So I spent most of today at the Field Museam, Chicago's museam of natural history. There was a special exhibit of dresses, hats, jewelry, and other accoutrement belonging to the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis that I was interested in seeing.
Wow! The exhibit focused on the presidential years and how Jackie's fashion sense and general good taste affected her husband's administration and the perception of the US throughout the world.
Although Mrs. Kennedy always publicly expressed wonder at the public's fascination with her clothes and hair, privately, she knew exactly what she was doing and kept meticulous notes on what was worn when and what outfits would complement a particular occasion or destination.
The exhibits highlighted the clothes themeselves and placards gave information on the material, cut designer, occasion wore, and any special information about why the dress was made the way it was.
Of course, her most famous ensemble, the infamous pink suit worn on November 22, 1963, was not amongst the collection. I have heard that she destroyed it herself at some point afterward by throwing it into a furnace. Frankly, I probably would have done the same.
One interesting thing I learned was the Mrs. Kennedy hated hats. She felt hats kept the public from seeing her face. But, being a public figure in the 1950's and 1960's. she had to wear one, so someone one came up with the iconic pillbox, a hat that could be worn high up and toward the back of the head which solved her problem.
She also didn't care for sleeves, but that wasn't as big an issue, apparently.
After leaving the museam, I walked along icy Lake Michigan up to the Chicago River and walked along the river a bit until returning to the Loop to help out at Rudolph, the Red Hosed Reindeer. I was almost alone along the lake and had a wonderful time watching the skyline and enjoying the beautiful day.
En route, I checked out the lovely Christmas windows in Marshall Field's, this year done up in a Snow White theme. So Cool!
The show was so oversold tonight that I volunteered to give up my seat and didn't even get to watch. In fact, I am typing this from the box office as I wait for the performance to let out. Sigh. Oh, well. There's always tomorrow...
I've been away from home 8 days at this point, and, as much fun as I'm having, part of me is ready to go home. I don't know quite why because it's not like I have anything awaiting me at home. Hmmm...
But, don't get me wrong...I love Chicago and definitely recommend it as a vacation destination/place to live. It doesn't feel like it's been a year since I've been here. I feel like it's been a couple of weeks or a couple of months, not a year.
So who's having a party in New York next week?
Greeting from Chicago!
The weather here is unseasonably mild and I hope that it stays that way for the remainder of my visit.
I got here with no trouble at all, surprising since I was flying from Philadelphia, the scene of so much mishigoss over Christmas.
At the last minute, I decided to check one of my bags and I spoke to the attendent at the Northwest Airlines counter and asked her if the baggage issues of the past few days had been cleared up and could I expect my luggage to arrive in Chicago with me?
Her response? "Well, your suitcase is tagged for Chicago." I stared at her. She stared back at me. And then it dawned on me that she wasn't avoiding the question, but rather she actually thought she answered it. I wasn't amused. Airline personnel: In future, please, at least, hand me the cock-and-bull party line about how operations are back to normal and no problems are anticipated. Telling me that my bag is tagged for Chicago is meaningless. It especially means nothing if the bag remains in Philadelphia or is diverted to Kuala Lumpar while I head to the Windy City.
But the bag did, indeed, reach Chicago without incident. Whoo-Hoo!
Northwest packed us in like sardines in a particularly snug can and I don't think that there was single empty seat on the plane. Though we were late getting out of Philadelphia, I made it to Detroit with just enough time to deplane, pee, and go get on the plane to Chicago. I think I was in Detroit for about 20 minutes all tolled.
Luckily the flights were reletively short, both less than 2 hours. On the flight from Detroit to Chicago, we were just being served our pretzels and beverage when we started our descent into O'Hare.
I then went and met my friend Steve for dinner and we headed out to a party, where I got to catch up with a lot of Chicago friends. I'm very much looking forward to checking out the show tonight.
Hey! Spamalot is here in Chicago doing it's out-of-town previews before New York. Don't think I'll have time to get a cheap ticket though.
Right now, I'm sitting in the beautiful Harold Washington Library in the Loop typing this. Couldn't ask for lovlier surroundings, unless my friends Clarissa, Bridget, and Melissa were here with me. Saw them at the party last night and I'd forgotten how smashingly gorgeous they all are. If I was straight, I'd totally be into them.
Internet access is still spotty here, so I may or may not be able to update further, If not, Happy New Year and I'll be back with you when I get home to New York.
So I'm running around tonight trying to pack all my shit to head to Chicago tomorrow morning. My one big Christmas present was a set of pots and pans from my parents. There's no way I'm carting THAT to Chicago, so it's being shipped back to my apartment while I work on schlepping everything else.
My parents are also in the midst of packing to decamp for their condo in Florida, which they are doing the day after I leave. They will be down there for the next several months and I will be visiting them there in February.
I've never flown on Northwest Airlines before. But due to some massive airfare sale on their part, I am heading to Chicago via Detroit on their planes. I'm reminded of that episode of The Simpsons where Mayor Quimby changed the airport flight paths so that planes were flying right over the Simpson house. One of these turns out to be a footpedal driven craft flown by the Mole Man. "If I stop pedaling, I die," he says, "but, at least, it's better than US Airways."
I will be flying out of Philadelphia International Airport, the scene of such chaos over the past few days that I've heard it called the death knell of US Airways. If it was a work stoppage on the part of disgruntled employees, I don't get it. Who benefits if US Airways goes out of business? Certainly not their employees who would go from earning less money than they were before, due to union concessions to a struggling airline, to earning nothing because the company went under. And this is no time to be unemployed in the airline industry.
But I digress...I'm just glad I'm not on US Airways this weekend.
However, I do have a trip planned with them next month, so, if they do go under, I may still be in trouble. We'll see.
I'm not sure what kind of internet access I'll have in Chicago, so I may or may not be updating the blog while I'm there. If I'm not here over the next few days, everyone have a Happy New Year!
I'll definitely be here in 2005. Hope to see you around.
After a day of helping my parents store the Christmas decorations and hitting the local Walmart for some supplies destined to keep my teeth shiny white and breathe fresh, I went with my parents to see The Aviator, Martin Scorsese's new biopic of Howard Hughes starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the legendary movie producer/aviation pioneer/eccentric.
Really interesting movie, although really really long (in the Scorsese tradition). Like his last 3-hour opus, Gangs of New York, which also starred DiCaprio, as well as John C. Reilly who also appears here, the movie could be about 20 or 30 minutes shorter. Can I tell you how much I needed to pee by the end? Oy! There's a scene late in the film where an increasingly insane Hughes is storing up his urine in milk bottles. By the time I saw it, I was sort of thinking the whole milk bottle thing wasn't such a bad idea.
DiCaprio gives the best performance here he's given in ages. He really carries the film in a way that he's never done before, not even in Titanic, which was really Kate Winslet's movie anyway. He pretty convincingly portrays Hughes over a 20 year span from the late 1920's through the late 1940's. This is Hughes' glamourous period when he was dating movie stars, setting aviation records, and taking on big government and before his OCD complusions really took over his life and turned him into a nutty recluse.
Besides DiCaprio, the person who makes the biggest impression here is Cate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn. Everything about her performance is spot on perfection and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if she got herself an Oscar nomination for this. Hepburn is the one character in this film full of real life characters that is emblazoned on the national conscious. Hepburn was a true American original and Blanchett manages to capture that uniqueness with her voice, her walk, and her stature. It's not an impersonation exactly, but it sort of is in the best possible way. She's just BEING Hepburn.
Lots of other notable actors turn up in featured roles, some for just a scene or two. Everyone is good and, as might be expected, looks ravishing in the costumes and hair of the period. Has there every been a time in American history when fashions were so flattering to so many? Was it possible to dress well, but look bad in the 1930's and 1940's?
I have no idea how good the history is in this picture. I have heard that it fudges dates and people in the usual manner to compress and make more dramatic. But it is pretty good drama, so perhaps that's for the best.
One of the really nice side effects of writing this blog has been chatting on-line with and, in some cases, meeting people who have randomly come across the blog. How cool is it that people I have never met seem to like me enough to not only check in here on some sort of regular basis, but also to catch me now and then via AIM.
Lately, I've been chatting a lot with Randy from Pennsylvania, who even sent me a Christmas present. Thanks, Randy! I really appreciate it. :)
And also, there's Alex from Germany, from whom I've learned about German culture, and who's been the recipient of the few phrases of German that I've picked up throughout my life. Luckily, he speaks very good English.
I've also had the pleasure of meeting readers on social occasions in the past, like Jeffrey from Indianapolis, a charming guy, whom I met for brunch one Sunday at the Film Center, and John, who showed up to my birthday gathering with a friend in tow and also even gave me a present.
Again, more great people.
And there was Rich, another reader with whom I've corresponded, but not met, but who came to see me in Sugar this past summer. That was really nice of him.
This is not even counting the other bloggers I've known before I started writing and those I've met since. Haven't met an asshole yet.
Awww...I love you folks.
Happy Boxing Day! I hope I've gotten that right. Isn't Boxing Day the day after Christmas in the UK? I don't know what it commemorates, but I love the name. Do I have any British readers who could enlighten me?
My mother was tying up magazines and newspapers to recycle and I contributed three, 2 issues of Entertainment Weekly and the latest issue of The Advocate. Not too long afterward, I noticed Mom leafing through The Advocate and taking a look at some of the articles.
(This was after my Dad asking to borrow my copy of the current Out on Christmas en route to my aunt's place for dinner, because there was a big article about being gay in Alabama, a state where we lived for awhile when I was a kid.)
Right this very moment, I am sitting here watching Queer As Folk with my Dad. My parents were apparently unaware that they have Showtime On Demand or how to use it. I showed this feature of their cable system to them and taught them how to use it.
When Dad was deciding what to watch this evening, he was deciding between all the episodes of Queer As Folk, newly at his fingertips, and the first season of Dawson's Creek that I gave him for Christmas.
Okay, I"ve got to say that as much as I hate hate hate Time Warner Cable, my parents' are Comcast subscribers and the Comcast setup is much more complicated and requires several extra steps to do the same thing.
Is it just me or is every single person's TV/DVD/Cable set-up different? I know all the little quirks and issues of mine, things like which remote has to be used for what task and when, but this knowledge of my own set-up doesn't help me one bit when I go to other people's homes. It's starting at Square One all over again. No one's quirks are quite the same as anyone else's.
I guess that's sort of like life, huh?
I had a lovely Christmas, thank you very much. It was much the same as usual, if a little quieter due to my brother's being on call at work at not here. I received some very nice gifts from my family, which I now have to figure out how to get home.
The gifts I got for people went over well. One of the things I got my mother was the most expensive plate ever. You see, my mother's wedding china pattern was discontinued some time ago and she's always wanted more plates to match it.
So I tracked down a website that had a quantity of Mom's plates. And was able to afford to buy her A SINGLE PLATE. Between the cost of the plate and the delivery, I could have bought Mom a ticket to a Broadway show with the same amount of money.
One of the things I got for my Dad was the complete first season of one of his favourite television shows on DVD. What was the show, you ask? Well, that would be Dawson's Creek.
The ironic thing is that, though I have never seen an episode of this show, this is the second time I have purchased its first season on DVD as a gift for someone. The first time was for Karl, who also loved that show. I thought it was a good sign that he and my Dad would have something about which to talk. But, alas, that was never to be. He turned out to be yet another in the parade of those who just didn't like me enough.
But I digress...
Dinner was at my aunt's house in Bucks County. The menu of our family Christmas dinners hasn't varied in 30 years. It is absolutely identical to our Thanksgiving dinners, also unchanged in my memory.
Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatos, gravy, corn, peas, and cranberry sauce. I have tried to convince the powers that be that a change might be good every now and then and have extolled the virtues of victuals as varied as goose and lasagna. No dice.
After dinner, my cousin and I played board games to pass the time. I won both rounds of Chutes and Ladders, one round of Sorry!, and our only attempt at The Yogi Bear Game and she took two additional rounds of Sorry!. We even got out the official Parker Brothers Ouija board, but didn't have much luck contacting the spirit realm this evening. Perhaps Christmas is a busy time for those on the other side.
Now I'm counting the hours till I get to head out to Chicago. There are a lot of them since I don't leave till Wednesday.
I hope everyone had a terrific Christmas, even those of you who do not celebrate it.
I just want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas.
It's Christmas Eve and I am relaxing in my parents' beautiful living room trying to figure out what I'm wearing to church. Due to not having anymore room in my luggage, I will be greeting Jesus this evening in sneakers. Oh, well. I know that He does not mind or care.
My relationship with God is a private one that I will not be pontificating on here. I will say that I consider myself to be a Christian (as awful a connotation as that has these days). I do not attend church anywhere on a regular basis. I am not a fan of organized religion these days and I think almost all of it is a big box of shit.
Regardless of your ideas about God or Allah or Yahweh or whatever you consider a higher power, religion is a creation of man. There is nothing divine or holy about religion anymore than there is about anything else that was created by man.
When I think of things divine and holy, I think of mountains and oceans and deserts. I think of rolling hills of soft grass. William Wordsworth wrote a poem about daffodils to which I no longer remember the words, but the images it conjures are holy to me.
I feel the presence of God in a waterfall, a sunny day, a friendly cat. Also, on a rock in Central Park, at a table in a cafe in Mexico, in my friends. Have you ever seen how beautiful Sixth Avenue is at night with all the office buildings lit up? God is there too.
God is everywhere, even we have to look for Him sometimes.
But religion? Religion seems to be about creating some kind of artificial "us vs. them" situation. And I have news for you. There is no "them." There is only "us."
Religion seems to breed fear and intolerance of those who believe differently.
And the thing is...no faith-based idea can ever be proven or disproven. So no matter what you believe, whether you're a conservative Christian, a liberal Jew, a Shiite Muslim or whatever, you must allow that there's no way to know which version of which religion is the "correct" one and that your neighbour's views are as valid as your own. But so many don't.
My relationship to God is personal and I would never allow anyone to infringe upon that by suggesting that I'm unworthy because I am, for example, gay. God doesn't care. If He did, He wouldn't have made me this way.
No minister or priest can tell me what my relationship to God should be. How would they even know?
Happy Christmas, Everyone. Have a great day.
So I finally got my ass together and out of the city. I'm in New Jersey with my family. My brother was not able to get off work to be here, so I suspect that Christmas will be a much calmer, quieter holiday than Thanksgiving was.
Before I left, my buzzer rang. I was not expecting company, so I thought that someone hit the wrong button down at the building's front door, which does sometimes happen because the buttons are small.
If only. Turns out it was a delivery guy from UPS. With two packages for me. One box was a Christmas present from a reader named Randy, who got me the cast album of The Boy From Oz, a show that I unexpectedly loved last season. And he got me a copy of Marc Acito's novel How I Paid For College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater. Thank you so much, Randy!
The other box wasn't such a nice surprise. It was a box of Christmas presents that I had ordered for my family and which was supposed to be delivered to my parents' home, here in New Jersey. Ugh. After calling UPS and reading them the riot act (they were contrite and acknowledged their culpability, but there was nothing to be done about it), I schleped the box, along with my luggage and shoulder bag, down Ninth Avenue to Port Authority to get my bus.
Yes, folks, I was that person trying to figure out how to manage three sizable pieces (without the third hand that would have made it much easier) on Ninth Avenue tonight. I was the one responsible for the chorus of fucks. There was "Fuck You," directed at the mistakenly delivered box of presents that was quite awkward. There was "Fuck Me," directed at myself for thinking I could do this. There was a general sort of symphony of "Fuckfuckfuckfuck" and "Fuckityfuckfuckfuck" and "Fuck-A-Duck," one of my favourites.
"Fuck" is one of my favorite words.
I remember the first time I ever said it. I was at Busch Gardens: The Old Country in Williamsburg, VA. I think I was in high school. I was rushing back to meet my family at an appointed time and was in a dead run due to taking one too many rides on something or other. I took a wrong turn and ended up in a dead end and the word escaped from my mouth, sort of under my breath. I was kind of shocked. No one else heard it.
The word really didn't make such a splash in my vocabulary until after I moved to New York and went through a dark period when I was earning Satan's pay working as a Stage Manager in a tiny off-off-Broadway theatre. I was much more than a stage manager. I was master electrician, carpenter, custodian, wardrobe, and anything else they could think of to make me do. It was not a happy time.
I used to be a nice guy, but that period transformed me, in the words of Rita Rudner, into a sailor with Tourette's.
Hence the fuckness.
If there are any nuns in my readership, I extend my apologies.
Desperately trying to get everything together here in New York so I can decamp sometime tomorrow and head down the shore to the parents' house in New Jersey.
It's so much harder when a sublet is coming in because you actually have to leave the place looking like a cyclone HASN'T just been through.
I'm so afraid that my Leaning Tower of Pisa bookshelf is going to fall apart and dump books, albums, yearbooks, and pressboard all over the living room while the guy is here. I don't really care about the books, etc, but I know I'd be really upset if such a thing happened in an apartment while I was doing the subletting.
Also, I have to make sure I leave the guy a sheet of instructions/reminders to do things like water my bamboo plant and bring up the mail.
Times like this, I sure could use...an assistant. (Thank God, I don't have a dog.) Sigh.
Yesterday, I walked over to Studio 54 to volunteer usher for the Roundabout's current production of the 1976 Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical Pacific Overtures, a rarely performed piece that has become something of a curiosity in the Sondheim canon.
The show tells the story of the US Navy's forcible opening of imperial Japan to foreign trade in 1853. The twist is that the tale is told from the Japanese point of view. Think of it as a sort of reverse King and I. (Although, both shows were, of course, written and produced by white guys from New York.)
The show stars B.D. Wong, perhaps America's biggest Gaysian star, in a role called The Reciter, a sort of Narrator/Interlocutor that allows Wong to comment on the action or take part as necessary. For those of you playing at home, this is the third Roundabout production in a row at Studio 54 to feature such a character. Assassins actually had two, representing different points of view. I wonder if they're planning on doing a little rewriting for their upcoming revival of A Streetcar Named Desire?
Japanese director Amon Miyamoto has based this production on a Japanese language version that he did last year that was successful enough to play limited engagements here at Lincoln Center and in Washington, DC. It's inspired by traditional Noh theatre techniques, such as the use of masks and cross-gender casting, which makes this show a very unique theatrical experience.
The set is beautiful and simple. It's an elevated, raked playing area that juts out into a pond that contains real water. And that's pretty much it. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it was serene and beautiful and just perfect for this production.
At the commencement, the cast takes the stage and begins to tell their story, in much the same way as the casts of Rent and the current revival of Fiddler on the Roof do.
And then we see a succession of scenes showing the reactions of various segments of Japanese society to the arrival of American warships in their harbor.
To be honest, I'm unsure what I think of this show. I honestly feel like I need a second viewing to really let it sink in. This was the only Sondheim show with which I was completely unfamiliar and there was a lot here to take in. So I will share some of my basic impressions of what I saw and heard and understood.
It was a little slow in parts. And not much actually happens. Through most of the show, we are told what is happening and shown reactions to what is happening.
The arrival of the Americans happens in a magnificent coup de theatre that may be the most effective use of an American flag in a theatre piece I've ever seen.
The opening of Act II, "Please Hello," which dramatizes the arrival of not only the Americans, but the British, Dutch, Russians, and French who followed them, is particularly effective and fun and should be this production's Tony Award number.
The production's masks, by Rumi Matsui, who also designed the set, were phenomenal. All the non-Japanese characters were represented by actors wearing elaborate masks. It sounds weird, but it works.
Wong is terrific as the audience's window into this world. Whether he's telling a story, playing a character, or simply watching the proceedings, Wong is a dynamic presence who holds the entire project together.
There is great work, as well, from Michael K. Lee as Kayama, a minor samurai whose elevation to different posts and gradual assimilation to western ways provides much of the dramatic throughline.
Paolo Montalban is Manjiro, a fisherman who has spent time living and working amongst the Americans and is one of the first to welcome them to Japan. And also among the first to reject their presence there. This is another character that we can follow from humble fisherman to condemned prisoner to samurai. Montalban and Lee create a complex relationship between their characters that mirrors attitudes of the Japanese toward the westerners in their midst.
Okay, I'm the first to admit that this particular critique is not as fully formed as my usual thoughts. It's because this is not a usual show and I'm just not sure what to think. Sorry.
Go see this one for yourselves and tell me.
So after the last performace of Tannhauser on Saturday at the Met, I did, indeed, walk down to the Belasco Theatre just off Times Square to procure a cheap ticket to Dracula, composer Frank Wildhorn's current (but not for long)Broadway musical. And for $26.25, I found myself in a front row center seat at the Saturday evening performance of this gothic extravaganza.
Oh. Man.
Now, I must say that I went into this experience with low expectations. Anyone will tell you that Wildhorn's previous Broadway shows (Jekyll and Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Civil War) were lowbrow, marginal entertainments meant to appeal to the undemanding masses. And, within that limited category, Wildhorn's shows have been mostly successful, even if none of them ever made a single dime on Broadway.
But this one stars Tom Hewitt, an actor I loved as Dr. Frank-n-Furter in the Broadway revival of The Rocky Horror Show a couple of years back, in the title role and Melissa Errico, an actress I've adored in many, many things over the years, as Mina. So I sort of had hopes.
But not for long...
The show proved to be equal parts unintentionally hilarious and deadly dull. Melissa Errico and the rest of the cast work valiently to try to wringe some life out of the material, but were defeated at every turn.
The main problem seems to be that the musical ignores one of the story's main themes. And that would be...erotic passion. The story really needs to contrast the rather tame, chaste lives and loves of the Victorian characters with the pure eroticism of Count Dracula. And, it doesn't really bother with that so much.
Though the female characters in the show are attracted to the Count, even when they know that he's an evil vampire, and the mere sound of his voice gets them disrobing, we aren't really shown or told why this is so. There are no scenes of "Gee, I find this mysterious person fascinating, and scary and yet I'm somehow drawn to him." Both Mina and Lucy are instantly in love with Dracula the moment he starts telepathically communicating with them. In fact, the "love" is a done deal by the time the characters even have any scenes with Dracula. So what's the point?
This whole story is about Victorian ideas of sex. Sex is bad and dirty and something to never be spoken of aloud. Letting oneself go and giving in to lust is the ultimate taboo and something that a proper lady or gentleman would never indulge in. And here comes a sexy stranger who sets bodices a-ripping and...he's a vampire, he's evil, he'll kill you. See? Sex is bad. Think of this story as a period equivalent of a teen slasher movie in which you know that the "bad" teens having sex are the next to die in some spectacularly bloody fashion.
The score has a few nice numbers, but most of it's instantly forgettable. The lyrics and libretto by a seriously slumming Christopher Hampton and Don Black are adequate. There's not much choreography in the show at all.
What does this show have? Well...flying. You've heard that there is a lot of flying in the show. What you probably haven't heard is that director Des McAnuff takes any and every opportunity to have characters fly in and out of scenes and it's terribly comical from the beginning. It's as if he was thinking, "Well, we've paid a lot of money to hire Flying by Foy, so we might as well put them to work." Dracula rarely enters or exits a scene under his own power and the character is very hard to take seriously because of this. It's as if he's showing off. "Hey, Mina, look what I can do. Look! Look!"
The actors, I'm pleased to say, mostly escape this debacle with their dignity, even the ladies who are both required to go topless for scenes with the Big D. (Apparently, it's not just the throat that the vampire is interested in...if you've got tits, you'd better be prepared to bear them as well.)
Errico is lovely and charming as always. She is playing the show with a sense of melodrama that the rest of the actors lack. It's as if she's doing a different show, possibly a good one. Everyone one else is playing it pretty straight and realistically, while Errico almost seems like a heroine out of a silent movie. At one point, I thought she was going to literally raise her knuckles to her mouth in horror. The show was always at least watchable when she was on stage.
Tom Hewitt is fine, if miscast, here as Dracula. As fine an actor and singer as he is, Hewitt is simply not the drop dead sexy presence that the character needs to be, especially given the show's lack of motivation for the women's succombing to his charms. In fact, he doesn't seem sexy or charming at all. Someone had the bright idea to give Hewitt the dramatic ripping-open-of-the-shirt scene that was a prominent feature of the Jekyll and Hyde television commerical (but not in the actual show) for years. And even this was not enough to get my blood circulating through the tepid love scenes. Ho Hum.
The rest of the cast was doing some fine work, but were likewise defeated by the material. Kelli O'Hara has a couple of nice scenes as Lucy (including the score's best song, "How Do You Choose?"), but gets killed off early on. The men, despite the actors' best efforts, are fairly interchangable. Darren Ritchie does some nice work early in the first act as Jonathan Harker, but then is sent adrift by the writing. Don Stephenson, as Renfield, is the victim of, perhaps, the least-realized character in the show to the point that I was wondering what the character was doing in the show at all. He has a song that recycles the melody of The Scarlet Pimpernel's "The Riddle," but to no real purpose.
Des McAnuff's direction was pretty standard and (except for an over-reliance on the flying) nothing special or noticeable. He does seem to be getting away from the elaborate projections that identified his major productions in the '90's.
Interestingly, McAnuff employs a device here that the director of the recent production of Mack and Mabel that I saw at Goodspeed Opera House also employed. Rather than hiring any men for the ensemble (literally, aside from named characters, there was ONE), he has women playing men whenever men are required. Though the makeup and hair departments here did a better job of disguising the women as men than the Goodspeed's did, it was still rather obvious that the porters, longshoremen, sailors, etc. were really women. I hope this isn't becoming a trend.
So this wasn't the glorious Springtime For Hitler trash wallow that last season's Dance of the Vampires was. It's a better show, barely, but if you're going to be putting up a bad musical (and from the reviews of the prior production in California and Frank Wildhorn's general track record, how could the production team have thought anything else?), be bad big. And entertaining. Be so bad, that your audience members' mouths drop open in disbelief. Be so bad that people will talk of having witnessed your show for years to come. This show is just not that bad.
People have asked me recently why I thought anyone went ahead and produced a show like this one that was probably doomed from the moment the idea entered Wildhorn's head. I think they were trying to tap into that suburban, tourist audience that just can't get enough of big, bad, flashy musicals and don't really care all that much for coherent story telling or originality of material. These are the people that supported Jekyll and Hyde for three years on Broadway (though, as stated, even that "success" never made a dime). But, sadly, the big, bad, flashy musical that all those people are going to and loving right now is Wicked. And, with ticket prices as high as they are, that audience can only afford to see a show (or only cares to afford to see a show) once a year or so.
Better luck next time, Ms. Errico.
The apartment is looking much better now and, I dare say, it will be presentable for the sublet next week.
Is anyone interested in trying to get a cheap ticket to Dracula tomorrow evening? I want to try to see it before it goes away. Some things just must be seen. They really must. I saw Dance of the Vampires too. I just love a good vampire musical...and that was nothing like a good vampire musical.
Last night, I volunteer ushered for the Roundabout's off-Broadway revival of Larry Shue's comedy The Foreigner at the Laura Pels Theatre within the cumbersomely named Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre.
The play is top-lined by Matthew Broderick and Frances Sternhagen, but Sternhagen has lately been sidelined by the flu and her role has been played in her absence by understudy Rita Gardner, whom you will know as the original Girl (Luisa) in The Fantasticks some 40 some odd years ago.
I've always liked this play, ever since I was chief cook and bottle washer on a production many years ago. I was the Props Master, Set Dresser, Stage Crew, and was even drafted to cameo as a Klansman in the second act. The only time I've ever gotten applause for clearing a set (in the dark) was on this play. And that's another story.
The play concerns Charlie, a science fiction magazine editor, who, needing a respite from troubles at home, is deposited in a country lodge in rural Georgia by his friend Froggy. Except that Charlie is extremely shy and is terrified of speaking to anyone at the lodge. So...Froggy tells the proprietor Betty that Charlie doesn't speak any English. And chaos ensues, as they say.
By the way, I've always wanted to go somewhere and try this bit and see what happens. The closest I've come is when I was offered drugs in Spain and...well, that too is probably a story for another time.
Broderick is keeping his nerdy persona in tune here between go rounds in The Producers on Broadway and the upcoming feature film. His Charlie is a somewhat less functional variation on his Leo Bloom, although Broderick is keeping his tendency toward the cartoonish more in check here than when I last saw him in Mel Brooks' musical.
And he's very good as the milquetoast, personality-free Charlie who gets handed bits of personality by every character who enters the stage. At first, Broderick is a deer in the headlights trying to merely survive interacting with Betty, the lodge's old proprietress, and his fellow guests, the heiress Catherine, her slow younger brother Ellard, and her fiance David, a local minister. But, as he becomes more involved in their lives, Broderick's Charlie gets more comfortable improvising in his "role" as a colorful, non-English speaking foreigner and becomes a confidant to Catherine, and friend to Ellard and Betty. And, by the way, Broderick may no longer be Ferris Bueller, but he still has a great ass.
Gardner is mostly terrific as Betty, a down-home country woman who has never left her small Southern town, but who dreams of what people are like in foreign parts. There were times when I felt she was struggling against the very specific dialect that Shue has written for this character, but she pulls it off admirably.
The terribly cute Kevin Cahoon makes a big impression as Ellard, Catherine's brother who may not be quite so dim-witted as he seems. I've seen Cahoon in small roles in other shows and he's always that actor that makes you wonder "Wow! Who is that cute guy over there?" Cahoon has a fine line to walk here with Ellard's apparent slowness and then his burgeoning confidence and ability, but he pulls it off masterfully.
(Anybody out there know this guy? Is he gay? If so, is he single? I'd love to know...)
Mary Catherine Garrison is Catherine, an heiress and ex-debutante, who is bewildered at the turns her life has taken and who isn't quite certain how she ended up in this tiny Georgia backwater. Although, I warmed to her performance as the play progressed, she really didn't have the look or bearing or voice of a girl who was an Atlanta debutante only a year prior to the events of the play.
Catherine also has a difficult transition to make toward the end of the second act. There is a moment when it could be interpretated that Catherine figures out Charlie's deception and plays along. Garrison chose to play the revelation without really showing Catherine's thought process from the moment when the idea strikes her to the decision she comes to at the end. And I wanted that.
The play itself is a little creeky, more so than I remembered, but it's basically a strong script and this is a really solid production, probably the best one you'll ever see of this comedy. Go, if you have a chance.
The apartment is looking much better now and, I dare say, it will be presentable for the sublet next week.
Is anyone interested in trying to get a cheap ticket to Dracula tomorrow evening? I want to try to see it before it goes away. Some things just must be seen. They really must. I saw Dance of the Vampires too. I just love a good vampire musical...and that was nothing like a good vampire musical.
Last night, I volunteer ushered for the Roundabout's off-Broadway revival of Larry Shue's comedy The Foreigner at the Laura Pels Theatre within the cumbersomely named Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre.
The play is top-lined by Matthew Broderick and Frances Sternhagen, but Sternhagen has lately been sidelined by the flu and her role has been played in her absence by understudy Rita Gardner, whom you will know as the original Girl (Luisa) in The Fantasticks some 40 some odd years ago.
I've always liked this play, ever since I was chief cook and bottle washer on a production many years ago. I was the Props Master, Set Dresser, Stage Crew, and was even drafted to cameo as a Klansman in the second act. The only time I've ever gotten applause for clearing a set (in the dark) was on this play. And that's another story.
The play concerns Charlie, a science fiction magazine editor, who, needing a respite from troubles at home, is deposited in a country lodge in rural Georgia by his friend Froggy. Except that Charlie is extremely shy and is terrified of speaking to anyone at the lodge. So...Froggy tells the proprietor Betty that Charlie doesn't speak any English. And chaos ensues, as they say.
By the way, I've always wanted to go somewhere and try this bit and see what happens. The closest I've come is when I was offered drugs in Spain and...well, that too is probably a story for another time.
Broderick is keeping his nerdy persona in tune here between go rounds in The Producers on Broadway and the upcoming feature film. His Charlie is a somewhat less functional variation on his Leo Bloom, although Broderick is keeping his tendency toward the cartoonish more in check here than when I last saw him in Mel Brooks' musical.
And he's very good as the milquetoast, personality-free Charlie who gets handed bits of personality by every character who enters the stage. At first, Broderick is a deer in the headlights trying to merely survive interacting with Betty, the lodge's old proprietress, and his fellow guests, the heiress Catherine, her slow younger brother Ellard, and her fiance David, a local minister. But, as he becomes more involved in their lives, Broderick's Charlie gets more comfortable improvising in his "role" as a colorful, non-English speaking foreigner and becomes a confidant to Catherine, and friend to Ellard and Betty. And, by the way, Broderick may no longer be Ferris Bueller, but he still has a great ass.
Gardner is mostly terrific as Betty, a down-home country woman who has never left her small Southern town, but who dreams of what people are like in foreign parts. There were times when I felt she was struggling against the very specific dialect that Shue has written for this character, but she pulls it off admirably.
The terribly cute Kevin Cahoon makes a big impression as Ellard, Catherine's brother who may not be quite so dim-witted as he seems. I've seen Cahoon in small roles in other shows and he's always that actor that makes you wonder "Wow! Who is that cute guy over there?" Cahoon has a fine line to walk here with Ellard's apparent slowness and then his burgeoning confidence and ability, but he pulls it off masterfully.
(Anybody out there know this guy? Is he gay? If so, is he single? I'd love to know...)
Mary Catherine Garrison is Catherine, an heiress and ex-debutante, who is bewildered at the turns her life has taken and who isn't quite certain how she ended up in this tiny Georgia backwater. Although, I warmed to her performance as the play progressed, she really didn't have the look or bearing or voice of a girl who was an Atlanta debutante only a year prior to the events of the play.
Catherine also has a difficult transition to make toward the end of the second act. There is a moment when it could be interpretated that Catherine figures out Charlie's deception and plays along. Garrison chose to play the revelation without really showing Catherine's thought process from the moment when the idea strikes her to the decision she comes to at the end. And I wanted that.
The play itself is a little creeky, more so than I remembered, but it's basically a strong script and this is a really solid production, probably the best one you'll ever see of this comedy. Go, if you have a chance.
Since I didn't have to work today, I spent the day trying to get my life re-organized. Everything has been in such disarray that it's been making me crazy.
I did many, many loads of laundry.
I finally did some Christmas shopping.
Then I finally starting going through boxes and trying to organize and find places for the pieces of my past that I'm finding. Lots of books. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Agatha Christie. Encyclopedia Brown. And more college textbooks than I remembered still having.
So I've been busy today, but I'm already seeing results and I like that.
Last night, I was down on the Lower East Side playing Trivia with Mike, Jeff, and Dan. Even though we only came in 6th place, it was fun and it's always great to hang out with a group of nice guys. I just wish I'd been able to contribute more. Oh, well...there's always next time.
Right now, the apartment looks like it's been ransacked. You know how it always looks worse then it did before while you're in the process of cleaning? That's how mine is now. But I can see that tiny little light at the end of the tunnel and that makes me happy.
Anyone want to come over and help?
Today, my friend Greg and I went on safari to the wilds of Connecticut. Why did we do this? To make a pilgrimage to a place neither of us had been before...the famous Goodspeed Opera House in the tiny hamlet of East Haddam. We went to catch their production of the 1974 musical Mack and Mabel, which stars Scott Waara and Christiane Noll in the title roles.
This is one of those famously troubled shows (Hello, Chess!) that has probably never been played the same way twice. Every major production since the 1974 original has made alterations to Jerry Herman's score or, more usually, Michael Stewart's libretto, which has born the brunt of the blame for the show's failure.
This version is, I believe, based on the revisions that were made for the 1995 London production, with a revised book by Francine Pascal, sister of the late Michael Stewart.
The story is still a fictionalized version of the story of early film pioneer Mack Sennett and his relationship with Mabel Normand, one of the biggest female stars of early Hollywood. Did I say "fictionalized?" Truth to tell, these two people had a long and complicated relationship, but the events of the musical are almost entirely fiction, reality either not being good enough or being way too complicated and overwhelming for the musical's creators.
Christiane Noll is as steadily working an ingenue as we have in musical theatre today. And here, as Mabel, she proved why that is the case. She is charming and believable in her transformation from gawky deli delivery girl to Hollywood star. She is undercut in the second act by this libretto's conscious effort to de-emphasize Normand's drug and alcohol abuse and other health issues and its constant refusal to theorize or comment upon her supposed involvement in the murder of director William Desmond Taylor. Basically, Noll has nowhere to go in the second act and nothing to play. But she does it charmingly.
Scott Waara disappointed as Mack Sennett. He lost me in the opening scene and number. It may not have been his fault. Again, the libretto tries to soften the character and tries to have things both ways. It wants a Mack who's cuddly and charming, yet also a self-involved asshole. And, while there are some actors who might be able to pull this off (I can't think of one off the top of my head), Waara is not one of them. He's playing a teddy bear under a gruff exterior, more suited to a role like 42nd Street's director character, Julian Marsh. Every moment seems dedicated to "I want YOU, Audience Members, to like me, in spite of some of the things you see me doing." And it didn't work for me.
And now we come to Donna McKechnie. The Broadway legend (a legend based on a single performance; take THAT, Carol Channing) appears here as Lottie Ames, a fictional role that seems to be part actress and part Sennett business manager. Like most of the characters, there's not much there in the text for McKechnie to play and we're never sure what her character is doing at any given time. But McKechnie gives it her all and belies (for the most part) her 60-something age.
Her big moment is the famous "Tap Your Troubles Away" number in the second act that was originally intended as a smiley face (but lyrically pointed) counterpoint to Mabel's second act descent into drug and alcohol addiction and tuberculosis. This production eschewed most of that and pretty much let McKechnie do what she does best, even including her iconic Cassie back bends. Dance-wise, she may not be the athlete she was 30 years ago, but she more than holds her own here leading a line of chorines 40 years her junior. I can't figure out why she hasn't yet played an engagement on Broadway in Chicago...she IS Roxie Hart.
The most incredible thing about her performance is what happened at the end of "Tap Your Troubles Away." As might be expected, she posed with chorines on the final beat and held it through the expected applause. The audience went wild. Wild. Did I say "wild?" There were shouts of "Brava!" People stood to applaud her. She broke her pose and acknowledged the crowd, the orchestra, and the girls in the number with her. She basked in the glory and love of the entire audience for quite a moment. And then remembered that this wasn't her nightclub act ("This isn't Vegas, Cassie!"). After getting a note or two from the orchestra to get her back on track, she went into a brief encore before concluding with the aforementioned back bends.
I've never seen anything like it.
I just sat there saying "What the hell is going on here?," and "What IS this?!" But most of the audience ate it up. Oh, to be a Broadway Star-cum-legend...
The direction and choreography by Arthur Allan Seidelman and Dan Siretta, who also did the "honors" for the recent TV movie version of A Christmas Carol that I've discussed here, was serviceable at best and horribly distracting at worse. Enough said.
Not that there weren't good things here. Many of the changes, notably the inclusion of an affair for Mack and having an already established character sing lead on a very "Mame"-like song called "When Mabel Walks In The Room," work wonderfully and are improvements. But, for most part, the show has exchanged one subpar libretto for another. It's a shame.
The score remains a classic, but the failings of the libretto do tend to point out the sheer extraneousness of many of the numbers.
This is just not a very good show and it looks like it never will be. It's time for the musical theatre community to move on. And I mean YOU, Mr. Herman.
I've totally forgotten write about two plays that I saw this week and last.
My parents were in town last week and took me to see the new August Wilson play Gem of the Ocean, which stars Phylicia Rashad as a 200+ year old sage in 1904 Pittsburgh.
Do you like August Wilson plays? If you do, you'll like this one. If not, well... Like most of his work, there is a lot of speechifying and a lot of philosophy on a topic related to the history of the African-American people. The topic here is freedom and what exactly it means. When is a person truely free? Is freedom the same for all people? You get the idea.
I liked the play very much, though not quite as much as Wilson's last one, King Hedley II. Rashad is wonderful. LisaGay Hamilton is wonderful. In fact, the whole cast is terrific.
Problems? Sure. It can be a little slow at times. And it can be a little heavy-handed. But it's August Wilson. That's what he does. The man doesn't write sparkling comedies about pretty people in glamourous costumes drinking champagne and expressing themselves in witty bon mots. Actually, I sort wish he would...that would be kind of cool.
And I volunteer ushered earlier this week for the new John Patrick Shanley play Doubt, at Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage I space at City Center.
Can I just say "Wow!"? This is an amazing play! If you can believe it, it's a sort of comedy about a nun who suspects a priest is molesting a young boy. Well, not a comedy exactly, but a comedy-drama. But there are a lot of laughs here, something I was absolutely not expecting. I've heard rumours that the play is transferring to Broadway and, honestly, it couldn't happen to a better play.
The play is set in the Bronx in 1964, but is clearly meant to reflect the troubles in the Roman Catholic church today. I also recently saw Sin: A Cardinal Deposed, another drama that attempts to deal with this same subject. Whereas Sin sought the drama in actual real life court testimony and fell short, Doubt seeks to illustrate reality through a fictional premise...and succeeds.
Cherry Jones plays the central role of a nun, principal of a Roman Catholic middle school, who begins to suspect that the parish priest has an "unnatural" relationship with one of the students in her school. How she goes about conducting her investigation and what she finds is the crux of the play. The concept of "doubt" is brought into every character and every motivation.
Shanley asks provocative questions here, almost none of which get answered definitively. Even the central question at hand goes unanswered for certain. The cast, led by Jones, one of New York's finest stage actresses, and Irish character actor Brian F. O'Byrne, so terrific last year as the child killer in Frozen, handles the twists and turns of plot with ease. A surprising scene between Jones and Adriane Lenox, as the mother of the boy in the center of the storm, had me, literally, on the edge of my seat.
This is what theatre is about, folks. Go see this play if you can.
Feeling much better today. I think whatever was causing the problem was...um..."evacuated" one way or another yesterday and my body has been recovering nicely. I'm keeping down solid foods again, which is always nice.
But I'm still taking it easy, just in case.
Tonight I went to see a friend, opera singer William George, in a chamber music concert called Mystics and Misfits: An Exploration of Mysticism in Contemporary Chamber Music.
Now chamber music really isn't my thing, but I had a really good time experiencing something I wouldn't normally have gone to see. The last piece was one for which Bill wrote the music to the lyrics of Richard Gleaves (the writer of that Dorian Gray musical that Goodspeed Opera House did awhile back), based on a 2nd century text.
The concert was held in a beautiful Espicopal church in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Cobble Hill, a place I don't think I'd been before. What a lovely neighbourhood! It seems to be all brownstones on quaint little residential streets.
And the armed guards at the Brooklyn border gave me no trouble once I produced my valid passport and paperwork. The strip search was just a cool extra.
I have been sick and miserable all day long.
I woke up feeling fine and then IT slowly took over my body. First came the diarrhea. And then came the vomiting. And then came the fever and the chills.
I am still in the ratty tee shirt and sweatpants that I woke up in. I have not showered. I have not shaved. I have not brushed my teeth. I look like a not-particularly-well-kept homeless man. And I had to forgo a couple of hours of passing out candy canes.
Well, I lie a little. I'm in a different pair of sweatpants. At some point when I was bowing to the porcelain god, there was a little backsplash.
And did you know that, if you drink a glass of orange juice in the morning prior to being sick, your disgorgement will smell like Florida?
I just wish I knew what those hard chunks of matter were that came up...
The one bright spot in the day was the arrival of a late birthday present from Jess and Marc. Having not known me at the time of my actual birthday in August, they decided that late was better than never (Thanks, Rizzo) and sent along an item from my Amazon Wishlist.
I was so surprised to open the box and find a copy of Savage Love: Straight Answers From America's Most Popular Sex Columnist on my lap. And aren't you glad I knew how to properly italicize that last sentence?
Can't wait to read this. Thanks, Jess and Marc! If anyone else would like to send me a late birthday present, an early Christmas present, or a right-on-time Hannukah present, just click on the list and behold a wide array of items certain to put a smile on the face of your favorite blogger. Who, need I remind you, is feeling under the weather today.
That is all for now. I'm going to scavenge about in my kitchen and see if I can find some soup.
Tonight after work, I met up with Matt and went to see a reading of a new musical at the York Theatre Company. Since this is a show is the very earliest stages of development, I will refrain from extensive comment here.
It was called Heaven Knows and concerned an actress who goes into an audition for a musical and finds herself auditioning for God. It's sort of a combination of Joan of Arcadia and Defending Your Life. Book, Music, and Lyrics were by Charles Bloom, who also wrote the well-received Insomnia that was presented this past summer at the Midtown International Theatre Festival.
Oh, and there were cute boys in it.
It's always so interesting to see musicals at this point. You can never quite tell what they're going to be. And it's fun to try to guess. Matt and I adjourned afterward to Posh to hash it out.
Matt, like his boyfriend, is a great guy, and one of those friends that I just don't see often enough. I hadn't seen him in quite a while and it was nice to be able to catch up a bit.
On the way to the reading, I walked past the world famous St. Regis Hotel and there was a huge crowd of people in suits just milling about on the sidewalk blocking my way. In my best New York "get the fuck out of my way" voice, I said to no one in particular "Why are all these PEOPLE blocking the SIDEWALK?!" And then followed this up with a series of pointed "Excuse MEs" that I hope will send them back to wherever they came from telling their neighbours how rude New Yorkers are.
Don't get me wrong. I love tourists. I just need them to stay out of my way when I'm trying to get somewhere. It's a sidewalk, folks, leave some room for the pedestrians while you're standing around socializing.
I'm so excited! Last night, I managed to sublet my apartment for the week between Christmas and New Years, which means that I get to go to Chicago for New Years to see this year's production of Rudolph, the Red Hosed Reindeer, the musical I did there last year.
I'll be there from December 29th through January 2nd. Who wants to get together? I want to see EVERYONE!
Mike Miller has already suggested a New Years Day Chicago Deep Dish Pizza Party Double Feature of The Poseidon Adventure and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, which would be the coolest thing ever.
I can't wait to see everyone there. I miss them.
More later.
I totally left out of my random highlights the meeting of a supercool blogging couple, Jess and Marc.
Jess and Marc live out on Long Island, a place with which regular readers will know I am familiar. They did NOT come to see Sugar, although I certainly couldn't hold THAT against them. But they did actually come into the city for the whole blogger meet-up thing, something I'm not sure I would have done.
You see, the Saturday evening gathering at Therapy and the Sunday after-party (meaning after Show Tunes) at Posh were held practically in my living room. So I had little excuse to miss. I was not, of course, invited to the Friday evening festivites at Posh, because some people never invite me anywhere.
So there.
The bookcase is built and standing in my living room. I have yet to brave actually putting any books on it, but I'll get there eventually. It scares me with its seeming fragility. Perhaps I need to bribe Tim into a visit to put his set design/construction skills to use in making it a little less Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I spent much of the weekend hobnobbing with other bloggers at several of the events that I'm sure you've read about elsewhere by now. I'm in the process of linking to all the various people that I met. If I met you this weekend and haven't yet linked to your blog, please feel free to drop me a line and ask "What the Fuck, Asshole?!"
The weekend wasn't completely drama-free, but I was so glad to have been able to take part. Here's some highlights:
1) Finally getting to meet the famous Hot Toddy. What a great guy! I think every single person who met us both said to me "Wow...he's even taller than you." I had this weekend marked in my calendar as Hot Toddy In Town!.
2) Having Hot Toddy tell me, upon our meeting, that he had thought I was ever so much older and shorter. I guess my writing leans toward the old and short. By the way, if you are curious as to what I look like (sort of), the Tin Man has posted some pictures, one of which is an odd one of the two of us. You'll have to trust me when I say that I look much more...normal...in real life. The eyebrow police need NOT issue a warrant.
3) Finally meeting the elusive Famous Author Rob Byrnes, who is not, as I hypothesized last week elsewhere, a middle aged woman from Duluth. When I needed to check the spelling of his surname just now, he will be happy to know that I went over to my bookshelf and checked the spines of his books, both of which I have read and recommend.
4) Having a suspicion confirmed that a fellow blogger is actually a co-worker at my part-time desk jockey day job. That sonic boom you heard this weekend was worlds colliding, folks. And, no...we didn't do any duets from She Loves Me.
5) Singing show tunes around the piano at Marie's Crisis, a highlight of any weekend or weekday for that matter. I've got to get there more often.
6) Having people point out that I was sort of automatically doing choreography to various show tunes at Marie's Crisis - and having it NOT be laughing derision. I just do this sort of thing, especially with a song like "All That Jazz," which, frankly, you'd have to be a statue for it not to get your ass in gear. Can't you hear the sex in that song? Hot!
7) Dubbing a fellow blogger "Cancer Boy" to his face and having him not take offense.
8) Meeting Hot Toddy's Oregon compatriot, Bobo, otherwise known as The Executive. Neat guy, who reminds me of someone I can't quite put my finger on at the moment. Could it be one of the Coreys from the '80's? He is presently in Ecuador on vacation, something I found fascinating.
9) Drinking WAY too much, courtesy of lots of other people. I had quite the hangover this morning, but managed to get my ass out of bed and even to work, not too far past the time when I actually should have been there.
10) Going into the historic Stonewall Inn for the first time and finding it to be a charming, comfy little place with sofas that threatened to swallow me up every time I saw down.
So a good time was had by most. And, really, Ira...who could ask for anything more?
I've been spending this afternoon building a bookcase.
Well, I guess I should really say that I've been spending the afternoon REbuilding a bookcase. You see my parents were in town this week and brought me a bunch of boxes of my things from the attic of their house. It was mostly books, I think, although I haven't had a chance to go through most of the boxes.
I expect to find lots of Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys.
One thing I did find, in a box of old show programs was the Playbill for the national tour of Arsenic and Old Lace that I saw in Philadelphia when I was a freshman in high school. The tour starred Jean Stapleton, Marion Ross, Gary Sandy, Larry Storch, and Jonathan Frid and was the first "real" professional Equity production that I ever saw.
You see, it had a funny television commerical and I had decided that I wanted to go down Center City to the Forrest Theatre and see it. So my Dad and I got tickets way up in the balcony. Even then, I was over six feet tall and could just barely fit into a balcony seat. But it didn't matter because Dad and I were practically the only people up there, besides the ushers.
And it was magical. The play is, of course, a classic, and this production was wonderful. I had such a good time and, in the end, it didn't matter whether our seats were built for people no taller than 5'9" or that they were located so far above and away from the stage. Magic. Welcome to the theatre.
Anyway, my parents also brought me a spare bookshelf that they found in the attic to help me store all these books and things they brought. I have no idea where this thing is going to go. But it may not matter.
This bookshelf is one of those generic white put-it-together-yourself bookshelves that you get at Ikea or Home Depot and that we've all owned at one time or another in our lives. And while these shelves are terrific, they are not the sturdiest pieces of furniture available. Specificially, they are not meant to be assembled and disassembled and assembled again ad nauseam forever.
And I'm not sure I can save this one. It appears to have been through the war. Any war. Pick one. And, while it's served valiently, it's pretty worse for wear at the present time.
So today it's been like this past week's Amazing Race over here. It also feels like any given episode of ER in which any given noble doctor/nurse works on any given dying patient, trying to save him or her and not giving up till the steady sound of the heart monitor beeping life away drives everyone crazy.
So, here I am...with a dying patient on my living room floor, boxes of books everywhere, and having to head out soon to go do Tannhauser.
Hope everyone else is having a high flying, glamourous weekend.
The other night I dreamed that I had wild and crazy sex with British pop star Robbie Williams. Well, I didn't actually dream the sex part...the dream started just as we climaxed and collapsed onto each other sated in each other's bodies.
It was great. Really.
Here's the weird part: I know nothing about pop music. While I know the name "Robbie Williams," I wouldn't know the man if I fell over him on the street. To my knowledge, I've never heard his music. I wouldn't recognize one of his songs or his voice if I heard them.
And yet I somehow knew that this guy under me was Robbie Williams. I just knew.
Weird, huh?
Okay, so apparently the sill outside my bedroom window is the hottest piece of real estate in all of New York, as determined by the local pigeon population.
I hear rustling and cooing at all hours of the day and/or night. Sometimes I bang on the window and it stops for a few minutes. Then they come right back.
And, yes, if baby pigeons do indeed exist, I now know exactly from where they come.
The birds have got to go. The only billing and cooing I want to hear in my bedroom is that which goes on between me and the person(s) I've invited in there.
Question...how in the hell do I get rid of amorous pigeons? Obviously, they have ceased to be intimidated by my feral machismo. Charm? Hah! These are New York pigeons.
And don't advise me to stun them into submission with my manly beauty and sexy body. Doesn't work. Don't ask.
So, now, I submit to you...my humble audience...for your suggestions. Please post any ideas here or email to me privately. Much obliged.
I don't normally work on Tuesdays and there were no open call auditions that I wanted to try to go, so I'd planned on running about and doing a whole list of things that needed to be done.
So, of course, I overslept.
I ended up running about and getting some stuff done before heading out to an audition appointment. I mailed a check to cover the balance on my Discover Card (just in time to start Christmas shopping with it), walked over to the Laura Pels Theatre to see about volunteer ushering for the Roundabout's current production of Larry Shue's play The Foreigner. No dice. Every slot at every single performance is filled. Sigh.
Then I headed over to my audition for a new play. I was very wrong for the role I had been called in for, but I gave a decent audition anyway. However, I doubt that I will get this one.
I did have some time today to check out that new television musical version of A Christmas Carol that my DVR recorded for me on Sunday. It's a film version of the stage musical that played annually here at The Theatre at Madison Square Garden during the Christmas season for about 10 years until a year or two ago.
It was a holiday extravaganza on par with The Radio City Christmas Spectacular...4 or 5 performances a day for about 6 weeks or so. I saw it twice, I think. One of the Scrooges I saw was Hal Linden, the year that he and Roddy McDowell split the role. I do not remember who the other one was.
Even though the stage production was the work of some of the most talented people in the industry (Alan Menken, Lynn Ahrens, Mike Okrent, Susan Stroman, et al), I never really cared for it. It was big and that was about all that I could say for it. I don't think the score is especially distinguished and there was nothing special or even necessary about this particular version of the oft-told tale.
And that was pretty much how I felt about the movie version. Eh. Why did anyone bother? Probably because Kelsey Grammer was feeling bored and looking for something to do since the demise of Frasier. His wife was even listed as a producer.
The talent on display here was pretty enviable (Grammer, Jane Krakowski, Jesse Martin, Linzi Hateley, Ruthie Henshall, et al), and everyone gave fine performances. But the film as a whole just sort of laid there. There was absolutely no reason for it to exist.
A Christmas Carol must be amongst the most filmed properties in Western literature. That's not even counting all the stage versions. We don't need any more. We don't want any more. Writers and producers, please STOP. Now.
Thank You.