Forty-one theatres between 41st and 54th, only four of which are actually on Broadway. Here is how the tickets work and where the cheap ones are.
What counts as Broadway
Not the street. A Broadway theatre is a professional house in Manhattan with 500 seats or more operating under the relevant union agreements — there are 41 of them, and only the Broadway, the Winter Garden, the Marquis and the Palace actually front onto Broadway itself. The rest are on the side streets between 41st and 54th, mostly in the West 40s.
Off-Broadway is 100 to 499 seats. Off-Off-Broadway is under 100. Those are contractual definitions, not quality ones, and some of the best theatre in New York is in rooms with sixty seats.
Getting tickets without paying full price
TKTS at Duffy Square, under the red steps at 47th Street, sells same-day tickets at 20 to 50 per cent off. The board lists what is available; the queue moves faster than it looks and is shortest right at opening and in the last hour. There are smaller TKTS booths at Lincoln Center and in Brooklyn with shorter queues and the same stock.
Digital lotteries are the best value by a distance. Most shows run one through their own site or an app, entries open the day before or the morning of, and winners pay around $30 to $50 for seats that would otherwise be $200. It is genuinely random and it costs nothing to enter. Enter several.
Rush tickets are sold at the box office when it opens on the day, cheap, limited, first come. Some shows restrict them to students.
Standing room is sold only when a performance is otherwise sold out, usually about $30, and you stand at the back of the orchestra. For a two-hour show with no interval this is harder than it sounds.
Full price through the theatre’s own site or Telecharge/Ticketmaster. Avoid the resale sites; the markup is severe and the seats are often no better.
What to know before you book
Matinees are Wednesday and Saturday, usually, and are cheaper and easier to get. Tuesday evenings are the quietest night.
The theatres are old and small — many date from the 1910s and 20s — and legroom in the balcony of the older houses is genuinely tight. Seat maps online tend to be honest about obstructed views; believe them.
Most shows run around two and a half hours with one interval. Doors are strict: latecomers are held until a scene break, and in some shows that is twenty minutes.
Nobody dresses up. Jeans are completely normal.
Where to eat
Not in Times Square. Restaurant Row is West 46th between Eighth and Ninth, and it is built entirely around the 8pm curtain — tell them what time your show starts and they will get you out. Ninth Avenue through Hell’s Kitchen is cheaper and better.
More Theatre & Music
Carnegie Hall
Opened in 1891 with Tchaikovsky conducting, nearly demolished in 1960, and saved by a violinist. The acoustics are the reason it still matters.
Lincoln Center
Sixteen acres of performing arts built on the cleared remains of the neighbourhood that West Side Story was filmed in. The plaza and the fountain are free.
Radio City Music Hall
The largest indoor theatre in the world when it opened in 1932, with a proscenium designed to look like a sunset and a stage that still works on 1930s hydraulics.