Our March trip to New York City and its August - and October - sequels- Page 4

[inception]

Posted: 8/28/23 at 12:28pm

Have you ever gone out to Coney Island & walked the boardwalk?  I did that last summer and it was nice.  Walked to Brighton Beach area then had lunch at one of the restaurants with awnings open out onto the boardwalk.  They're pricey, buy it was nice on a weekday.  I imagine a weekend would be crazy busy.  I thought Brighton Beach close the beach seems like it would be a nice neighborhood to have an apartment in.   I have no idea what it costs to live there though, and I don't know what's it like in the winter.  Probably quite windy off the water?

[bear88]

Posted: 8/29/23 at 12:29am

I went to Coney Island on a trip a few years back and enjoyed it. The funny thing is that our trip has been so up in the air, and at this point pretty brief, that we haven't done much in the way of planning, the way we normally would. My wife and I will figure things out when we get there, outside of the show Wednesday night and the wedding on Thursday night.

Updated On: 8/29/23 at 12:29 AM

[bear88]

Posted: 9/4/23 at 6:51pm

A lot of the short trip was improvised, from our postponed departure date to the show we saw (Here Lies Love instead of Funny Girl) - except for the wedding we attended on Thursday.

Here Lies Love fit the bill for a musical to see in New York City, as it will never be able to tour as the spectacle it is at the Broadway Theatre (assuming it tours at all), and the price - $35 rush tickets - couldn't be beat even though I was concerned we would be too far back and to the side in Row F of rear mezzanine to enjoy the musical. But with the all the video screens and stuff to watch (and sometimes dance), it really wasn't a problem. Sometimes, our "distant" view worked to our advantage. The scene in which Conrad Ricamora, as Ninoy Aquino, sings to and looks at Arielle Jacobs' Imelda Marcos in the second half of the show was fascinating just because I was watching Ricamora in person while checking out the screen when he looked back to Jacobs on the stage. The combination of David Korins' scenic design and DJ Moses Villarama's introduction - noting the U.S. purchase of the Philippines - gets the show off to a spectacular start. The leads were all in, and they do an excellent job. The weakness, as many others have noted, is the book, which alternates between making excuses for Imelda Marcos (she's taking pills, her husband cheated on her) and doing an abrupt heel-turn towards the end. The show sometimes does what I hoped: illustrate the appeal of autocratic leaders despite and perhaps because of their corruption and despotism. But I guess the musical never really fooled me, even when we were doing our dance moves. It's a bit like Great Comet's second act middle section, before "In My House," only about real people. It was easy to get caught up in Great Comet, but I never felt seduced or betrayed during Here Lies Love. Instead, I got a little bored during the somewhat meandering middle section.

But the musical concludes strongly even if what is apparently a revised speech by Villarama is a little too on the nose about the dangers to democracy. "God Draws Straight" is such a strong song that I kind of regretted the new megamix that ends the show. But I agree with Peter Marks of the Washington Post that the show is more a party than a parable. I'm glad I experienced it.

[inception]

Posted: 9/4/23 at 10:14pm

I've been looking forward to your trip report.  Hopefully you will finally get to see Funny Girl when it tours.

[edwardkgill]

Posted: 10/11/23 at 2:16pm

muscle23ftl said: "So, did you end up seeing Funny Girl with LEA? I think it's the best show in town. I hated it with Beanie though. Discover the excitement of free games at your fingertips. Check out the other top casino games chosen by Canadians at spieltimes.com. Immerse yourself in the joy of risk-free games, where fun is combined with convenience. But the LEA, Tovah, Ramin, Jared chemistry is very good and fixed the show completely to have a talented singer like LEA. I hated Kimberly Akimboo, and wasn't crazy about Shucked, so we may have a similar taste sometimes."

Absolutely! I couldn't agree more. LEA's performance truly elevates the show, and the chemistry among the cast is magical. It's great to find someone who shares similar tastes!

Updated On: 10/24/23 at 02:16 PM

[bear88]

Posted: 10/12/23 at 12:26am

OP here. Assuming nothing goes haywire, and it always might, we’ll be in New York City next week. Plans are mostly settled, as we already bought tickets for two of the shows we’re planning to see.

Tuesday - Here We Are

Wednesday evening - Merrily We Roll Along (I guess the tickets will arrive in my inbox on Monday. Is that correct?)

Thursday - ?????

As my wife is indulging my interest in seeing the Sondheim shows we haven’t already seen earlier in the year, she will get to decide what we see on Thursday. (She doesn’t want to see a Wednesday matinee so we can see more around the city during the day.) But even if I was going alone, I am not sure what I would choose.

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding sounds like a good play, and Purlie Victorious certainly has received glowing reviews.

Of the musical options, and my wife is more of a musical person, I am torn between Little Shop of Horrors (never seen it, can Constance Wu sing?), Gutenberg! (which sounds fun but awfully slight), the second preview of Harmony (is the score any good?), or possibly Some Like it Hot. We have seen Sweeney Todd, Shucked, Kimberly Akimbo, and Here Lies Love of the newer shows.

I have been trying to figure out where to eat near The Shed before Tuesday’s show. It seems like there are many options.

Here’s hoping we are there next week.

[LuckyDipster]

Posted: 10/12/23 at 5:40am

I'm always going to bang the drum for Back To The Future.

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 10/12/23 at 6:11am

Yes - your Merrily tickets will arrive in your inbox a couple days before the show! Merrily is easily the best thing on Broadway right now in my opinion, so you're in for a real treat there. Gutenberg is a great deal of fun, and I would definitely recommend that. The Off-Broadway production of Little Shop is also fantastic. Some Like It Hot is a perfectly respectable and polished show, but I found it a little dull for some reason.

Re the plays: I know I'm in the minority, but I really didn't love Purlie as much as most folks. Didn't see Jaja yet.

 

[bear88]

Posted: 10/18/23 at 1:55am

I wanted to like Here We Are but was delighted by what a successful adaptation it turned out to be. Book writer David Ives and director Joe Mantello did right by Stephen Sondheim. I’ll write more later but it’s a wonderful, surprisingly sweet production that features terrific performances by the whole cast, but especially Rachel Bay Jones, Dennis O’Hare and David Hyde Pierce. I suspect familiarity with the source material will enhance enjoyment of the show even if it includes some spoilers. The much-discussed absence of conventional songs during much of the second act shouldn’t work but didn’t bother me at all.

Merrily tonight. We’re seeing Little Shop of Horrors on Thursday.

[bear88]

Posted: 10/24/23 at 3:46am

A summary of our short New York City trip, last week, which proved that if I drag my wife to enough Stephen Sondheim shows, she'll end up liking a couple of them (she's a saint for indulging me):

Tuesday -- Here We Are. I've had nearly a week to mull this musical over. A few thoughts: Rachel Bay Jones is a marvel in this, especially in the second act. It's hard to pull off emptyheaded but openhearted this well, and every quality her spoiled rich character possesses, Jones creates a  hilarious but warm person out of it. The first act, based on "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie," is quite funny - and Sondheim, while composing songs that reminded me in structure and sometimes in melody of other of his songs, has a lot of fun while integrating the music with bookwriter David Ives' score very successfully. Other highlights include David Hyde Pierce, as a bishop in spiritual crisis, and Denis O'Hare - who is especially good playing a variety of characters, including one who turns out to be a bit of a surprise. There are a few conventional songs early in the second act, and one - by Jones - created the one meta moment in the show for me, because it was obviously the last Sondheim song. The second act has spurred some gripes, but it didn't bother me at all. Ives and director Joe Mantello create a show that departs from Bunuel's "The Exterminating Angel" in the second act with its sweetness and humanity that I wasn't entirely expecting - and which many of the characters - most of whom aren't as richly drawn as Jones' Marianne or Pierce's bishop - arguably don't earn.  But the entire show, lovingly directed and staged, felt complete to me, ending on a properly ambiguous note. It's a bit much to have expected Sondheim, in his late 80s or early 90s, to dash off another "Sunday" for the cast to sing at the end.

Wednesday -- Merrily We Roll Along. If Tuesday brought the excitement and unexpected pleasures of a new Sondheim show, Wednesday was a spectacular remount of a famously-flawed musical that I had never seen in person before but knew very well. It was the best revival I have ever seen, thanks to the brilliant directing choices of Maria Friedman and the terrific trio of Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe. Not to be overlooked, because it's such an impossible role, is Krystal Joy Brown as second wife Gussie and her ex-husband Joe, played by Reg Rogers. Merrily is the unusual Sondheim show in which the women are less well-drawn than the men, but the problem with the show was always what to do about Frank. Groff, as I suspected he might be, is the perfect Frank - his insecure smarm barely hides his self-loathing - and he's likeable enough of an actor to pull it off. Plus, his friends Mary and Charley were always too dependent on him, and that issue feels addressed - balancing the show. Friedman's staging of Merrily as a memory play is brilliantly simple and solves a multitude of problems. I knew, by the time the overture and title song were done that we were in good hands. I even thoroughly enjoyed "Bobby and Jackie and Jack." Frank's son gets one too many lines, almost designed to make one forget that Mary attended the older Frank Jr.'s graduation when Frank didn't. But that small quibble was easy to forgive as the show reaches its emotional climax and then comes full circle. 

Thursday -- Little Shop of Horrors. I worried without reason about how Constance Wu would handle the role of Audrey, at least the singing, but she was terrific. The performance suffered from one important problem: sound design. The "urchins" were so loud that it was often hard to make out the lyrics, a problem that often cropped up with the plant and occasionally with a game Corbin Bleu, who was having a blast. When Howard Ashman is writing the lyrics, you want to catch every word. Wu and the extremely funny Bryce Pinkham (as the dentist and many other roles) were easily understood. 

Updated On: 10/24/23 at 03:46 AM