nineteen-year-old actor Christopher Bray hits the booth whenever he can, hoping against hope to score a ticket to “The Producers.”
It hasn’t happened yet. He has, however, seen “Cabaret,” “Chicago,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and nearly everything else – which is why, that day, he comes to Bannahan’s rescue.
“See ‘Millie,’ ” he says. “It’s funny and Sutton Foster is terrific.”
Bannahan gets her tickets and smiles.
“How can you go to New York,” she says, “and not see a show?”
