Those weren't all Arthur Miller fans queuing up on Broadway tonight.
More than two dozen protesters from the anti-Scientology group Anonymous joined the throng Thursday outside New York's Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, where Katie Holmes was starring—wonderfully, according to Tom Cruise—in her first preview performance of All My Sons.
“We are not boycotting Katie, we are not boycotting the play, we are protesting Scientology," a member of the group shouted. "It is evil. Scientology kills people. It follows you home at night. It is perverted.”
People in the crowd donned V for Vendetta-style masks and wielded signs that read "Scientology Kills" and "Free Katie."
"We aren't protesting Katie," one demonstrator told the New York Daily News. "But Scientology is a cult and once you become a member you can't leave, and we've heard that Katie isn't able to leave because of Tom Cruise."
None of which was going to deter Cruise from seeing his wife make her Broadway debut, of course.
The actor slipped into the packed house just moments before the curtain went up, but still found time to shake hands and pose for pictures with well-wishers, among them pal Dustin Hoffman, as he made his way to his seat.
Neither Cruise's nor Holmes' rep had any comment about the brouhaha that preceded tonight's show, but Cruise himself had a pretty positive spin on what went on—inside the theater, at least.
"She was extraordinary," he told the Daily News after the cast had taken their final bows.
All My Sons, costarring Holmes, Dianne Wiest, John Lithgow and Patrick Wilson, has its official premiere Oct. 16, ideally under more convivial circumstances.