What is Broadway Opening Night? How it’s changed, why it matters.

What is Broadway Opening Night? How it’s changed, why it matters.

Opening night doesn’t mean what it used to mean. It suddenly has come to mean even less than it did three years ago, when I first wrote that it had become nearly meaningless. The changes have consequences for the ticket-buying public, for professional critics, and for the New York theater ecosystem as a whole. Notice it says when the previews start, but not when the show opens. In a change from common practice, its “opening night” is not when th…