There was theater inside and outside Broadway playhouses yesterday as Republican delegates cheered at matinees and protesters of all stripes jeered in the streets.
On the eve of the Republican National Convention, the Great White Way became the meeting ground for conventioneers out for entertainment and demonstrators looking to be heard.
In between was an army of riot-ready cops, wielding batons and a new weapon to round up the rowdy: giant nets.
When some protesters tried to lie down in the streets to block traffic at W. 46th St. and Broadway yesterday afternoon, cops used the plastic orange netting to corral them back onto the sidewalk.
As cops slapped plastic handcuffs on people, other protesters shouted, “Shame! Shame!”
Newsday photographer Moises Saman - who spent eight days in an Iraqi prison in 2003 - got snared in the nets and arrested while covering the protest.
“I was photographing a guy getting arrested and somebody grabbed me from the back with a lot of force and made me fly backwards,” Saman said. “I turned around and it was a police officer in a white shirt.”
Throughout the day and into the night, protesters shadowed delegates from their hotels to restaurants.
When a group of Alabama delegates showed up for dinner last night at the Boathouse in Central Park, about 1,000 protesters greeted them with chants of “No more war!”
At the Milford Plaza on 45th St. at Eighth Ave., where many of the delegates are staying, police arrested 80 boisterous protesters for harassing delegates or blocking the street.
Some protesters complained of being roughed up by cops, while one Texas delegate said he was knocked to the ground at 25th St. and Sixth Ave. by a couple of rude protesters.
“I feel like I’ve been spit on,” said the delegate, a Houston furniture-business owner who did not want his name used.
As convention delegates emerged from theaters last night, they were greeted by hundreds of protesters booing and chanting “RNC go home!”
In front of the New Amsterdam Theater, where delegates attended “The Lion King,” and at the Ford Center, where they watched “42nd Street,” police cleared paths for the visitors to rush to waiting buses.
“I’m not ashamed to be a Republican and I’m not ashamed to be here,” said Amy Bracht, 28, a delegate from Nebraska. “They [the protesters] can be here and so can we.”
Delegate Eleanor Friedman, 78, of the upper West Side, was unfazed by the protesters as she left “The Lion King.”
“It’s all right, I’m used to it,” said Friedman, of the Riverside Republicans. “I’m from New York. They [the protesters] can do what they want.”
Inside the New Amsterdam, Gov. Pataki welcomed delegates.
“This city is very different than it was 10 years ago,” he said, referring to the bad old days when Times Square was overrun with hookers and drug dealers. “It’s safer, it’s cleaner and taxes are down. Republican policies have transformed it.”
Across the street at the Ford Center, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani got a standing ovation from delegates. “This has got to be the largest number of Republicans ever in New York City,” said Giuliani.
Outside “Bombay Dreams” at the Broadway Theatre, delegate Robert Pittinger of North Carolina watched as four protesters were arrested for disobeying orders to move along.
“If they lived in a country of these people who are trying to kill us, they wouldn’t have this right [to protest],” Pittinger said of the demonstrators.
PHOTO: Cop cuffs Joan Roney of the upper East Side at 46th St. and Broadway yesterday after group of protesters was penned and arrested for disorderly conduct during massive protest march.