The line for the first showing (technically a preview) of Into the Woods stretched almost to the Central Park Reservoir on Tuesday. Some of the hundreds of people who waited outside on a hot day said it was the longest they’d ever seen (yes, that’s an air mattress in the photo above).
The draw? Amy Adams, Glenn Close, and a Stephen Sondheim musical that’s kind of perfect for an outdoor theater (though not to a Shakespeare traditionalist). It also helped that the first performance on Monday night was cancelled because of rain, which forced some people to wait again for tickets on Tuesday. The line stretched all the way to the Arthur Ross Pinetum around 85th Street. That’s about five blocks from where the line starts.
We couldn’t get a definitive answer from people there on whether the line was longer than the lines to see Anne Hathaway in Twelfth Night a few years ago. Those lines were long enough that Public Theater personnel would tell people at the back of the line that they weren’t getting tickets.
Marley Weiner, the second person in line, said she got there at 3 a.m. (the first person in line wouldn’t talk to us).
“I’m just that die-hard, I guess.”
Check out our video interviews below (the top video is of Marley Weiner):
