Christmas in New York….

We’ve already had it onstage in the UK in seasons at Plymouth, Southampton and Cardiff over the last couple of years that starred Lorna Luft and Tim Flavin; a proposed production had once also been announced for the West End’s Savoy Theatre, too, in 2001, but never made it there - according to one report at the time, “No casting details were ever announced and, according to industry gossip, it was the fruitless search for appropriate leads which led to its abandonment.”

But this American version - first premiered in San Francisco in 2004, and since then put on an annual regional roll-out before finally arriving on Broadway this year - proves that the show has commercial as well as artistic legs. Title recognition - and instant song recognition, too - of course plays its part; but Walter Bobbie’s lavish production, and Randy Skinner’s buoyant, exhilarating tap-and-ballroom choreography, delivers on the promise, too. No wonder it is already proving to be one of the hits of the season - visiting the box office to collect my tickets, it is clear that tickets are in short supply already, to judge from the various dates being checked by someone ahead of me.

Just how it will pay back across a run of just 65 performances in a seven-week run - even with some weeks running to an unusual 9-performance run, and tickets spiked to $140 during the prime Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks - is obviously a challenge, but one that must have been calculated in advance to work. While the development costs for the project (the initial investment was pegged at $4m) must have surely been aggregated in advance by the regional productions, there are nevertheless higher costs attached to bringing it to Broadway itself. Or it could simply be a loss leader: in a Variety feature two years ago, White Christmas producer Kevin McCollum admitted at the time to looking ahead to a New York run, since (in Variety’s words) “it could elevate the shows’ status as it seeks to enter new markets.”

It is now duly receiving its Broadway kudos and credits. But while it is continuing to roll out its touring portfolio, in New York it has to compete with an even more vigorous tradition: the annual Radio City Christmas Spectacular, now in its 76th year and counting, is a one-of-a-kind show that has become as much a part of New York’s Christmas landscape as the outdoor ice-skating rink in Rockefeller Centre behind Radio City itself.

This is a glorious phenomenon - and an astounding one, filling a theatre with a capacity of nearly 6,000 for up to six performances a day. In one day, in other words, it could be seen by 36,000 people - nearly as many people who could see the rest of Broadway’s current crop of shows put together. (As of yesterday, there were 31 shows playing, with a total nightly capacity of around 38,000). No wonder, too, that there are large queues to actually get in - it’s something of a military manoeuvre to get everyone into their seats, with the queue snaking backwards and forwards and virtually around the block.

And because of the extended performance schedule, the curtain waits for no one but goes up promptly at the advertised times, whether the audience is in their seats or not! (Fortunately most of them are, but when I saw it again on my first weekend in New York last week, my colleague Georgina Brown had unwisely taken herself to the beautiful downstairs loos before the show, entirely missed the opening 3D sequence in which we join Santa Claus on an aerial journey over New York).

Part of the thrill of seeing the show, of course, is seeing Radio City itself, though you can do so without actually seeing the show by joining one of the regular guided tours that take place throughout the day - and even continue as the audience are arriving to see that day’s shows. I did that, too; and besides getting to meet a Rockette (which I did for a second time later in the week, when I went to interview one who is actually British born and bred), you are also taken into a box at the very top of the theatre for a birds-eye view of this expansive auditorium that is literally breath-taking.

It’s astonishing to think that this unique and unrepeatable auditorium was very nearly lost: in 1978, it was closed and plans were being made to convert it into office space! But after its interior was officially declared a city landmark, it was fortunately refurbished and re-opened.

New York is, of course, in constant change; every single time I visit, there are new views and destroyed vistas. When the beautiful new home of the New York Times sprang up on 8th Avenue between 40th and 41st street, it was sight to behold as you walked down 8th; now that view has instantly evaporated, as a new building on the corner of 42nd and 8th has all but obscured it! But the block that upsets me most is the one on W46th between Broadway and 8th: while the arrival of the monstrous Marquis Hotel back in the early 80s famously led to the destruction of five classic theatres (the Helen Hayes, the Morosco, the Astor, the Bijou and the Gaiety) and their replacement with only one (coincidentally housing the aforementioned White Christmas), the other three corners of this block have also been raised in the last two years.

First to go was the Howard Johnson’s across the street from the Marquis, with one of my favourite “alternative” theatres above it - the was a celebrated male burlesque (i.e. strip!) club, and its presence next door to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre (for many years home of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast) was one of those wonderful New York juxtapositions of family and sleaze that once characterised this area.

But now that corner is newly under construction. Meanwhile, at the 8th Avenue end, McHale’s - a fantastic burger-and-booze tavern - was shut in 2006 to make way for yet another condo tower (and whose loss led to the foundation of the fascinating Lost City blog that chronicles such losses), while across the street, the Broadway Inn - once a lovely boutique hotel, where I stayed at least three times (once with my parents on their first and only trip to New York in 2001) - has also finally been demolished, too. Thank God we didn’t lose Radio City, even if I’m sad that we’ve lost the Gaieties - both the strip show palace and the theatre whose name it took that used to be on this block, too.