If Friday was Broadway’s arrival in the country, Saturday was the moment it unpacked its bags and decided to stay awhile.

Photo by Austin Ruffer

Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Photo by Austin Ruffer

Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Day Two of The Festival, held Saturday, August 15 at Kingston’s Hutton Brickyards Riverfront Hotel + Venue, took the ambitious premise introduced on opening day—a destination festival devoted entirely to musical theatre—and turned up the volume. The Broadway Direct Stage filled with Tony winners and Broadway favorites, composers stepped out from behind their scores, unlikely musical moments appeared, and after dark the Hudson River became part nightclub, part theatrical summer camp.

But the emotional heart of Saturday belonged to a musical that changed Broadway 30 years ago.

Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Wilson Jermaine Heredia. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Fredi Walker-Brown. Photo by Austin Ruffer

No Day But Today: RENT at 30

Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Daphne Rubin-Vega and Kristen Lee Kelly. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Anthony Rapp, Fredi Walker-Brown, Gwen Stewart. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Three decades after RENT exploded onto Broadway and changed the sound, look and audience of the American musical, members of its original Broadway company reunited at The Festival. Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Taye Diggs came together again, transforming what could easily have become a nostalgia exercise into something considerably more moving.

Anthony Rapp and Taye Diggs. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Because RENT is no longer simply a Broadway musical.

Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Taye Diggs. Photo by Austin Ruffer

For an entire generation, Jonathan Larson’s work became a marker of time. It arrived speaking about AIDS, art, poverty, friendship, sexuality, chosen family and the terrifying uncertainty of whether tomorrow would arrive at all. Its young artists were trying to create lives in a city that increasingly seemed determined to price them out of existence. Thirty years later, some of those ideas feel less like period details than unfinished conversations.

RENT 30th Reunion. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Fredi Walker-Brown. Photo by Austin Ruffer

RENT 30th Reunion. Photo by Austin Ruffer

And there they were again…. Rapp,Pascal, Rubin-Vega, Diggs. Older, certainly. So was the audience that first loved them.

RENT 30th Reunion. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Fredi Walker-Brown and Lauren Patten. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Fredi Walker-Brown and Lauren Patten. Photo by Austin Ruffer

But RENT has always contained that strange contradiction: a musical obsessed with mortality that somehow refuses to age. Hearing its music sung by the people who helped introduce it to the world created one of those rare theatrical collisions between memory and the present. The people onstage had lived 30 more years. So had many of the people watching them.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes suddenly seemed like a very small unit of measurement.

Kelli O’Hara

Kelli O’Hara Raps. Because Apparently Anything Can Happen Upstate.

Kelli O’Hara Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Kelli O’Hara and daughter, Charlotte Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Saturday wasn’t entirely interested in reverence. One of The Festival’s strengths is its ability to remove Broadway performers from the carefully constructed environments in which audiences normally encounter them. Here there are no characters to disappear behind and no fourth wall demanding obedience. The artists can play. And Kelli O’Hara rapping certainly qualifies.

Kelli O’Hara Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

One of Broadway’s most exquisite singers—an artist associated with Rodgers and Hammerstein, Adam Guettel and some of the most beautifully controlled vocal performances of her generation—allowed herself to venture considerably outside the territory in which Broadway audiences usually encounter her. That sense of mischief is exactly what an event like The Festival should encourage. We already know what these performers can do eight times a week. The fun is discovering what they do when somebody hands them a microphone beside the Hudson and lets them loose.

Jason Robert Brown Photo by Michaelah Reynold

Norbert Leo Butz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Norbert Leo Butz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Norbert Leo Butz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Norbert Leo Butz Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Norbert Leo Butz offered a different kind of pleasure, returning to Big Fish, while Jason Robert Brown sat at the piano and performed selections from his own formidable catalogue. Brown remains one of contemporary musical theatre’s most distinctive composer-lyricists, and there is something particularly satisfying about hearing theatre songs stripped back to the person who first imagined them.

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Dasia Thomas, Jenn Colella and others to perform songs from Brown’s past and present shows.

Kelli O’Hara, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Renee Elise Goldsberry Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Renee Elise Goldsberry Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Renee Elise Goldsberry Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Renee Elise Goldsberry & Kelli O’Hara

Kelli O’Hara, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

The Saturday Big Show, featuring Renée Elise Goldsberry, Kelli O’Hara, Norbert Leo Butz, Jenn Collela,

Lena Hall. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Lena Hall. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Lena Hall. Photo by Austin Ruffer

and Lena Hall.

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Solea Pfeiffer, Liisi LaFontaine, and Tyler Joseph Ellis. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Krystina Alabado and Isabelle McCalla. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

A Preview of New Musicals, hosted by NY1’s Frank DiLella, highlighting seven new musicals in development: Autopilot, Bludline, Huzzah, Love Somebody, Regency Girls, Someday Soon, and Star Machine. The talented Solea Pfeiffer, Solea Pfeiffer, Liisi LaFontaine, Krystina Alabado, Isabelle McCalla and Tyler Joseph Ellis joined.

Some Broadway performances become permanently attached to the actor who introduced them, regardless of how many talented performers inherit the role. Angelica Schuyler’s breathtaking rewind through desire, sacrifice and split-second decision-making is one of those moments, and Goldsberry remains inseparable from it. Bringing “Satisfied” out of the Richard Rodgers Theatre and onto an open-air stage gave Saturday another jolt of Broadway history suddenly living in the present.

That mixture became the defining character of Day Two. This wasn’t merely a collection of performers singing their biggest numbers. The Festival was beginning to demonstrate the value of placing artists from different corners and generations of Broadway beside one another and seeing what happens when the usual theatrical architecture disappears.

When Broadway Goes to Camp

Lauren Patten. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Fredi Walker-Brown and Lauren Patten. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella, Lauren Patten, and Norbert Leo Butz. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Then the sun went down. This may ultimately be where The Festival separates itself most successfully from the endless parade of Broadway concerts, conventions and benefit evenings already filling the theatrical calendar. The programming didn’t simply end after the marquee performances. Instead, Broadway nightlife followed Broadway upstate. A cozy campfire set featuring performances from Kelli O’Hara, Jenn Colella, Lauren Patten, Norbert Leo Butz, and more.

Krystina Alabado and Isabelle McCalla. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

A pop-up edition of Club Cumming, the East Village playground created by Alan Cumming and a gathering place for performers, musicians and assorted creatures of the night, brought some downtown Manhattan energy to Kingston. The elegant Hudson Valley retreat suddenly acquired a little glitter around the edges.

Elsewhere, Broadway performers gathered around campfires for acoustic music along the river.

Amber Ardolino. Photo by Austin Ruffer

That image may actually capture the entire weekend better than the “Coachella for Broadway” label that has followed The Festival since it was announced. Coachella suggests scale, spectacle and celebrity. The Festival certainly had all three. But Broadway is fundamentally a community of storytellers, musicians and performers, and some of the weekend’s most appealing moments came when the machinery disappeared.

Seth Rudetsky and Tommy Bracco. Photo by Austin Ruffer

A singer, a song, a fire, the Hudson and people listening. There is something wonderfully old-fashioned about that, particularly for an industry increasingly obsessed with grosses, celebrity casting, social-media engagement and whether a production can survive another week. Remove the commercial machinery for a moment and you’re left with the reason people entered this profession in the first place. They wanted to tell stories.

Photo by Michaelah Reynolds (

Hovering over Saturday was RENT, the musical that once told Broadway audiences that community could become family and that the meaningful measurement of a life wasn’t money, possessions or even time. It was love. Thirty years later, on the banks of the Hudson, the people who first delivered that message found themselves together again. Perhaps that is why the reunion belonged here.

The Festival was attempting to build something Broadway desperately needs and rarely has enough time to create: community without a curtain call waiting at the end of it. Saturday proved there may indeed be an audience for that. And there was still one day left.

Next: Day Three — Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and the finale of Broadway’s first weekend on the Hudson.

Times Square has hosted almost everything imaginable, but on August 25 it is handing the controls to the kids.

@wonderamatv The Wonderama Wonder Games are back! Join in on the fun starting August 25th, live from Times Square! Join host @davidosmond and discover why The Wonderama Wonder Games are truly The Games That Everyone Can Play! #wonderamatv #timessquare #gaming #livemusicconcert ♬ original sound – Wonderama

Wonderama, America’s longest-running children’s television show, is bringing its inaugural Wonder Games to the Crossroads of the World for a day where music, gaming, emerging talent and some wonderfully old-school Wonderama fun collide with the digital generation.

David Osmond

Hosted by David Osmond, Wonderama Chuckie and Alisa Obrianova, Wonder Games is built around a rather irresistible premise: “The Games Everyone Can Play.” That means young gamers, musicians, creators and families won’t simply be watching the action—they’re part of it.

The event brings Wonderama together with FENIX360, AbleGamers and the Empire State Scholastic Esports Federation, with support from the Times Square Alliance and One Times Square/Jamestown. Expect live music, creator showcases, family activities and those classic Wonderama games alongside something that certainly wasn’t part of children’s television when Wonderama first hit the airwaves: competitive esports.

Student gamers will take center stage for exhibition matches in Rocket League and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, presented with the Empire State Scholastic Esports Federation. And while parents may still occasionally wonder how sitting in front of a screen became a team sport, scholastic esports has become an arena for strategy, communication, collaboration and community—and these students are coming to Times Square to show what they can do.

“Wonder Games is about much more than competition,” said Wonderama Executive Producer Charles Armstrong. “It is about creating a place where every child feels welcome, creativity is celebrated and young people can discover how their interests in music, gaming, technology and storytelling can open pathways to future opportunities.”

That idea of discovery has always been embedded in Wonderama’s DNA. Long before everyone with a phone could become a content creator, the show understood something television occasionally forgot: kids don’t merely want to be entertained. They want to participate. Wonder Games takes that philosophy into 2026.

Through FENIX360, a global platform designed to help musicians, performers, artists, gamers and other creators connect directly with audiences, Times Square will also become a showcase for emerging talent. Young performers and digital creators will have the chance not simply to appear before the live crowd but to reach FENIX360’s international creative community. In other words, the kid performing in Times Square on Tuesday could be reaching an audience halfway around the world by Wednesday. But perhaps the most important part of Wonder Games is contained in those four words: everyone can play.

Wonderama’s partnership with AbleGamers puts accessibility directly into the experience, highlighting adaptive gaming technology and approaches that allow players with disabilities to participate. Gaming is at its best when the controller isn’t a barrier to entry, and Wonder Games makes the argument that ability shouldn’t determine who gets invited into the game.

There is another side to growing up digitally, of course. Wonderama will also address creating safer and healthier online environments for children and families, supporting the goals behind the Kids Online Safety Act and recognizing Senator Richard Blumenthal’s work in pushing children’s online safety into the national conversation. It is a surprisingly broad agenda for a day of games—and that may be exactly what makes the concept work.

Wonderama has survived generations of childhood because childhood itself keeps changing. The games change. The technology changes. The screens certainly change. Today’s kids inhabit a world where performer, gamer, programmer, musician and digital creator increasingly overlap, and careers exist that their parents couldn’t have named when they were the same age.

What hasn’t changed is the desire to play, create, compete, belong and be seen. On August 25, Wonderama is taking all of that, putting it beneath the lights of Times Square and inviting New York to come play. Because Times Square may belong to Broadway most nights. But for one day, Player One is taking over.

There is no question that Sydnie Christmas can sing.

That was never really the issue Sunday night at Sony Hall. The winner of Britain’s Got Talent possesses a formidable instrument, charisma, an enormous belt, considerable control and, perhaps most importantly, the instinct not to use all of that power all of the time. At her best, Christmas will release a thrilling wall of sound and then suddenly pull the voice back, allowing something warmer and more vulnerable to emerge. It is a beautiful choice because it tells us she understands that volume and emotion are not the same thing.

The frustrating thing about her Sony Hall concert was how often the evening prevented us from hearing precisely what makes her special. Thankfully my video’s allow you to hear much better than being at the venue.

Christmas is enormously likable. She has an unaffected warmth with an audience and none of the distancing polish that sometimes arrives when a singer becomes famous very quickly. Her audience clearly adores her, and Sunday night’s crowd was firmly in her corner from the moment she appeared.

Smartly, she included “Tomorrow,” “My Way” and “Over the Rainbow”  the songs that introduced her to the world on Britain’s Got Talent. Those performances remain important because they reveal what first made people stop and listen. Christmas didn’t win simply because she could produce spectacular notes. There was an emotional immediacy to her singing that made familiar material suddenly feel personal and she made iconic songs hers.

From Christmas’s concert it seems she intends to move into musical theatre—and she made that ambition clear—this concert however raised some questions about how she is positioning herself for that next chapter. Her rendition of “Don’t Rain On My Parade” made me instantly want to see her do Funny Girl.

Most surprisingly, she did not perform “Animal Lover” from her role as Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians The Musical. Thankfully PBS will be presenting Sydnie Christmas: Live in London where the song will be sung. For a singer actively interested in establishing herself within musical theatre, omitting material that already connects her directly to the form seemed a curious decision. A concert isn’t simply a collection of songs; it is an opportunity to tell an audience, and perhaps an industry, who you are and where you intend to go next.

Some of the musical-theatre choices she made were less successful. “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret should seemingly be ideal territory for Christmas. It requires enormous vocal ability, but the song is not really about singing enormously. Sally Bowles is trying to convince herself that perhaps, against all available evidence, life will finally choose her. The song needs hope, desperation and the terrible possibility that Sally herself doesn’t quite believe what she’s singing. Christmas sang it impressively, and her audience loved it. Christmas has the instrument; what she now needs to explore is how thoroughly that instrument can disappear inside somebody else’s life, which is normally her forte.

Dez Duron and Sydnie Christmas

During a duet with Dez Duron from Maybe Happy Ending. Unexpectedly, he emerged more strongly from the number. Not because Christmas suddenly lacked vocal ability, but because musical theatre operates under different rules from a concert. The best singer doesn’t necessarily win the scene. Given the raw material she possesses, watching her develop could be extremely exciting.

Unfortunately, another obstacle Sunday night had nothing whatsoever to do with her. The band was too loud. They were amazing, especially the drummer but in a room as cavernous as Sony Hall with concert goers talking and food being eaten and delivered there were times the intimacy of her voice was swallowed up.

That matters enormously with a singer like Christmas because one of her greatest strengths is dynamic contrast. She can produce that tremendous belt and then retreat into something much more delicate. When the orchestration overwhelms the quieter passages, the effect can make the voice appear inconsistent when the singer is actually making an intelligent musical choice.

You should never have to strain to hear Sydnie Christmas. Sony Hall itself is the wrong room. Sony Hall can be terrific for the right performer, but Christmas’s particular appeal requires intimacy. Her personality invites an audience toward her rather than projecting an enormous theatrical persona across a cavernous space. She needs a room that allows silence to become part of the performance.

Put her at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Put her in a small Broadway theatre. Put her in The Carlyle. Put her at Carnegie Hall. Put her in Town Hall. Give her an acoustically sophisticated room where the audience can hear the moment that massive voice becomes almost a whisper.

The Sony Hall environment worked against precisely the qualities that distinguish her from dozens of other powerhouse vocalists.

Christmas also performed two original songs she wrote from her album The Artist, which  is scheduled for release on October 2nd. They are perfectly respectable songs, and she sings them extremely well, but stylistically they feel strangely displaced—as though they wandered out of the late 1980s or early 1990s and never entirely discovered that popular music had moved on. That creates another problem. Christmas’s voice may be more contemporary than her material. However she did a soul/disco set that was remarkable and I personally would love to see her do a retro album of that genre.

This is where Christmas now faces the wonderful—and dangerous—problem that confronts enormously gifted singers after their initial breakthrough. What do you do with the gift? She has already proved that she can sing. Repeatedly. She doesn’t need another evening designed to prove how high, how loudly or how spectacularly she can belt. We know. What she needs now is material worthy of the voice and a director—or musical director—willing to be ruthless about choosing it. She needs arrangements that leave room around her. She needs a venue that understands intimacy. If musical theatre is genuinely where she wants to go, she needs to move beyond singing songs beautifully and begin allowing characters to take possession of that extraordinary instrument, because the potential is absolutely there.

Sunday night didn’t diminish my opinion of Sydnie Christmas’s talent. If anything, it clarified it. She is better than the concert built around her.

That may sound like criticism. For an artist still deciding exactly who she intends to become, it may actually be the most encouraging thing one can say.

Broadway packed a weekend bag, left Times Square behind and headed north. On Friday, August 14, the inaugural The Festival opened at Hutton Brickyards Riverfront Hotel + Venue in Kingston, New York, transforming the Hudson River waterfront into something Broadway has rarely attempted: a true destination festival built around the people, music and community of the theatre.

Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Produced by Joshua Saltman and David B. Schwartz, The Festival ultimately drew 2,875 attendees from 48 states over its three-day debut, with 165 performers taking part in more than 30 programs. There were 30 musicians, 14 ensemble members and 13 apprentices, but numbers only begin to describe the ambition of what Saltman and Schwartz were attempting. This wasn’t Broadway presenting another concert. It was Broadway borrowing the language of the great music festivals and asking what happens when musical theatre gets out of the theatre.

Campfire Stage photo by Austin Ruffer

The answer, at least on Friday, was that it rather liked the fresh air. At the center of the sprawling weekend was the Broadway Direct Stage, an open-air covered venue surrounded by the Hudson Valley landscape. Instead of velvet seats, chandeliers and the compressed electricity of a Broadway house, audiences found themselves experiencing some of the theatre world’s most recognizable voices against water, sky and the industrial remnants of the historic brickyards. There was something wonderfully incongruous about it: Broadway glamour meeting Hudson Valley earthiness without either having to apologize to the other. The opening day’s lineup immediately established that this wasn’t going to be a modest experiment.

Gianmarco Soresi. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Gianmarco Soresi. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Comedian and actor Gianmarco Soresi hosted the inaugural “The Festival”(The Broadway Festival). He served as the host and emcee

Alex Newell. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Alex Newell. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Alex Newell. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Alex Newell

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Mandy Gonzalez

Christopher Jackson. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Christopher Jackson and Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Christopher Jackson and Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Christopher Jackson

Javier Muñoz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Christopher Jackson and Javier Muñoz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Javier Muñoz

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Solea Pfeiffer

Jasmine Amy Rogers. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jasmine Amy Rogers. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jasmine Amy Rogers. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jasmine Amy Rogers

Cara Rose DiPietro. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Cara Rose DiPietro

Tyler Joseph Ellis. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Tyler Joseph Ellis and Matt Rodin were among the artists helping launch the weekend, while SiriusXM’s Seth Rudetsky did what Rudetsky does particularly well—turn Broadway history, personalities and musical obsession into entertainment.

Tommy Bracco Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

One of Friday’s most charming ideas belonged to Tommy Bracco, the Newsies alum and Big Brother favorite, who hosted a celebration of Disney music. Bracco began with “Out There” from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but it was Solea Pfeiffer who provided one of the afternoon’s genuine reminders of how much extraordinary music remains trapped inside Disney’s animated catalogue. Her performances of “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas and “Reflection” from Mulan made a fairly persuasive argument for why Broadway has yet to get its hands on either score.

Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Eva Noblezada. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Then came Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada, whose musical and personal history has become its own little piece of contemporary Broadway mythology. They originated Orpheus and Eurydice together in Hadestown, fell in love, married, and have continued sharing stages since. At Hutton Brickyards, the scale shifted. Away from the machinery of a Broadway production, the two were able to offer something more intimate—a reminder that before scenery, costumes and theatrical spectacle arrive, musical theatre begins with people telling stories through music.

Campfire Stage 2 photo by Austin Ruffer

That intimacy was one of the more intriguing elements of The Festival’s concept. Broadway normally asks audiences to enter its buildings. Here, Broadway entered the audience’s world. People wandered between performances, conversations and events rather than sitting obediently in one seat for two and a half hours. Artists who normally disappear through stage doors after a performance were suddenly part of a larger weekend community.

By evening, however, subtlety was finished.

The Big Show. Photo by Austin Ruffer

The Big Show. Photo by Austin Ruffer

The Big Show Night 1 Company photo by Austin Ruffer

Friday culminated with The Big Show, and the Broadway Direct Stage became exactly what its name promised: a full-scale concert designed to let Broadway voices loose. Cara Rose DiPietro, Tess Soltau and original Rent star Adam Pascal opened with an inspired piece of theatrical mischief, turning Stephen Sondheim’s “A Weekend in the Country” into a self-referential welcome to the weekend, accompanied by more than a dozen Broadway dancers.

It was an appropriate choice. Sondheim’s number is itself about people converging upon a destination carrying expectations, desires and complications with them. Here came thousands of Broadway devotees doing essentially the same thing, only their weekend in the country involved considerably more belting.

And that may be the cleverest thing about The Festival. Broadway has spent decades trying to expand beyond the geographic boundaries of Broadway while still treating the Broadway theatre as the center of the universe. Touring companies travel. Cast albums travel. Stars perform concerts. BroadwayCon created its own gathering place for fans. But the great American music-festival model—travel somewhere beautiful, stay for several days and immerse yourself in the music and the people who make it—has largely belonged to other genres.

Saltman and Schwartz decided musical theatre deserved one too.

They assembled an astonishing inaugural roster across the weekend: Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Norbert Leo Butz, Jason Robert Brown, Lena Hall, Tom Kitt, Andrea McArdle, Alex Newell, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, Jenn Colella, Andrew Barth Feldman, Lauren Patten, Denée Benton and many more, culminating in something irresistible to Broadway devotees—a 30th anniversary reunion of the original Broadway cast of Rent.

Behind that amount of talent was an equally formidable creative operation. Tony winner Jerry Mitchell and Jon Rua choreographed the event, with Mitchell and D.B. Bonds directing. Dan Lipton handled musical supervision, Julie McBride served as musical director, and Michael Downs oversaw creative direction and experience design. David Rees provided lighting, Cody Spencer sound, Caite Hevner video and Ryan Park costumes, while Lana Schwartz directed The Festival Apprentices. Chris Gratton served as production manager, technical director and site manager, with Lisa Iacucci as production supervisor.

That is an enormous amount of Broadway infrastructure to transport to the banks of the Hudson, and Friday proved that the concept could actually work.

By the time the weekend ended Sunday, Saltman and Schwartz were already prepared to announce that The Festival will return in 2027.

“We are absolutely thrilled with how The Festival went this weekend,” the producers said following its conclusion, thanking both the fans who had created the weekend’s community and the artists who had filled it. “We couldn’t be prouder of the experience and the incredible team that put it all together. We can’t wait to see you in 2027!”

Neither, apparently, can Broadway. Friday was only the overture.

Next: Day Two of The Festival — when Broadway’s weekend in the country really got underway.

Some Broadway friendships end when the final curtain comes down. Others apparently turn into a rock-and-roll band.

Michael Longoria

The Midtown Men brought their irresistible combination of Broadway polish, four-part harmony and pure 1960s swagger to Eisenhower Park’s Harry Chapin Lakeside Theatre, proving once again that Jersey Boys may have introduced these four men to one another, but it certainly wasn’t the end of their story.

Christian Hoff

Tony Award winner Christian Hoff, Michael Longoria, Daniel Reichard and Tony Award nominee J. Robert Spencer first shared a stage as members of the original Broadway company of Jersey Boys, the musical phenomenon that turned the story and songs of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons into one of Broadway’s biggest hits.

Daniel Reichard

They spent more than a thousand performances together before doing something rather unusual: instead of simply moving on to their next individual Broadway jobs, they took the chemistry they had developed eight shows a week and created something of their own.

J. Robert Spencer

The result was The Midtown Men.

Michael Longoria, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer

And while their pedigree is unmistakably Broadway, this isn’t Jersey Boys on tour. The Midtown Men became their own musical act, expanding beyond The Four Seasons to embrace the glorious pop landscape of the 1960s—The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Motown, The Rascals, The Mamas & the Papas, The Ronettes and more. Their official repertoire has long celebrated the decade that gave America some of its most enduring pop music, with four singers who know exactly how to sell both a harmony and a story.

Michael Longoria, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer

What makes the group work isn’t simply nostalgia. Plenty of acts can recreate the music of the ’60s. The Midtown Men have something considerably harder to manufacture: history with one another.

Michael Longoria, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer

They learned how to listen to one another on a Broadway stage. They know where the other voices are going, when to step forward, when to pull back and how to turn four leading men into one sound. Reichard has recalled that while they were still performing Jersey Boys, the four would gather in dressing rooms between shows and work out harmonies to other songs they loved from the decade. In other words, The Midtown Men were quietly being born backstage while another show was happening out front.

Michael Longoria, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer

That musical shorthand followed them to Eisenhower Park.

Christian Hoff

Christian Hoff

Christian Hoff

Hoff brings the confidence that won him the Tony Award for his portrayal of Tommy DeVito. Reichard, Broadway’s original Bob Gaudio, possesses the musical-theatre storyteller’s instinct for finding the character inside a song. Spencer, the original Nick Massi and later a Tony nominee for Next to Normal, supplies formidable Broadway chops, while Longoria—who originated Joe Pesci before succeeding John Lloyd Young as Frankie Valli—knows a thing or two about sending a voice soaring above a crowd.

Michael Longoria

Michael Longoria

Michael Longoria

Together, however, they stop being four Broadway résumés and become a genuine group.

J. Robert Spencer

J. Robert Spencer

J. Robert Spencer

There is something wonderfully circular about what happened to these men. They began as actors playing a band, only to discover along the way that they actually were one. What started under Broadway lights developed into years of concerts across the country, recordings and even a nationally televised concert special.

Daniel Reichard

Daniel Reichard

Daniel Reichard

The Harry Chapin Lakeside Theatre is precisely the sort of setting where this music feels at home. These songs weren’t created to sit politely behind glass as artifacts of another era. They were made for summer nights, for dancing, singing along and suddenly realizing that you remember every word to a song you haven’t consciously thought about in twenty years.

Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard

That’s the pleasure of The Midtown Men. They don’t treat the 1960s as a museum exhibition. They remind you why this music became permanent in the first place.

Christian Hoff, Michael Longoria

The Beatles gave us exuberance. Motown gave popular music sophistication and irresistible rhythm. The Beach Boys made adolescent longing sound like California sunshine. The Four Seasons gave us those impossible harmonies and that unmistakable falsetto.

Daniel Reichard

J. Robert Spencer

Daniel Reichard, J. Robert Spencer,

Michael Longoria

Christian Hoff

Four Broadway actors fell in love with all of it. Nearly two decades after first coming together, Hoff, Longoria, Reichard and Spencer are still standing beside one another, still singing, still touring and still having what appears to be a ridiculously good time doing it.

Michael Longoria, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer

Not bad for four guys who were originally hired to pretend to be a band. Turns out they were just getting started.