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tzikehThe weather continues to be glorious. Wednesday was a double-header; we found out on Tuesday that we could easily get tickets to a matinee of Forbidden Broadway. And man, am I ever glad we did.
I've been in love with Forbidden Broadway since its first incarnation in '81. I've always been a huge fan of parody, and a fan of the Broadway musical, so FB is like heaven to me. We got tickets the day before and quickly discovered why it was easy to get them when we arrived - the audience was about a quarter full, made up of old women and men who have nothing else to do with their Wednesday afternoons. While that can sometimes be the worst kind of audience, in this particular instance it made no difference, because![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
whatssnoo and I howled with laughter through the whole thing. We drew some fish-eyes, but FUCK YOU LADY, it's a freaking COMEDY. They opened with the murder of Annie, followed by the familiar "CHUNG CHUNG" of Law & Order. Then "Belzer" and "Wong" came out and started investigating the brutal murder of the Broadway musical. The numbers ranged from "You Gotta Get a Puppet" to "Defying Subtlety" (and I know I have Wicked fans on my flist, but I gotta tell you that they hit the nail on the freaking head for me with that one) to perhaps my favorite, "Unworthy of Your Love" where John Hinkley and Squeaky Fromme sing to a photo of Stephen Sondheim. We died and we are dead.
Down the street from Forbidden Broadway is an internet... I was going to say an "internet café", but honestly it's an internet automat. And you thought the automat was gone forever! This place - you buy a ticket with a number on it, then you walk into this... it's hard to describe. I wish I'd had a camera with me. It looks like something out of Brazil, a cavernous room FILLED with rows and rows of people sitting at long bars of mice and keyboards with endless wooden half-walls hung flat-panel monitor screens. It was sort of a 21st-century version of the switchboard offices, with at least two hundred people clacking away.
Anyway. Did the usual internet check-in for mail and lj, and then we were off to La Maison Du Chocolat.
So we walked up to to 30 Rock to visit My Favorite Chocolate Store Ever Ever Ever. We picked up a little box for ourselves and a bigger box for our lovely host,_par_avion. I may have to get back there before we leave, because I really want to know what a $7 cup of hot cocoa tastes like. Mmmmmm. (p.s. try the website - they have an interactive menu where you can click on a piece of chocolate and find out what's in it. Fun!) More walking (but not too far; thanks to Vindigo!) to a nice swordfish dinner and a chocolate martini (hmmm, sensing a theme here) and then our evening show.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf... well, what can one say. It's been at or near the top of my list of Great American Plays since the first time I encountered it, and the entire trip to NYC was predicated upon my reading that Bill Irwin would be playing George in a Braodway revival of it this spring. Because I have not had enough coffee yet, I can't be coherent about it much. I wish I could; I used to be very good at writing essays about performances and the like. Posting "this was great!" doesn't really tell you much except that I enjoyed it, but we were second-row center and may as well have been in George and Martha's living room. Bill Irwin was, as usual, my personal theatrical God, and if you have never seen him perform live, you are missing one of the great talents of our age. Hollywood doesn't know what to do with him and, quite frankly, I don't think there *is* anything they can do with him. He is meant for live performance and if you are ever lucky enough that one of his shows comes to your town, run, don't walk. And oh, yeah, Kathleen Turner played Martha. ;)
Honestly, the entire cast was magnificent and the play holds up brilliantly - they used a *very very slightly* altered version of the script, which distracted me at the time because I'm so familiar with the text, but in hindsight (and after talking about it briefly to Ms. Turner and Mr. Irwin after the show) I think the cuts made good theatrical sense. There's just so *much* to say about this show, and this version of this show, and I have no words at the moment, and then the moment will pass and I'll be on to other things and feel stupid coming back to it and... sigh. Anyway, it was one those experiences theater-goers live for, where you fall in love with the experience of live theater all over again.
Tonight? SPAMALOT.
I've been in love with Forbidden Broadway since its first incarnation in '81. I've always been a huge fan of parody, and a fan of the Broadway musical, so FB is like heaven to me. We got tickets the day before and quickly discovered why it was easy to get them when we arrived - the audience was about a quarter full, made up of old women and men who have nothing else to do with their Wednesday afternoons. While that can sometimes be the worst kind of audience, in this particular instance it made no difference, because
whatssnoo and I howled with laughter through the whole thing. We drew some fish-eyes, but FUCK YOU LADY, it's a freaking COMEDY. They opened with the murder of Annie, followed by the familiar "CHUNG CHUNG" of Law & Order. Then "Belzer" and "Wong" came out and started investigating the brutal murder of the Broadway musical. The numbers ranged from "You Gotta Get a Puppet" to "Defying Subtlety" (and I know I have Wicked fans on my flist, but I gotta tell you that they hit the nail on the freaking head for me with that one) to perhaps my favorite, "Unworthy of Your Love" where John Hinkley and Squeaky Fromme sing to a photo of Stephen Sondheim. We died and we are dead.Down the street from Forbidden Broadway is an internet... I was going to say an "internet café", but honestly it's an internet automat. And you thought the automat was gone forever! This place - you buy a ticket with a number on it, then you walk into this... it's hard to describe. I wish I'd had a camera with me. It looks like something out of Brazil, a cavernous room FILLED with rows and rows of people sitting at long bars of mice and keyboards with endless wooden half-walls hung flat-panel monitor screens. It was sort of a 21st-century version of the switchboard offices, with at least two hundred people clacking away.
Anyway. Did the usual internet check-in for mail and lj, and then we were off to La Maison Du Chocolat.
So we walked up to to 30 Rock to visit My Favorite Chocolate Store Ever Ever Ever. We picked up a little box for ourselves and a bigger box for our lovely host,
_par_avion. I may have to get back there before we leave, because I really want to know what a $7 cup of hot cocoa tastes like. Mmmmmm. (p.s. try the website - they have an interactive menu where you can click on a piece of chocolate and find out what's in it. Fun!) More walking (but not too far; thanks to Vindigo!) to a nice swordfish dinner and a chocolate martini (hmmm, sensing a theme here) and then our evening show.Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf... well, what can one say. It's been at or near the top of my list of Great American Plays since the first time I encountered it, and the entire trip to NYC was predicated upon my reading that Bill Irwin would be playing George in a Braodway revival of it this spring. Because I have not had enough coffee yet, I can't be coherent about it much. I wish I could; I used to be very good at writing essays about performances and the like. Posting "this was great!" doesn't really tell you much except that I enjoyed it, but we were second-row center and may as well have been in George and Martha's living room. Bill Irwin was, as usual, my personal theatrical God, and if you have never seen him perform live, you are missing one of the great talents of our age. Hollywood doesn't know what to do with him and, quite frankly, I don't think there *is* anything they can do with him. He is meant for live performance and if you are ever lucky enough that one of his shows comes to your town, run, don't walk. And oh, yeah, Kathleen Turner played Martha. ;)
Honestly, the entire cast was magnificent and the play holds up brilliantly - they used a *very very slightly* altered version of the script, which distracted me at the time because I'm so familiar with the text, but in hindsight (and after talking about it briefly to Ms. Turner and Mr. Irwin after the show) I think the cuts made good theatrical sense. There's just so *much* to say about this show, and this version of this show, and I have no words at the moment, and then the moment will pass and I'll be on to other things and feel stupid coming back to it and... sigh. Anyway, it was one those experiences theater-goers live for, where you fall in love with the experience of live theater all over again.
Tonight? SPAMALOT.
