When I started as a drama critic in 1980, I learned how little I knew about how the theater business actually works. A stagestruck adolescent growing up in Washington, D.C., I had the same romantic view of Broadway from afar that every kid like me did back then — and maybe still does. A fantasy patched together from books (in my case, Moss Hart’s Act One), movies (All About Eve), and, with luck, family holiday trips to the big city to see a Big Broadway Smash.