‘Gettin’ the Band Back Together’ Broadway Review: They Were Better Off Going Solo

“Gettin’ the Band Back Together” had me waxing nostalgic for the glory days of the 1970s. Broadway gave us “A Chorus Line” and “Chicago” and more than a few musical classics by Stephen Sondheim. What’s often forgotten, though, is that the 1970s was also the golden age of the Vanity Musical, a show bankrolled for under a million bucks that typically closed the same week it opened.

Publicists back then weren’t so sophisticated at papering a house, and it was standard practice among many enterprising young theatergoers to mention a cast member’s name to the box office — “Joe Blow left me two tickets” — and see any of these Vanity Musicals for free.

It is how my friends and I saw such Joe Allen keepers as “Rockabye Hamlet,” “Platinum,” “Angel,” and “Doctor Jazz,” as well as the ultimate Vanity Musical, “Got Tu Go Disco.”