WITH show tunes still filling their heads, the day-trippers resolved to write their own musical, about a group of crazy people riding a bus to New York ... to catch a musical.
The epiphany came during a post-matinee tipple as Nancy Altschuler, 56, and two friends secretly — and somewhat gleefully — passed around a bottle of Crown Royale on a tour bus from New York to Philadelphia.
“ ‘Cocktails on the Bus’ will be one number,” Ms. Altschuler suggested, as she sipped her whisky and ginger ale.
Ms. Altschuler and her friends, along with some 40 other passengers, were headed home on a recent Saturday after a trip to see “Curtains,” the Kander and Ebb musical comedy starring David Hyde Pierce. In so doing they were taking part in a particular New York ritual, repeated thousands of times a year. Aboard coaches and vans, in time for the Saturday or Wednesday matinees, theatergoers from Hartford and Boston; Lionville, Pa.; and Litchfield, Conn., squeeze through the knotted tunnels and bridges into Manhattan, disembark for an hour or two of lunching or shopping, and then pour down the aisles of Broadway theaters.
The groups are students and the elderly mostly, but there are church groups and local clubs. Some make only a single trip; others, like Ms. Altschuler and her friends, are regulars, shuttling in once a month or so with the same group, thinking about the next show before their last trip is done. “Musicals I love,” Ms. Altschuler said contentedly as the suburbs of Philadelphia whizzed past. “I hope we can do this forever.”
By the millions, day-trippers visit New York every year, to see the biggest Broadway shows. The matinees, more than other performances, rely on the bus trips, according to theater executives. “Especially the Wednesday matinee,” said Phillip Smith, the president of the Shubert Organization, “A lot of out-of-towners. They come for the musicals.”
The majority of Broadway tickets are sold to theatergoers who don’t live in the city, most of them from the suburbs and other states. In addition to the tickets they buy, those who come to the city just for theater spent more than $2 billion on hotels, restaurants and other expenses in 2004-5, the most recent period for which figures are available, according to the League of American Theaters and Producers.
Most of the riders on the bus with Ms. Altschuler were women over 50, along with six men, one of whom was Ms. Altschuler’s father, Albert, 95. The group included a lawyer and a law student, an actress and a few doctors, a mom visiting from Missouri, a bride-to-be, a woman who lives in a retirement community, and the concierge at a ritzy Philadelphia apartment building.
A few of the women had traveled with Margie Lance, the tour’s operator, and her company, Go With Us Inc., for more than a decade. Some traveled with the same partner for every play, and other women insisted on traveling alone. Great friendships had started on the bus; in other cases, on trip after trip, women sat next to each other and had never really met.
The trip that day started at 8:30 a.m., with Roger Gaines, a regular and favored driver guiding the white coach bus decorated with a resting lion through Philadelphia’s still-empty streets. His first stop, near the art museum and the statue of Rocky Balboa, was the Philadelphian, an apartment building on the city’s grand Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Molly Albert, 83, stepped on board, wearing large sunglasses and a name tag. (Among the passengers only Ms. Albert, who helps recruit passengers for the trips, wore one.) She showed off pictures of her great-grandson. “Isn’t he adorable?” she asked, as another woman passed around a photo of her nieces.
At the next stop, in upscale Rittenhouse Square, another pair of oversize sunglasses came on, this time framing the face of the elegant Myriam Langford, 78, a former actress; she had spent much of her career in Europe, at one point playing Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?” and starring in an advertisement for Du Maurier cigarettes.
As usual she was accompanied by Dr. Albert H. Greer, 87, whom Ms. Langford met about 14 years ago. “We always travel together,” she said. “Dr. Greer likes David Hyde Pierce.”
Dr. Greer, a research scientist who specializes in polymers, just smiled. “I drag him to all these Chekovian things,” Ms. Langford said.
Sue Ann Mallon, one of the trip’s two guides, distributed tickets to the passengers. Ms. Langford opened her envelope. “We’re in the mezzanine. That’s good for musicals.” She sees plays in Philadelphia, but allowed that she is a bit of a snob when it comes to theater. “This hasn’t been a terribly good season,” she said.
After two more stops, including one in the parking lot of a shopping mall, the tour was ready to begin. Patrice Kruszewski, the other guide, stood at the front and spoke into a microphone, announcing that Mr. Gaines would be driving (cheers from riders ) and bringing everyone up to speed on how “Curtains” was received in New York. Then she wrapped it up. “We’ll start with our continental breakfast, and we’re on our way,” she said.
For $150 each these passengers got theater tickets, the round-trip ride to the show and snacks along the way. Once they arrived, the schedule was tight: They would reach the city at around 11:30 a.m., which meant they had two hours until the doors would open for the show. Afterward the bus would be waiting to take them home.
Newspapers were handed out and from a green basket, breakfast, which included boxes of cereal, granola bars and coffee. Ralph Gallo, 59, and Karen Garbeil, who declined to give her age, friends after spending years together on the bus, had decided on lunch at Junior’s, just a block from the Al Hirschfeld Theater, where “Curtains” is playing. Over the years Dr. Gallo, a former pediatrician who now specializes in sleep medicine, said, he has made a half-dozen friends on the bus, including Ms. Garbeil, a real estate agent. They always eat lunch together and discuss the plays on the ride home.
Not everyone pairs off. At the back of the bus Joan Willson, 89, sat by herself, reading an old issue of Smithsonian magazine. “I don’t travel with a group,” she said, explaining that she used to drive herself until it became too much of a hassle. Nor does she dine with anyone.
“I consider it a great waste of time to go into a New York City restaurant and have an expensive lunch,” she said. Instead she stuck to her routine, usually a stroll through Bergdorf Goodman, a walk through the Museum of Modern Art, and a stop at Takashimaya, the Japanese department store. She said she appreciates good design, and besides, if she got hungry, there was always “a nibbly at a bar.”
The bus started to turn, looping toward the entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel.
“I always wonder what happens when you get stuck in the tunnel,” Ms. Altschuler said. Mr. Gaines reassured her that they tow you right out.
Once in the city Mr. Gaines dropped off his passengers along Eighth Avenue near Times Square and took Ms. Willson up to 57th Street to begin her own ambitious schedule. After various lunches and shopping were finished, everyone met at the theater in a line that stretched a city block: a good omen, everybody said.
Most of the group sat in the mezzanine. Ms. Willson sat alone near the orchestra, binoculars at the ready and a CD player with a book on tape for the intermission.
“Curtains” is a musical comedy about a murder during a musical; Mr. Pierce, the star, plays a theatrically inclined detective trying to solve the case. The play includes a few racy musical numbers, several people falling in love, elaborate stage pieces and a scene in which Mr. Pierce rides a horse.
When the Philadelphia contingent emerged from the theater two and a half hours later, a consensus seemed to emerge: “Curtains” had been a hit. (Broadway itself agreed: The show received eight Tony nominations, with Mr. Pierce winning for best performance by an actor in a musical.)
The bus, as promised, was idling outside the theater. White wine, cheese and peanut-butter crackers awaited. Ms. Altschuler and her friends sweetened the experience with that Crown Royale. “It was a perfect way to spend a Saturday,” Ms. Garbeil said.
“It was just an old-fashioned musical,” Ms. Langford said. “The dancing was tremendous.”
Ms. Willson was more measured in her praise, deeming it “so terrible, it was good.”
On the ride home — the bus returned to Philadelphia around 7 — the passengers leafed through their Playbills, discussed the play or slept. Ms. Altschuler combed her father’s hair, and the bus made its stops all over again.
Ms. Langford spoke of the old days, as an expatriate in the 1970s, when she lived in Brussels and owned a theater: recollections that seemed touched by glamour. Her circle had included the American ambassador in Belgium, and she won awards for her cultural work. Today life was children and grandchildren. Recently there was a cataracts operation. The bus rides with Dr. Greer and the rest of the day-trippers were something to look forward to, a diverting part of her second act.
“Sometimes you think, well, that was your life, and you can’t have a new one,” she said. “But you can.”
