The Jon Blog

The Itsy Bitsy Mitzi...

So last night was a rather odd trip to Lincoln Center. Why? The center itself was quite crowded, due to the Midsummer Night's Swing concert/dancing taking place in the plaza. And there were a bunch of girls conducting a survey. "Which show are you seeing? What part of town are you from? Where did you have dinner?"

Then I went to the Beaumont/Newhouse building, ye olde home of LCT, where, since there was no show performing in the big theatre, there were velvet ropes to direct everyone downstairs. They weren't far enough from the stairs, though, and it was hard to get around the slow-moving old people.

The lobby was rather full of activity, though: there's a scaffold set up on the north side of the lobby and there were nubile young girls doing the Jane Krakowski style long sheet of silk dancing. There was also a set taped out on the floor, and once or twice, I heard Nathan Lane hollering in the auditorium.

Then on the way downstairs, it got even more surreal. There was an old, old man in a seersucker suit. I was suprirsed; I didn't realize anyone wore seersucker anymore. Then I saw another odd suit, too, on a woman (!) coming in from the parking area. Her suit was offwhite with blue pinstripes, in a very masculine cut, but she had a big flouncy straw hat on. Oh, the seersucker guy had a hat on, too.

So I finally made it into the Lobby of the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, but it felt a bit more like the Mitzi Newhouse Retirement Community aside from one cute gay couple. I did feel that I was on the younger side of the audience... by far!

Anyhow, the show was amazing. Barbara Cook is so talented and her voice is still lovely, although there are a few reminders through the evening of what she cannot do any more (I don't mean that as a slam!). I really love her, and I felt so lucky to get to see and hear her do what she did - especially when she presented a couple of the songs as scenes; almost recreating the stage role for a moment or two, rather than just being in the cabaret-ish atmosphere she had created.

One major gripe: there was quite a lighting design (and it was lovely!) but there were no credits for any of the technical folk in the Playbill.

One other comment: the bass player was REALLY cute. Anyone know him and want to give him my phone number???

Posted by Jon at June 11, 2004 12:37 PM | TrackBack