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The first play that will open on Broadway in the post-COVID period, Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu's Pass Over, is in some ways very new-fashioned: a searingly timely look at the toll of police violence on urban communities, written by a young Black woman who is making her Broadway debut. But the production, which begins previews on August 4, is briefly bringing back one very retro tradition: line-ups at a theater's actual box office.
Although tickets for Pass Over are available online, and have been for several weeks, the in-person box office at the August Wilson Theatre (245 W 52nd St) is not scheduled to resume business full-time until July 21. But for two days only—on Wednesday, June 30, and Thursday, July 1—the venue will open its doors from 10am to 6pm to offer a special deal to walk-up buyers: mezzanine seats for $55 and orchestra seats for $75. (The top seats in those areas are usually priced at $129 and $149, respectively.) Proof of vaccination will be required for purchase.
In Nwandu's play, which fuses elements of the Exodus story and Waiting for Godot, two young black men hang out on a street corner and dream of a promised land. When the show had its NYC premiere in 2018 at Lincoln Center Theater's intimate Claire Tow space, we described it as "an intimate political play that grapples with epic themes and is likely to leave you shaken"; a filmed version by Spike Lee debuted the same year, and can be viewed on Amazon Prime. Now the LCT production, directed by Dayna Taymor, moves to Broadway with its original cast of three—Jon Michael Hill, Namir Smallwood and Gabriel Ebert—and a script that Nwandu says has been significantly rewritten to reflect evolving attitudes toward Black oppression and survival.
