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Theme answers:
- 23A: Munchkin femmes fatales? (WICKED LITTLE WOMEN). Read the books, but haven't seen the plays.
- 36A: Workplace braggart? (COMPANY SHOWBOAT). Heard of "Showboat."
- 55A: Inferior pomade? (HAIR GREASE). Now, "Hair"! That one I can get into. But "Grease" is a movie to me. One I saw nine times in the theater when it first came out. You'd think I had no parental supervision.
- 76A: Like sturdy chairs? (FANNY PROOF). Haven't heard of either of these.
- 95A: Standing ovation? (TITANIC APPLAUSE). Okay.
- 111A: Queen Henrietta's personal account of Cromwell's treachery? (OLIVER THE KING AND I). Ooh! Know both of these!
- 16D: Jazz lovers on the Mississippi? (BIG RIVER CATS). "Cats," yes.
- 61D: Detective usin' taps? (DANCIN' SLEUTH). Um ... let me think ... nope.
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There are a ton of what I think of as "bonus" answers in today's puzzle. That is, non-theme answers that are related to the theme:
- 66A: At the theater, perhaps (ON A DATE). Could just as easily have been clued as "At the movies" or "Out to dinner," so I'm calling this one intentional.
- 118A: Milk a scene (EMOTE).
- 1D: Curtain call response (BOW).
- 8D: Ticket sellers: Abbr. (AGTS).
- 18D: Tony-winning Manhattan restaurateur (SARDI).
- 25D: Lerner's partner (LOEWE). Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. I would say they're best known for their work in "My Fair Lady."
- 35D: Arrive en masse (STREAM IN). This is a stretch, I know, but when I think of the phrase STREAM IN, I actually do picture a crowd streaming back into a theater after intermission.
- 40D: One-__: uninterrupted play (ACTER). This one's a little ouchie for me. Any theater people out there who can attest to its common use?
- 115D: Gershwin of Broadway (IRA).
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Stuff I Did Not Know:
- 16A: __-Rhin: Strasbourg's department (BAS).
- 19A: Algerian seaport (ORAN). I'm sure I've seen this before in puzzles, but I sure couldn't recall it.
- 28A: "The Virginian" author Wister (OWEN).
- 35A: Dish sometimes served with wasabi (SASHIMI). Not a fan of any kind of seafood.
- 43A: Pulitzer poet Marianne (MOORE). She won the Pulitzer for her 1951 Collected Poems. And she threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium in 1968. Cool.
- 6D: Ghostwriters' noms de plume, say (ALLONYMS). Never heard of this awesome word.
- 14D: Tuscan hill town (SIENA).
- 17D: Relevant, in law (AD REM). Not previously in my store of Latin phrases. But I did get [60D: Ab INITIO: from the beginning].
- 91D: Largest of the British Virgin Islands (TORTOLA). With many of the crosses in place, I entered tortuga, which is Spanish for tortoise. I even thought that was the name of the the terrapin statute on the University of Maryland campus, but that's Testudo.
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- 5A: Fundamental (BASAL). Raise your hand if you had basic at first.
- 26A: Boxer's warning (GRR). I know you were all thinking of "boxer" as a dog after yesterday's discussion!
- 41A: Last Hebrew letter (TAV). And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where I 'splain to you how much reading crossword blogs will improve your solving skills. The only reason I knew TAV is because it was in another puzzle recently. I still might not have gotten it though, because it was clued differently. But someone mentioned in the comments that it was the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And I remembered it. And the moral of the story is: Read your crossword blogs! And don't forget the comments!
- 42A: No longer an item (APART). I had split at first.
- 49A: Rewards for playing well (ESPYS). These are sports awards presented annually by ESPN.
- 69A: 20-20 observation? (IT'S A TIE). This doesn't have to do with eyesight. It's an observation someone would make if the score was 20–20.
- 86A: Dots on la carte (ILES). I kept think la carte meant menu, but it's French for map. And islands appear as dots on a map? Not sure I'm buying it.
- 92A: "Nature's soft nurse," to Shakespeare (SLEEP). Ain't that the truth. But then there's that pesky ALARM (63A: Frequent morning surprise).
- 93A: Conductor's aid (SCORE). I had baton at first.
- 110A: VW predecessors? (STU). S, T, and U are the letters that precede V and W in the alphabet.
- 119A: Row in a bowl (TIER). In this case, bowl means "4b. a bowl-shaped structure; especially: an athletic stadium." (Merriam-Webster Online)
- 3D: 1978 Village People hit ("MACHO MAN"). Me: "Okay, there was 'YMCA,' ... then there was 'In the Navy,' ... and there was one more. What the heck was it?"
- 7D: Like a big loser? (SLIM). As in someone losing a lot of weight.
- 13D: Angus's topper (TAM). Angus is a county in Scotland. And in Scotland, they wear a type of hat called a tam.
- 15D: Che, really (ERNESTO). I did not know that Che Guevara's real name was Ernesto.
- 39D: Georgetown player (HOYA).
- 74D: Wouldn't hurt __ (A FLEA). I always thought it was "wouldn't hurt a fly." Maybe it can be either? Flea gets about 5,000 Google hits and fly gets 61,000.
- 93D: Subject for Eric Partridge (SLANG). He wrote many books about the English language, and several specifically about slang.
- 99D: Elbows, maybe (PASTA). Like elbow macaroni.
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