As I was preparing to leave for the reading, I turned on the tv and, because it was on every channel, caught the end of the Pope's address to the United Nations. Within five minutes my computer was down and the tv froze, both on Time Warner Cable. My first reaction was, great, terrorists just hit the UN and blew up all communication at the same time. I expected to get to the subway and find New York in panic mode. Well, whatever happened at Time Warner was terrorist activity and eveything seems to be working now.
The reading was quite a lot of fun. About three years ago, Stephen Cole and David Krane wrote a musical ASPIRE for the Emir of Qatar, and it must have been a circus from the evidence in the new musical about creating ASPIRE called - in homage to Crosby and Hope - The Road To Qatar. Two Jews on the loose in the Far East, dealing with interpreters, casting in London, recording in Bratislava, and all performed by five very very funny people and one of the theatre's great pianists: Seth rudetsky and Brad Oscar were the standins for Krane and Cole, Rob Bartlett, Ray Wills, and Mary Birdsong were every person from Egyptian producer to Air India flight attendent, and the musical direction wasprovided by the great Paul Ford.
I saw a lot of friends including David Garrison, Beth Fowler, the director Marcia Milgrom Dodge and her husband Tony. I hadn't seen Paul Ford in about 10 years, which is amazing to me, but I hadn't seen David Krane in about the same amount of time. I sat with Beth, who just finished up a run in STEEL MAGNOLIAS. I also talked to Maury Yeston, who loved the reading, in the elevator after the performance. I wish the show well; it's outrageously funny.
