Well, dear readers, here I am, high in the sky, beginning these here notes on location. I only got an hour or two of sleep. The trip to the airport was quick and effortless, and getting through security was relatively painless. The flight took off on time. These are very short sentences. Has anyone noticed how short these sentences are? They are brief, these sentences. We seem to have two extremely orthodox Jewish people on this plane. They have put on their prayer shawls, strapped little things to their heads and arms and are roaming around the aisles doing all manner of kissing and bowing and looking at their prayer books and I must say it’s kind of unnerving. The stewardi don’t seem to give a flying Wallenda, so I shan’t either. I have ordered my Diet Coke and hopefully they’ll have some snack things, too. Jet Blue now has “Mint” seats, which is like first class. It would have basically doubled the cost of the flight had I chosen that option, but it’s still hugely less expensive than first class on any other airline. And all those seats are taken so it’s working. The seats are large, they get large TV screens, too – there are five rows of two seats per row so twenty seats only.
I am quite tired and perhaps after my drink and snack I’ll doze off – that would be a very good thing. I shall continue from the hotel.
And here we are, back at the hotel after a lovelier than lovely evening here in a very cold and rainy New York, New York, the city that never sleeps. I must write the rest of these notes in a hurry because while the city never sleeps I really must, as we have an incredibly long and complicated day tomorrow.
The flight was effortless and quick, but the cab ride was a bit of a nightmare thanks to really incredible traffic. What should have been a forty-minute ride took almost ninety.
I checked into the hotel – they really only had two rooms available (of the sort I booked), one on the first floor and one on the eleventh, but I took the first floor because the eleventh floor is right under a noisy club they have. The room is very nice and I’m fine with it. I went down to the Duane Reade right nearby and got the few things I needed to have, then came back up, got the computer set up and relaxed a bit. Then I moseyed on down to walk to the theater to pick up the tickets. As I was leaving, Sami and her mom arrived, so we chatted for a bit. Thankfully, they have an umbrella in the room, so I used that for the twenty block walk to the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, so named for my close personal friend, Mr. Stephen Sondheim. The seats were very good. I then took a walk and killed some time, then Adryan Russ showed up and in we went to see Beautiful, the musical about Carole King.
I will say in advance that I was pretty much prepared to not like it, but I was hugely surprised and how that was not the case. In fact, for whatever reasons, I had a big ol’ lump in my throat for almost the entirety of the show, a lot of that having to do with the power of the songs themselves, but also having to do with Doug McGrath’s excellent structure for the show. But where this production truly becomes a transcendental experience is the performance of Jessie Mueller. She is, in a word, perfect. She’s so real and raw, her performance has such joy and occasional pain, she’s just a marvel to watch. But the entire cast is really excellent, and it was great seeing my pal Liz Larsen (playing the mother) having such a great time and doing such a great job. And I was extremely impressed by the sound design of the show. The sound is completely natural and never sounds horribly amplified in all the dialogue scenes as well as the scenes where Carole and company are creating and writing the songs. The amplification is really only used for the performance numbers – it all works beautifully. The direction is certainly competent and gets the job done and the choreography is simple and strictly limited to the performance numbers. The lighting is also terrific. My one nitpick is the set – I’m simply not a fan of this designer and I’m extremely bored of the Next to Normal “look” of a lot of shows. This doesn’t completely do that, but half the time it does and it doesn’t add anything or really work for the show itself. All in all, a wonderfully wonderful evening of theater.
After that, we convened at Joe Allen. Maddy Claire Parks and her friend were there, and the Staitmans, who’d seen a show at the Public, were also there. I didn’t know many people, but my pals Paul Kreppel and Murphy Cross came in – I literally see them all the time, no matter what coast I’m on. I had only eaten some pretzels, so I had a small Caesar and the chicken Cajun sandwich I like. We got three desserts for the table to share, all very good. Then I came back to the hotel.
Today, I’ll be up around eight-thirty and to rehearsal by a few minutes before ten. It’s only ten blocks from here. I do hope the rain stops, though. Rehearsal will be long and then we do our two back-to-back stumble-throughs, which has to end by seven. Then a few of us go directly to see Gentleman’s Guide to Murder and then some dinner.
Tomorrow, I can sleep as late as I like and will. Then I’ll relax until four-thirty, at which point I’ll go to The Triad for set-up and sound check. Then we have our two shows, and I’ll eat somewhere after them, maybe the Brooklyn Diner or perhaps something close to The Triad. Sunday is the same exact thing, and then I fly home first thing Monday morning. We still need a lot of people to see the shows, and we had not one reservation yesterday – really kind of sickening.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have a very long rehearsal day and then see a show. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player and your DVD/Blu and Ray player? I’ll start – nothing. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after having a beautiful time appreciating the beauty of Beautiful.