I feel giddy, oh so giddy

Front row seats. Beautiful Broadway house. Beautiful boys dancing and singing and snapping their fingers.

This is musical theatre the way it should be.

I sat not five feet from the stage of the Palace Theatre a couple days ago after my sister, who was visiting from Colorado, was smiled upon by Lady Luck and won a ticket lottery for a couple orchestra seats for the Broadway revival of the musical theatre classic about racial tensions in 1950s New York.

There’s much to adore about the show. Here are just a couple of the things I loved about my West Side Story experience:

• One of the men in the show hails from the University of Northern Colorado and performed alongside many of the actors with whom I worked at a dinner theatre back home. His name is Josh Buscher – and he’s fantastic. One year ago, he was in Greeley, Colo. Now he is in a critically-acclaimed Broadway revival of one of the most-beloved musicals of all time. Call me a homer, but hooray for a Colorado kid making his debut on the Great White Way.

• After the show, we headed west for some sustenance and ended up in Hell’s Kitchen – which is where West Side Story takes place. How cool is it to be able to watch a show and minutes later tread the ground in the neighborhood that provides the setting for it?

I have seen West Side Story on stage many times, and it has not grown stale for me. It’s a testament to the power of a well-written script, a fantastic score, amazing choreography and a compelling love story.

It’s a testament to the power of live theatre.

Yes, I have a crush on Broadway, and I’m not afraid to say it. (Some of the men in the show aren’t too shabby, either. I wouldn’t mind having Tony and Bernando fighting over me. Especially if it’s dance-fighting.)