If you've spent any time on Broadway, you know the drill: some theaters are always packed, most are half-empty, and a few are straight-up ghosts. So nobody (nobody) was ready for what happened the week La La Land opened.
One minute the Olympia Theater was a dead zone, the next it was the hottest ticket in town.
All because The Broadway Reporter dropped a rave review with a near-perfect score.
Overnight, La La Land became the show everyone had to see. Word spread like wildfire, and suddenly the sidewalk outside the Olympia looked like Black Friday at Times Square.
The poor girl at the box office hadn't seen a line like this in years; maybe ever. People were queued ten meters out the door, and every time the line looked like it was shrinking, another wave showed up. You literally couldn't see the end of it.
Inside, she was losing her mind (in the best way). After years of being the forgotten stepchild of Broadway, the Olympia was finally the cool kid. It felt like winning the lottery and the Super Bowl on the same day.
Even she couldn't resist sneaking into the back row on her breaks. The show was that good. She'd seen it dozens of times by now and still got chills every single performance.
Out on the sidewalk, the buzz was nonstop.
"I heard this is the one to see right now. Reviews are insane."
"I'm an L.A. girl, and oh my God; seeing the Angels Flight trolley and Griffith Observatory on stage? I almost cried. It really feels like a love letter to the city."
"All my girlfriends saw it and said the romance is next-level. I'm so over the old-school stuff; give me a modern love story!"
"I came yesterday and I'm already back. It's that good."
They started preselling tickets for the next day, then the day after that, because the "today" and "tonight" slots were gone in minutes.
On Broadway, word-of-mouth is everything. A great musical can pull the same people back again and again; some people buy tickets weekly, even monthly.
And right now La La Land wasn't just hot; it was nuclear.
Online, in magazines, everywhere; people were calling it a "breath of fresh air," a "high-class unicorn," the second coming of the Golden Age musical.
Every legendary show (Phantom, Les Miz, Cats, Miss Saigon) still had its usual line… except the lines were shrinking. One afternoon the Phantom of the Opera box-office girl was literally scrolling TikTok because nobody was buying. That theater only sells tickets a week in advance, and even those were moving slow? Unheard of.
Staff from other theaters started sneaking out on their breaks just to see where all the foot traffic had gone. Imagine their faces when they turned the corner and saw the mob outside the Olympia.
The Broadway Reporter put the La La Land key art on the cover; something they normally reserve for the untouchable classics. That issue sold out in hours and went into multiple reprints.
The quotes pouring in were ridiculous:
"This is the musical for anyone who's ever had a dream."
"Emma Stone is so beautiful I cried."
"The use of color is god-tier. The last time I felt this way about visuals was a little movie called Source Code."
"City of Stars had the entire audience screaming."
"I wanted to leap onto the stage and dance with them. Walked home feeling like the whole world was spinning."
"Standing ovation, ugly-crying. This is the purest, back-to-basics, fall-in-love-with-musicals-again show we've been waiting for."
Attendance hit 100% and stayed there. The Olympia staff walked around like they'd won the World Series. Cast members were hugging each other backstage, sobbing from sheer joy.
But now Broadway had one giant, burning question:
Who the hell is the director?
The theater's website crashed; multiple times; because everyone was flooding the comments:
"Who's the director?! That credit is obviously a pseudonym!"
"Why does the director never take a bow? On Broadway the creative team comes out with the cast; every single show I've been to been to, they're a no-show!"
Customer service phones were ringing off the hook:
"Does the director have a warrant out or something? Why so mysterious?"
"Come out so we can worship you!"
The Broadway Reporter couldn't even get an interview with the director. They had to settle for Gottia, the theater manager.
"It's a friend of mine; a director from Hollywood," Gottia said, smirking. "Our theater was on life support. I begged her to come save us."
The reporter pounced. "Her? A woman?"
Gottia just grinned. "There are a few of us out there. Good luck guessing."
"She must be a jazz freak; the score is flawless."
"She's got impeccable taste."
"She probably never expected to cause an earthquake on Broadway."
"She definitely didn't. When she first said yes she was terrified she didn't know enough."
"She's a genius, genius. So who is she?"
That was as far as they got.
The review itself was pure poetry:
"How good is this show? Picture this: twenty years from now you're driving home, one of these songs comes on the radio, and the second you hear that first note every feeling from opening night floods back like it was yesterday."
And the audience quotes kept rolling in:
"City of Stars live is a religious experience."
"Emma Stone had this lovesick glow I hated at first… then the music hit and I was a goner."
"Sweet, lonely, heartbreaking, bursting with life; every complicated feeling you've ever had about love and dreams is in this show."
Tickets were already presold two weeks out. Scalpers were having a field day.
But the mystery only grew.
Who's the fearless, possibly insane female Hollywood director who:
- Took a total unknown college kid's script
- Took another college kid's jazz score nobody else would touch
- Built an entire musical around jazz (jazz!)
- Made it look effortless
- And turned a dying theater into the center of the universe?
Nobody believed a first-time musical director could pull all that off.
So the logical conclusion on Broadway was: it has to be a front. Some legendary director working under a fake name, scared to get exposed.
Because if a rookie actually did this?
She wouldn't be human.
She'd be a myth.
And yet…
A few months ago Hollywood crowned a genius female director named Joey Grant.
Now Broadway apparently has its own.
Two once-in-a-generation talents in one year?
Either geniuses are suddenly growing on trees…
or the same unicorn just jumped coasts and did it again.