The main lessons – Broadway musicals can leave a lot to be desired, and the Stratford Festival certainly can deliver the goods.

It took until Stratford’s final weekend of the season for me to get around to seeing its acclaimed production of West Side Story last Saturday. It was a fabulous experience, a case of very high expectations being exceeded. We had top seats – a few rows back and off a bit to the left – bought at a big end-of-season discount. On a week-long holiday in New York last month, my girlfriend and I had very similar seats for a long-running Broadway production of Chicago – another musical that’s heavy on dance. But the similarities between the two experiences end there.

At Stratford, our seats were so steeply banked that visibility wouldn’t have been an issue even if a basketball player sat in front of us. On Broadway, a tallish fellow in the row ahead of us meant having to crane necks to see the two sides of the stage.

Chicago was advertised on New York buses as the “Sure Thing” musical – for people like us bewildered by all the choices. We chose it partly because discounted seats could be bought without having to join the very long line at the half-price, same-day ticket booth in Time Square. But we found the show overdone and not especially entertaining – certainly not a “sure thing.”

What shocked me, though, were the amenities – or lack thereof – at the Broadway theatre. The lineups for the lone men’s and women’s washrooms were appallingly long, and they were still long as the lone intermission was ending. Nearby, a theatre employee was advising a few men who’d hardly started their beers – because of the long concession line – that they should enjoy their drinks and miss the show’s second-half instrumental introduction. After he, he joked lamely, they’d probably paid as much for their beer as he had for his first house.

At Stratford, all the amenities were very comfortable and thoroughly first-class.

Another off-putting thing about the Broadway show was an orchestra taking up so much space on stage that the performers seemed squeezed into the front. At Stratford, the orchestra was totally hidden from view, focusing audience attention where it should be – on the performers.

I’ve seen memorable musicals on Broadway, including Dreamgirls, Miss Saigon and Ain’t Misbehavin. But I’m not really a huge fan of the genre – I’ve never bothered to go to see one in Toronto. My New York advice: try a play, like the stunning production of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Our Town running until January off-Broadway in Greenwich Village. If you really love musicals, though, don’t forget Stratford.