Sorry, I didn’t respond earlier – it’s been very busy. Thank you all for your advice about the Violet/Hedwig doubleheader, which I did last Saturday with great success! Violet started at 8:05, so I thought I’d have no problems, but the curtain call didn’t end until 9:52. I had purposely gotten an aisle ticket and I got out of the theater extremely quickly without having to leave early, leaving on the 43rd Street side. It only took about 4 minutes to walk to the Belasco, so I got there about 9:57. I was surprised to find when I got there that there were still many people waiting in line to be let into the theater! Not sure what that was all about. Hedwig started at 10:07, so I had about a 15-minute break between the two shows.
It was a lot less crazy than I thought it would be, because the two shows were physically so close to each other that I didn’t have to run and, as haterobics had suggested, it just seemed like intermission between two very different acts! Although I was a little distracted towards the end of Violet once it was getting to 9:40 - 9:45 with no clear sign when the show was ending. It seems like this performance was a little long, although I’m not sure why. It seemed to go smoothly.
(SPOILERS BELOW)
In terms of the shows themselves, I enjoyed them both. I thought Violet had a great cast and score. Alexander Gemignani was out, but Charlie Pollock did a great job. I thought some of the staging was less clear than it could have been, particularly what was a flashback and what was just a vision and only existed in Violet’s head. And I’m not sure I understood why the three main characters all seemed to fall for each other so quickly. Someone once commented that the three all seem about 10 years too old for their part, which I kind of agree with. The characters seem more like people in their early twenties than people in their thirties. But Joshua Henry and Sutton Foster can sell anything, and listening to them sing was glorious.
I thought Hedwig and Neil Patrick Harris were hugely entertaining. NPH reminded me a lot of James Corden in One Man, Two Guvnors, both in the audience interaction and in the way he can effortlessly make something seem like improv when it actually isn’t. He did the carwash on someone in the center section on the aisle, about 4 – 5 rows back, which I think is a different seat location than usual. I wonder if it was a celebrity or someone he knew. I couldn’t see the person from my seat. There was one portion that I’m sure doesn’t happen every night, although I’m not sure if NPH makes the same references every time it happens. When he asked the box occupants if they had seen Belasco’s ghost, one woman said yes. NPH seemed a little taken aback, then said that since she had seen the ghost, then surely she could describe the ghost and the encounter in excruciating detail, so could she do that right now? This was of course met with dead silence from the audience member, which got a huge laugh. Then he riffed on that, saying that since she wasn’t saying anything, maybe the ghost was a mime? Then he started talking about how the ghost must have been distracted by her huge breasts. He made more comments about her breasts when he returned to talking to the box occupants later. It was all really funny. I would agree with those who have said that his portrayal of Hedwig could be less “fun” and he could have explored the pathos more, but I still had a great time.
For those who care, NPH came out the stage door about 35 – 40 minutes after the show was over, and signed for everyone within reach, but a bunch of people had lined up along the outer wall of the barricade and he only walked down the two sides between him and his car and didn’t travel down the length of the barricade as people had hoped he would. I don’t know if this is typical for him or not.
"What was the name of that cheese that I like?"
"you can't run away forever...but there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start"
"well I hope and I pray, that maybe someday, you'll walk in the room with my heart"
Updated On: 8/8/14 at 05:55 AM
