Wow...I had a great time out on my birthday and it was wonderful to see so many friends come by for dinner and/or drinks. Truthfully, I was a little worried that all of my various friends wouldn't find anything to talk about together or would quickly get bored with each other. But I shouldn't have worried. Everybody seemed to like everybody else and there really didn't seem to be much awkwardness.
New York can be such a busy place that it's often hard to get together with people. We're always running about trying to get everything accomplished in our busy busy lives and there isn't always time to see friends. I hate that.
Thank you so much to everyone who came out to help me celebrate.
It's that time of year again.
It's time for my annual ill-planned, last minute birthday thing. Please come if you can. Have some barbeque and/or a drink and come hang out.
Wednesday, August 29th
Dinner: Bone Lick Park BBQ
7th Ave & Greenwich Ave
6.30pm
Drinks/Show Tunes: Marie's Crisis
7th Ave & Grove Street
7.45pm-ish
Let me know if you have any questions. Comments are still not working over here, but drop me an email. I'd love to see any or all of you. Even if you don't actually know me and are curious, drop on by.
I've been running non-stop for almost a week now.
I've had temp work since Friday and, even though I'm going to be very appreciative when I get the check, it's putting a serious crimp into my schedule. I just need to be independently wealthy or to have a Renaissance-style patron...I am just too busy to hold down a day job. :)
This morning my alarm clock never went off, so I overslept and was 90 minutes late for work. How mortifying! It seems to be okay and no one yelled at me, but this would have to happen on a day when I'd already asked to leave an hour early. And I cannot change the appointment that's the reason I'm leaving early.
I haven't had a night at home since last Thursday, and, while I'm certainly enjoying the company of friends and family and the things I'm doing in the evenings, I am also feeling the effects of not having a whole lot of time to myself. However I have blocked out Thursday night to go home and take care of some things.
UPDATE: It's now Friday...I didn't even have time to finish the blog post. Wow. Anyway, I'm bagging it now and moving out. Long story short (too late!): I've been busy.
Celebrity Sighting of the Day: former Cheers star George Wendt waiting to enter the elevator that I was leaving this afternoon. I was in the middle of running from one audition to another; no idea what he was doing. He's been doing some theatre, so maybe he was there for an audition as well.
I'm looking around my living room today and I see a bunch of programs for shows I've seen and just not had a moment to sit down and write on. Okay, so let's take a look at what's around and I'll briefly write about what I've seen.
Opus - This is the new Michael Hollinger play at Primary Stages. It's about the interpersonal dynamics of a string quartet and what happens when one of the members has to be replaced. Wow...this was really compelling and brilliant and I urge everyone to get up to Primary Stages' 59E59 space to catch this before it closes. It reminds me a lot of Yazmina Reza's Art. Some amazing acting and directing really take what could be a "little" play and turn into something so compelling that the audience was literally on the edge of its seat by the final scene. Go Go GO!
110 In The Shade - Made a return visit to the Roundabout's revival of this neglected piece just before it closed. Audra McDonald's performance was justly acclaimed and held up well. Not sure I cared for the writers' attempt to "open up" the play by adding an ensemble that mostly seems superfluous. I hadn't realized that this production dropped a song in the first act for the character of File. No idea why. The direction was really effective and it was nice to see Lonny Price stage something fully, rather than his usual concerts presentations. Well done all around.
Gypsy - Of course, I went to see the big revival of this classic musical at City Center. As you must know, it starred Patti LuPone as Rose as well as, in a wonderful happenstance of luxury casting, a host of New York names in featured parts. Laura Benanti was Louise, Boyd Gaines was Herbie, Alison Fraser was Tessie Tura, Nancy Opel was Mazeppa/Miss Cratchitt, and Marilyn Caskey was Electra. The director was show's librettist, Arthur Laurents, who also helms productions in the 1970's starring Angela Lansbury and the 1980's starring Tyne Daly (followed by Linda Lavin).
I love this show and thought this production was a really terrific rendering. LuPone and all the cast were great. The biggest problems I had were with the direction, which was too presentational (especially in the first act) and which tended to leave cast members with little to do but march from one side of the stage to the other and back again in some of the numbers. The use of what seemed to be a rejected puppet from The Lion King was a mistake.
I came to the realization that, while the show is brilliant as a whole, the second act is really a wonder to behold. There's not a piece of flab on it and it really could stand on its own as a piece, coming as it does as a sort of reboot after the revelations of the first act finale. The dual stories of Rose and Louise in this act make it a stunning duel between two characters who are, ostensibly, on the same side. Benanti really came into her own here as Louise and the had some truely great moments mining things in this character that I've never seen before. The dressing room showdown was something to behold and Benanti's strength here really brought out the best in LuPone.
Special mention must be made of Fraser, Opel, and Caskey as the three burlesque strippers. Fraser got a laugh just about every time she opened her mouth. Caskey managed to steal their number with a literal interpretation of the lyric "I'm electrifyin' and I ain't even tryin'" that had to be seen to be believed. The usually hysterical Opel seemed more subdued between her more outrageous cohorts, but she fit in perfectly and did a great job.
I also wanted to mention that Sami Gayle, who played Baby June in the first act, did almost all her choreography en pointe. I couldn't believe it. It really made me sit up and take notice and realize that it's true that June is talented...but she has to escape third rate vaudeville if she's ever going to be something.
If you follow theatre at all, you've read all about LuPone's performance and who hated it and who loved it and why it worked and why it didn't. Big Woo. So I'm not going into all that here. I'll just say that enjoyed what she did and thought her interpretation was just swell.
Beauty and the Beast - I caught a performance of this long-running musical just before it closed. It had been years since I'd seen it. What a disappointment! The cast was walking through it like they only had a week to go before escaping their own particular Hell. The pacing and timing was all off kilter and the cast was taking every opportunity to mug to the audience. Unbelievable. Since the performances were so subpar, I had lots of opportunites to re-evaluate the show itself and found lots of flaws in the writing, execution, and conception that were somehow masked by the competent casts of yesteryear. But, you know what? The audience didn't care. They gave it the usual standing ovation. It's hard to fault the cast for not caring, if the audience doesn't care either.
Alive At Ten - This was a workshop of a new musical based on the film To Die For. It was just a workshop, so I'm not going to write a lot about it. But, the creators are well on their way to having a hit and Jane Krakowski or her agent would be well advised to contact these folks about playing the leading role. Keep an eye out for this show over the next few years (although one thing it needs is a new title, so look for it as an adaptation of To Die For no matter the title).
Frost/Nixon - Made a return visit to see this fascinating play. Definitely worth the second trip. Great performances in a really interesting piece. And it's being made into a film. Can't wait for that one.
Guilty - This play was the premiere presentation of a new company called The Cell Theatre. Really bad play. It never would have gotten produced had the writer not been a founder of the company. Interesting idea...not well realized in any way, except for an evocative set that worked well. Little of it worked. Better luck next time, Cell Theatre.
Romeo and Juliet - Jim and I caught the last performance of this in the park after waiting in line for over 12 hours. You read that right. But the play was worth it and we both really enjoyed it. Lauren Ambrose was a great Juliet and the whole thing was just a really great evening in the park.
Bajour - I caught the York's Musicals in Mufti presentation of this forgotten 1960's musical about gypsies (the actual eastern European kind) in New York. It was presented pretty much in street clothes and on book, as per usual for this series (which is like a lower budget version of Encores!). This was interesting to see, although I get why this show has fallen by the wayside. There were some interesting moments here and the cast was superb, but most of the show is just not good enough. And I found it a little distasteful that I was expected to sympathize with and root for a band of thieves (if there is an authentic gypsy culture that doesn't involve stealing, it goes unexamined here). Well, that's what series like Mufti are for, after all...and it was lovely to get a look at a show that will likely never resurface again.
Idol: The Musical - Wow! What a piece of shit! This show was probably one of the worst things I've ever seen on this level...another show that would never have been produced had the writers not done the honors themselves. There's literally nothing to say here other than that this was a grain of a good idea gone horribly wrong. Some of the cast members are good. Okay, it's about a group of young adults at a community college in Ohio who feel alienated from society and form their own little American Idol/Clay Aiken fan club. They get the chance to audition to be part of an Aiken tour and...chaos ensues. There aren't really any characters here...just stereotypes sort of sketched in with one or two details. The most ludicrous is a basketball player who decides to give up his sport and any ideas of furthering his education to be an exotic dancer (he sings about wanting to be a Chippendale, but the pole dance he does and the fact that the show is not set in 1984 make that hard to believe). Couple that with the fact that the actor saddled with this part has neither the dancing skills nor the body to actually enter this profession and you start to get the level of ineptitude of this production.
At dinner afterward, I was trying to brainstorm, with my new friend Eric who'd seen the show with me, how I could help the writers fix it, other than sending them back to their desks to write a better show. And I was having trouble coming up with ideas. Other than adding in some full frontal nudity, which always gets people talking, I was at a loss.
I was so embarrassed for all involved. I wanted to sit the writers down and go over the script line by line and find out exactly what they were thinking.
There's also a curious lack of gayness here for a show that partially centers on Clay Aiken, known by virtually everyone with a television or internet access to be gay. Not one character actually raises the subject, even though one of the women is clearly obsessed with having a sexual relationship with the singer. Even if you don't want to believe the ample evidence of Aiken's homosexuality, it seemed very disingenuous to not raise the subject at all.
And there actually is a gay character, although his sexuality is not acknowledged either and he has almost no story and certainly no romantic interests (not even amongst the two guys who strip to their underwear and are practically climbing all over each other in one number...nope nothing gay about that). This character's "resolution," in which he exchanges his flamboyant style for something more straight and conventional bordered on the offensive. Not cool, writers...know any actual gay people?
Like I said, there is an interesting grain of a story here about a group of young adults learning to replace unattainable dreams with more realistic ones and learning that it's okay for one's persona and style to evolve and change as life changes. But all that gets buried in bad jokes, bad songs, and an almost complete lack of actual characterization in the script.
Ugh...did I say how bad this was. Sorry, guys...better luck next time.
I saw married Broadway stars Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley outside a restaurant on West 44th Street this afternoon. There were speaking to another couple and had obviously just come from lunch. I didn't interrupt them, but might have had they been alone. I love them, especially her. I've seen her in SO many things. At the moment she's in Spamalot and he's in Curtains.
I passed director/actor Lonny Price on Ninth Avenue earlier tonight whilst I was en route to Westside Cottage to meet a friend for Chinese food. I was introduced to him last week, but didn't have the balls to stop him and say hi and remind him of who I was. Maybe next time.
So I had a great time in Denver for a couple of days with my friend Jason. The lack of humidity was a really nice change of pace. Let's see...what did we do?
Well, we went and visited the Molly Brown House, where we learned all sorts of fascinating things about this remarkable woman...not the least of which was that her name was Margaret and no one ever actually called her Molly. That name came later as her accomplishments began to get mythologized. There's so much more to this woman that just being a heroine of the Titanic disaster. Of course, most of the musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown is fiction (like most musicals about real people), and that's a shame since her real life contained more than enough inspiration for a drama or a musical. I found it fascinating that, late in life, she saw Sarah Bernhardt perform and the experience transformed her life such that she turned to acting herself and was quite successful playing Bernhardt's roles. She spent her last years living in New York acting and teaching acting. Wow.
We went to the Buffalo Bill gravesite and museam, which is on the top of mountain and has the most gorgeous views. Buffalo Bill was another real person who was eclipsed (even within his own lifetime) by legend. The real Bill Cody spent as many years in show business as he did as an actual frontiersman and he was a poor enough businessman that his famous Wild West Show was eventually seized and auctioned off to pay off debt.
We spent a little time in a small town called Golden, which happens to be the world headquarters of the Coors Brewing Company. Whoo-Hoo! It's too bad Coors tastes like piss. But it's a lovely town and even has a small professional theatre.
We drove through the very dramatic Red Rocks Park, although we couldn't see the actual amphitheatre because Bob Dylan was playing there. And we weren't big enough Dylan fans to pony up the $65 for a ticket. Too bad it wasn't Bernadette Peters. Place is beautiful though.
We visited two amusement parks, Lakeside Park and Elitch Gardens. It's always fun to ride a roller coaster. Jason even talked me getting shot into the sky on something called a Sling Shot, which scared the hell out of me, but turned out to be really fun. Lakeside was especially great at night because of all the vintage neon signage and I really recommend going in the evening if you can manage it.
We took a tour of the famous Brown Palace Hotel (no connection to Molly, although she did take credit for it anyway), which is THE old grand dame of the Denver hotel scene. Fascinating. The atrium lobby must be seen. Way Cool.
And, for all you South Park fans, we went to Casa Bonita...which I was surprised to discover was a real place. (Thanks, Rich!) If you haven't seen the great South Park episode where Cartman schemes to get in on a birthday trip to Casa Bonita, it's hard to describe the place. It's a Mexican themed restaurant with a lagoon, cliff divers, a marachi band, a pirate cave, improv shows, puppet shows, and various theme rooms in a suburban shopping center. It's pretty surreal. The food was okay, but it's all you can eat, so go hungry.
And that's pretty much it. I was only there for two days, so we managed to pack a lot into that time. It was fun. I'd go back.