Racing

This NYC vacation has gone so quickly, as my vacations are wont to do. We got up late again, and then realized we had a limited amount of time to purchase and send Mother’s Day presents, less than 2 hours, since we will be all tied up tomorrow with air travel, etc. So we ate our chocolate babka and with the energy it provided, raced out to the post office on the 9th floor of Macy’s to get Priority mail boxes, then to Hallmark, which it turns out is within the Herald Square train station, then back to the hotel to find another Hallmark, then to the other Hallmark on 7th Ave and 38th, then to 25th St and 7th Ave. to purchase the gifts, then back to the hotel to put them all together, then back to Macy’s post office again. And then we waited for a very long line, and at 1:40 we finally got our packages off, just in time to take the elevator to street level, race into the subway entrance, take the train to 49th St., and then walk quickly to the theater to catch our 2pm curtain, which I am proud to say we made with 5 minutes to spare!

In all that, we sort of missed lunch, so we’ll just have to make up for it at dinner.

The show “Race” was about racial relations. A rich man (the guy who played John Boy in the Waltons…the one with the big ass mole…) comes into a lawyers office wanting them to take his felony rape case. The partners (James Spader and David Alan Grier) try to decide whether they want to take the case. One is white, the other black. They have a black female intern lawyer also working for them, who gathers things for the case. Here is the kicker, the alleged rape victim is black. That is the basis of this fast paced legal drama written and directed by David Mamet.

Margie thought the play was so-so and that Ms Washington was weak. I liked the play better, especially the 2nd act which was a pot boiler. James Spader was really good, as you would expect.

There are rats in the 14th St/Union Square train station. That is all.

Dinner was at the Aroma Café, on 4th St. since we are seeing a off-Broadway production nearby. We didn’t get to sit in the romantic area downstairs, due to some large parties, so we sat upstairs in the bar area. Margie started with a lobster broth soup, which was a classic French fish soup. I had a Caesar salad, with some very nice anchovies and a poached egg! I have never had anything like it, and it was pretty good. The entrees were merely OK. Margie had a cod ravioli, dotted with calamari which was tough and tasteless. I had Sicilian meatloaf with Spinach and Polenta. All off it was rather tasteless. Well, unless salt is what you like. The meat itself was tough. For dessert I had a bread pudding with an almond ice cream. That was pretty good. The wine I had by the glass was decent too. All in all, this was a miss, from the well meaning but clueless service, to the loud environment, so the sometimes good, sometimes not so good food.

“Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson” was bloody, bloody brilliant! Besides a great history lesson on the “American Nazi” and 7th president, the irreverent (think: Forbidden Broadway) musical was very funny. Very, very funny. This is right up there with the best musicals we saw on this vacation, and we saw some good ones.

It will be sad to go home tomorrow, but in answer to the question, is it possible to want more after 14 shows in 10 days. Emphatically, yes!

Whole gluttony

This morning we walked to Whole Foods. It is only about a mile away, and I figured we needed to earn our babka with some exercise. We got both cinnamon and chocolate, and a vegan chocolate cake, and a chocolate scone. There is a common thread in the last sentence. Anyway, after that exhausting walk, I needed a slice or two. So I got two. Margie had something she picked up from the hot buffet at Whole Foods for lunch, and watched me eat the pizza. The picture is for my beloved daughter, who shares my love of NY pizza.

For dinner, we decided to try a Mexican restaurant, Ta Cocina on 9th Avenue. I had a Margarita for my appetizer, and Margie had a Daiquiri. For the main course, I had Mole steak enchiladas, with rice and beans, and it was quite good. The mole wasn’t super spicy, or super anything -- it just tasted good. Margie had fish tacos with a chipolte mayonnaise, black beans and rice, and liked it a lot. She only ate two of the tacos, so I filled the last one with the remainder of my Mole sauce, and it was really good that way too.

After a brief stop at Dean and De Luca, we walked to the theater on 45th Street, near where the car bomb had been planted. The police were there in force!!! Besides the NYPD TARU (Terrorist Alert Response Unit? I don’t know…), they had regular police, a bunch of police vans, and a bunch of unmarked vehicles containing who knows who. We also saw Shubert security. Shubert owns 17 of the 40 Broadway theaters. I don’t know if they were just there in a preventative way, or some big shot was eating at a restaurant there, or I they were just showing force to deter a copy-cat attack.

Anyway, we saw Next to Normal, and it was next to great! The star, and Tony winner Alice Ripley, did not appear. Instead her understudy did, Jessica Phillips. This is the danger of going to Tuesday night shows. Anyway, Jessica had a great voice, and very decent acting skills too. I wish we could have seen Alice, though.

The plot concerned a woman who has suffered a loss in her life, and is manic-depressive and delusional due to this traumatic event. Her high strung and high performing daughter, and loyal husband suffer from her issues. This doesn’t sound like a musical, does it? But it certainly was, and the music was actually pretty good. All in all we enjoyed the show, and it was definitely 5 tissues out of 5 on the emotional scale.

Our last 2 plays are tomorrow, and we also have to pack, so it should be an easy and fun day, not that they all haven’t been…

Somehow not starving

We slept in again. After 4 shows over the weekend, we were perhaps a little over stimulated. Margie said she didn’t feel like shopping, so I felt it was safe to stroll 5th Avenue. Wrong! She suddenly felt like shopping. We went into the 10 floor Lord and Taylor, and she was very excited by the whole floor of shoes (#3) but didn’t buy any. She did find a gown on floor #6 (petites), which fortunately had a cafe I could hang in too, run by some famous jam and pastry maker. She also bought a hippie blouse at another store, and a t-shirt at yet another.

It wasn’t a total bust for me, as I got to go to my favorite little deli for lunch on 42nd St. near 5th Avenue. I think it is called the 42nd St. Deli, imaginatively enough. It is next door to McDonalds. Anyway, they had fresh turkey today, so I got a warm turkey sandwich. Margie got a freshly made salad with all of her favorite vegetables.

You would think we would have gained like 10 pounds the way we have been eating. But actually I am on my last belt hole, and I mean the smallest belt circumference. It must be all of the walking. I didn’t confess yet that we ate the entire cinnamon babka the morning after we purchased it! That is about a half pound of babka apiece! Cinnamon babka is like a giant thin cinnamon roll dough, rolled up, without all of the super sweet and disgusting icing, so in other words, perfect. Ours was made by Lilly’s Bake Shop in Brooklyn. I would provide a link, but Site Advisor did not bless it, so google at your own risk. Anyway, I just warmed a slice of babka in the microwave for a few seconds, and it was good. So I cut another slice for Margie and for me. And on and on, until it was gone! Cinnamon babka is not the lesser babka! Maybe we will go get another at Whole foods tomorrow, or perhaps try the chocolate one. Oatmeal is getting boring…

It is always fun watching New Yorkers in action. One guy ran after a police tow truck today. I guess it was his vehicle lodged on the back of the truck. He yelled at the guy in the truck, who shrugged and turned onto 5th Avenue and drove away. Another time *two* guys who were not together tried to cross 5th Avenue just as the light was turning red, so there were two cars, a black limo and a cab accelerating to get through the intersection. The guys stopped midway between the two lanes, and the two cars sped right by, one behind the guys, and one in front. No honking or shaking of fists, just an understanding that if either decided to make a run for it, or back-track, they would be dead and the cabbie would be in trouble and probably lose their medallion.

For dinner we went to La Masseria, our favorite Italian place in the theater district. The food is so good, and the waiters so Italian. Anyway, Margie started with the Fritto Misto del Mare, lightly breaded calamari, shrimp, and scallops, with a light tomato sauce. She mostly just drizzled lemon juice on the perfectly cooked fish. I had a Spinach salad with pear slices, nuts, with a Gorgonzola dressing. There were also little chunks of Gorgonzola in the salad. Delicious. For our main courses, I had Gnocchi al Taleggio e Radicchi, which was potato gnocchi in a creamy Taleggio cheese sauce, with Radicchio. Not the best thing for me to eat, but it sure was tasty. I don’t know how they get their gnocchi to be so tender and delicious. Last time I had their ravioli, and it was perfect too. Margie had fettuccine with duck, one of the specials. The homemade fettuccine was so light, it reminded me of versions I have had in the north of Italy. For dessert I had the crème brule, and Margie had Amaretto coffee. We also shared a perfect Chianti during dinner, a half bottle of Machesi Mazzei Chianti. Anyway, for those who visit NYC and want one special dinner in the theater district, La Masseria would be my recommendation.

Our evening show was “In the Heights”, last year’s Tony winner. We really enjoyed it, and bought the cast recording at intermission. Great music, energetic cast, and good sets and special effects make this show one of the best we have seen. Margie liked it more than Billy Elliot. The audience was very badly behaved, again, and the ushers did nothing to stop them. Prior to the show, flashes were going off all over the theater. During the show, the constant chattering and Iphone usage was really distracting, too. But the show more than made up for the rude Monday night audience.

3 Shows to go, and the Tony nominations come out tomorrow!

Blown Away?

Another hot day, and of course New York is all abuzz over the attempted bombing. Like almost everyone else, we didn’t let it ruin our plans for the day. In fact, I always assume that after something like this happens, Times Square is probably the safest place on earth to be! With all those police, I don’t expect there will be another attempt.

I sort of buy the explanation that the target was Viacom headquarters, for showing the South Park episode with Mohammad dressed as a bear, but if they really wanted those guys, wouldn’t they bomb during the weekdays when the building was more occupied? Nope, I think they wanted to kill lots of little kids seeing Lion King. Bastards!

So that is twice now, for us. The last time was 7/7/2005, my dear daughter’s birthday, when our west end theater plans were destroyed by the terrorist bombings in London. We got a late start that day, and by the time (10am) we reached the tube station (subway), they were just closing it down. The next day we attended the theater just as we would have otherwise, in solidarity with the British people, and in support of the theater. When we alter our behavior and are afraid, the terrorists win.

We’ve been using the subway almost exclusively for our transportation, although Margie did talk me into cabbing it the other night for the opera. I love how convenient the subway is, and how easy and fast it is to go from place to place. It is also very cheap when you buy a pass. I haven’t bothered to say everywhere we have gone on this blog, because it is not of general interest -- most want to read the dining/theater reviews, and not my ramblings on New York life. For example, we went to Washington Square the other day, as in the picture.

Some things do bother me about the subway, like the sign I have photographed to the right. Now what is going on here? Someone who is, I guess, trying to help clumsy people has put these signs all around the various subway stations of the city so that they won’t slip and fall into the 4” gap between the subway car and the curb, and they have posted it in 5 languages! No French, so I assume they know better? Or are not so skinny? Stuff like this really bothers me, as it seems to me a much greater statistical threat would be the extremely heavy cars coming into the station at 40 mph, and the slight possibility someone may fall in front of one of them! But you see no warning signs. Nor signs suggesting that banging your head on the tile floor is a bad idea. Or falling down the stairs could cause harm. Or not giving your seat to an angry elderly type might get you shived!

Our first show today, the matinee, was “Hair”. I didn’t know anyone in the cast, but Margie knew someone named Ace Young from American Idol, who played Berger, one of the leads. He was good, as was the rest of the energetic ensemble. The music was dated, of course, but the cast did such a great job of delivering the goods, that you didn’t really care. The harmonies were lovely, and of course “Hair” and “Aquarius” remain show stoppers.

My advice to anyone who wants to go is to get aisle seats. My brother-in-law Jeff had recommended that, but I didn’t manage to get them. Telecharge filled the theater weirdly, with the center orchestra packed, and the left and right empty. So at intermission we moved much closer to aisle seats in the left orchestra, and the sound was waaayyy better. Plus you interact with the cast who spend a lot of time in the aisles.

The audience was *very* badly behaved. Texting, and talking were the worst sins. But what I couldn’t understand were the people who brought their pre-teens, like the woman on my right, before we switched seats! Did she not realize that hippies cussed a lot in the 60s? Or how about the constant simulated sex onstage? Or the famous nude scene at the end of the first act? What is so hard to understand about “For Mature Audiences”? Look, I am hardly a prude, and my indignation is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and I know some kids are more mature than others, but what, you can’t afford to spring for Lion King tickets so you take your two little girls to see “Hair“ and tell them to close their eyes at the end of the first act?

At any rate, the show was fun, and they let the audience dance on stage after the curtain call. So if you go to this link at look carefully (because she is short) at about 1:19 for 2 or 3 seconds, you can see Margie make her Broadway debut…

After the show, we dined at Virgil’s BBQ on 44th St., another old favorite. They have quick service, and we only had about an hour an a half to eat between shows. I had the BBQed lamb, with mashed potatoes and gravy, greens, and cornbread, and it was all very tasty. I also had Margie’s cornbread. And I had pecan pie too! Margie had a grilled chicken salad with avocado, smoked pork belly pieces, and a honey mustard dressing which she liked very much. I forgot to take pictures. Sorry!

Our evening show was “Billy Elliot”. They now have 5 Billy’s (“you know how kids get sick, and it is better than cancelling a performance”, said the usher). None of the 5 were among the 3 who won the Tony last year. But that is OK, our Billy was first rate in both voice and dance. The show was sold out, as it always is, and it was really brilliant from beginning to end, a dynamite adaptation of the movie. The seats were uncomfortable, again, as my knees touched the seats in front of me once more. Greedy bastards! Are there no other 6’2” men who attend theater? At this point I can probably look forward to our flight home on AA for the most leg-room! Anyway, Billy Elliot was a really good show, and we were really blown away by it...

Promises kept

We're halfway done with our trip and our shows, and it has been a good run with both. The weather turned very warm today -- mid-80s! So I saw our first show of the day, the matinee, in shorts. I wasn't alone.

I would not say my gender was terribly well represented, however. The audience for Promises, Promises was three fourths female, for sure. I wasn't sure if that was because of Sean Hayes ("Will and Grace") or Kristin Chenoweth ("Wicked"). Based on the cheers each got in their first scene, perhaps a little of both, with a slight edge to Sean Hayes. I had never seen him before having never watched Will and Grace, and Margie loves the show, so perhaps we are were microcosm of the audience.
The musical itself was dated, and I mean that in a bad way. When the top two songs were Dionne Warwick hits in the 1960s ("I Say a little Prayer for You", and "I'll never fall in love again"), and the rest of the score is also by Burt Bacharach, you can perhaps understand what I mean. Phantom of the Opera, this is not!

As for the leads, Sean Hayes was a decent enough actor, with his asides to the 4th wall getting the most laughs, but his singing was suspect. Good enough for this material I suppose, but no better. Kristin has an amazing voice for a little gal, but lacked the material to get the pipes really moving.

Still, and in spite of a marginal NY Times review, the house was packed (and advance ticket sales are through the roof) at the cavernous Broadway Theatre, and everyone seemed to enjoy it, including Margie.

I was highly uncomfortable. Not due to anything onstage. Now these were not our best seats in terms of distance to the stage. We were in the rear Mezzanine, which seemed to start at Broadway and extend back to nearly 8th Avenue! Opera glasses would not have been inappropriate. I got what I could get, as this was one of the last plays I booked, and it was already booked pretty solid for this particular day. But eye strain was not the source of my discomfort. It was the seats! Sitting all the way back in my chair, I could not sit straight ahead without driving the seats in front of me forward with my knees. Just ridiculous, and the worst theater experience I have had in terms of being cramped, since seeing "Rent" here several years ago. I remember swearing last year that I would always book aisle seats from now on. If only that had been possible at this particular show. So anyway, in spite of the less than stellar show, in my opinion, and my discombobulated posture following the show, I took one for the team, which means Margie. She liked it a lot.

I suppose I should say a word about the plot. A NYC guy (Sean Hayes) working at an insurance company tries to advance his career by loaning his apartment out to the "Mad Men" executives for their carnal adventures. His ploy works, and he becomes a Junior Executive. But the girl (Kristin) he wants is also having an affair with his boss, one of the guys he is lending his key to most every night of the week. This might have been racy in the 1960s, but without the success of the aforementioned TV series, or the inestimable talents of the leads, I doubt anyone would have been interested.

Dinner was at an old favorite, Shun Lee on 65th. It used to be better, I think. Anyway, we shared the boiled szechwan dumplings, Neptunes platter which was a potato basket filled with seafood, and Sesame chicken, which was stringy rather than fried, and Hunan Broccoli. It was all good enough, and better than anything we get in Ashland, but for the astronomical prices, I guess I expected better.

But the location can't be beat for a show at Lincoln Center, which is right across the street. We sauntered over after the meal, and went into the beautiful Met Opera House to see "Carmen". This show has long been sold out, because it is both a stunning production, and it featured a up and coming tenor named Jonas Kaufmann as Don Jose. So we had to buy scalper tickets to get in, and we ended up with incredible seats, 10 rows back in the orchestra, mid-center. Some of the seats in the theater have memorials, and the one in front of us was for Enrico Caruso, so you know you have good seats! They are not going to give Enrico a dedication in the 5th balcony, trust me.

Carmen was played by Kate Aldrich, and she was a revelation. Beautiful, young, thin, this mezzo-soprano seems to have it all. Her acting was as stellar as her singing, and she even did a cartwheel on stage at one point! I guess you no longer have to suspend disbelief at the opera as you did when your Carmen weighed in at 250 lbs. No fat ladies sang here...

Anyway, the opera was just wonderful. Bizet's familiar music was utterly enchanting, the singers were great in every respect, and the sets were magnificent. I am so glad we decided on this particular production.

UPDATE: I wanted to let everyone know we were not in the vicinity of the car bomb that detonated but failed to explode on W 45th St. We were in the upper west side at the time this happened. But where it was located, in front of the Imperial Theater, is exactly where we will be that time this afternoon when we see "Hair" and this evening when we see "Billy Elliot". No worries. We are still planning to attend...