It was enough to make the Grinch’s heart grow three sizes.
Cast members of the holiday musical “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” held a spirited performance outside their theater, the St. James, tonight after being barred from returning to the stage.
Some 30 cast members, including a dozen child performers clutching “Grinch” dolls, sang “Who Likes Christmas,” one of the songs from the show before leading some 200 spectators in shouts of “We want Grinch.”
People ran from Broadway to the theater at 44th and Eighth to see the spectacle.
“We’re being illegally locked out of the theater,” said the show’s conductor, Josh Rosenblum. “There’s no legal reason why the show shouldn’t be going on.”
Lisa Cawiezell, 42, said she had driven from Eldridge, Iowa, with her daughter, Zoey, 16, to see “The Grinch.”
“This is a preview of what we will see,” she said. “In the spirit of Christmas, we hope it’s going to go on.”
Striking Broadway stagehands removed their picket line at the theater and agreed to work the show because it is running only through Christmas and is in danger of shutting down permanently.
But Jujamcyn, the Broadway theater group that owns the St. James, refused to allow the curtain to rise, saying the show would only reopen when the strike, which began Nov. 10, ends.
So, “Grinch” producers and Jujamcyn faced off in Manhattan Supreme Court today – with each accusing the other of having a heart two sizes two small.
Justice Helen Freedman scheduled a full hearing for Wednesday, when she is expected to rule on granting an injunction that would allow the show to reopen.
The producers argued that they had negotiated a special contract with Local One, which represents the striking stagehands.
“Our position is very simple,” said their lawyer, John Hutchinson. “They have an obligation to give us the theater for this limited-run production.
He said his clients would suffer “irreparable harm” if show doesn’t go on.
“We have 6,000 people scheduled to come tomorrow and 18,000 coming over the weekend. Unless we can get [the injunction] the show will have to close,” he said.
“This is a small company and these people have put in over $6 million to put on a show this year,” he added.
Jujamcyn lawyer Neil Abramson said the issue was “part of a very large labor dispute going on on Broadway” and claimed that Local One went on strike “with children waiting on line to get in” to ‘The Grinch.'”
He urged the judge to keep the status quo – “and the status quo is that ‘The Grinch’ is dark.”
Abramson said that while the stagehands had removed their picket line, Jujamcyn had nothing in writing from the uinion.
“They have offered us no assurance that if we fill these seats with children, that Local One [won’t] say, we are walking out,” he said.
Abramson said the judge doesn’t have the authority to get in between a fight stemming from a labor dispute.
Hutchinson argued that this isn’t a labor dispute but a contract dispute and a judge can get involved in a contract dispute.
At that point, Freedman called for a full hearing on the matter Wednesday.
The striking stagehands and theater owners met over the weekend, but talks broke off Sunday night with each side blaming the other. They are to resume on Sunday.
Today, theater owners sent a letter to employees saying they had made concessions in the talks, including dropping a request for the elimination of a position paying $160,000 and requiring no work.