If you have a few thousand dollars to spare (or maybe even $40,000), you might be able to snag tickets to the final show of the critically acclaimed Springsteen on Broadway. But if you’re one of Netflix’s 137 million subscribers, you can watch the performance at no extra cost just five hours after the curtain falls.
The 236th and final Springsteen show will begin at 8pm US Eastern time on Dec. 15 and will likely end around two hours later. The Netflix special will be available to stream at 3:01am ET Dec. 16, which is 12:01am Pacific time. The soundtrack album is available today (Dec. 14).
Springsteen is a mixture of stories and songs, almost entirely performed by Bruce Springsteen alone on the stage. Large parts of the show are adapted from Springsteen’s memoir Born to Run, a revealing look inside the artist’s mind, including his struggles with depression. Reviews of the Netflix version, directed by Thom Zimny, express how well it captures the intimacy of the performance. The cinematography is also designed to offer an even closer look at Springsteen compared to if you were watching from the audience of the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York itself.
“I wanted to capture Bruce’s eyes in a way that you don’t get from being in the theater,” Zimny told the Associated Press. “It’s another sense of intimacy, another sense of the performance.”
Zimny’s adaptation does not include any backstage scenes, interviews with Springsteen, or shots of the audience, in order to recreate the stripped-down aesthetic of the Broadway show. As NPR writes in its review: “Zimny has hit the mark through his austere approach, which elegantly preserves the live show’s quiet focus.”
Zimny told the AP, “It was most important to capture a very abstract thing that goes on in the Broadway show—an emotional feeling and an arc where you go on a journey with Bruce.”
Springsteen fans around the world will be able to go on that “journey with Bruce” very soon from their own homes, or even right after watching the live show. Until then, here is the trailer for Netflix’s Springsteen on Broadway: