TiVo Lady

In the Heights

TiVoLady actually leaves the house!  TiVoLady visits the City of New York with RioGringa!  TiVoLady sees In the Heights, a wonderfully-moving and seriously good Broadway musical, and that's not just my opinion.

This is an air-brushed, sparkly-eyed view of Washington Heights, the part of upper Manhattan that's home to lots of Dominicans and Cubans and miscellaneous Latinos.  And it's all about the tug-of-war between wanting to leave the 'hood forever, and longing to stay in a place that feels like home.  And, ironically, it was written by a kid from the Heights who ended up at Wesleyan University, in Connecticut, and wrote the musical for a school project.  How's that for precocious?

The music is zippy and fun, the dancing is hypnotic, and the whole thing is a feel-good experience for whities from the 'burbs, like me, who leave the theater feeling they've had an authentic Hispanic experience, Broadway style.  But the best part is that although most of the lead actors are in their early 20's, like Lin-Manuel Miranda, the 28-year-old boy wonder who wrote and stars in the production, many of the supporting actors are older.  Or, let's say, supposed to be older.  There's Abuela Claudia, who's supposed to be a grandma, but is played by Olga Merediz, an actress who cleverly hides her age, even from the Omniscient Internet, but she's got to be in her 50's.  And there are Nina's parents, Camila and Kevin, played by Priscilla Lopez, who's 60 (!), and Carlos Gomez, who's 44-years-old.  So Boomers get their day in the Dominican sun!

I'm a sucker for this kind of noisy, happy musical:  and I loved every single minute of it, especially since Kate got us house seats through her brother-in-law, the stage manager of Spamalot.  Eighth row, on the aisle....

South Pacific: Glorious!

Several months ago, I persuaded Kate that we needed to have a double date to see South Pacific, the much-ballyhooed revival at Lincoln Center.  We hemmed and hawed, and finally bought expensive tickets two months in advance--and the day of the performance finally arrived.  We zipped into the theater, instantly caught sight of Janet Maslin, the book reviewer for The New York Times, and the moderator at every screening we go to at our local indy movie house.  Her presence was proof that we'd snagged hot tickets at the zenith of the show's hotness.  (As if we needed further proof--last night's Tony Awards provided it, too.)

In any case, South Pacific has the most glorious music ever--Some Enchanted Evening, Bali Ha'i, Bloody Mary, I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair, Younger than Springtime, There is Nothing Like a Dame, and on and on--and one of the most dated plots ever, too.  See, the nurse Nellie regrets her alliance with the hot French planter, Emile, because he was married to a Polynesian, now conveniently dead.  And they had children!  Halfsies, even!!  It's difficult to recreate the horror that audiences felt in 1949.  But it doesn't even matter.  Kelli O'Hara plays Nellie and she's radiant with sweetness and naivete, and the pain of being in love with a man she doesn't quite understand.  Her voice is lovely, and I didn't want her to stop singing.  Likewise, Paolo Szot, a Brazilian opera singer, plays Emile, and he's sexy and handsome and just about perfect.  And when he sung This Nearly Was Mine, I had chills, even though it was the only song I didn't recognize.  The director has toned everything down, to a low energy buzz, as if the production is saying--take it or leave it, this is what it is.  Kelli O'Hara sings the blockbuster song, A Wonderful Guy, sitting down, though she's belting it out for all she's worth.  She's not trying to sell the song--it's a classic, so that's not necessary--she's just doing her very best.  And the result is moving and amazing and worth every single penny of the 12,500 pennies it cost to get in the door.

Lincoln Center these days, by the way, is one giant mess, with huge construction barriers all over the former plaza.  There are narrow corridors leading to each theater, but it's difficult to figure out where you are going, although you can see most of the buildings in the distance.  Next week, I go back there, to see a performance by American Ballet Theater with RioGringa...

Here's my somewhat illegal indoor shot, in the lobby of the Vivian Beaumont Theater.  Look closely, and you can see the construction barriers all around the outside windows. 

The Seafarer and the Ladies Room

Seeing a Broadway play is very different than seeing a Broadway show--and I mean that in a good way.  In The Seafarer, by Conor McPherson, there are five characters on a stage, acting in a shabby, dirty downstairs room of a house in Baldoyle, near Dublin.  There are no flashy costumes, no loud orchestra, no fancy footwork, no elaborate sets and fancy tricks.  It's just acting.  On a stage.  With words.

And it was fabulous.  Good thing, though, that we went to the Ladies Room at intermission.  While waiting on the (inevitable) line, we learned that the "seafarer" is how the Irish traditionally refer to the Devil, a very useful bit of info while watching this play.  Even more important, we learned that you can get a set of headphones in the lobby so that you are able to hear the damn play.  This is crucial for someone like me, for example, who has terrible hearing.  During Act I, I was sitting in the mezzanine, far from the stage, trying to figure out the thick Irish accents of barely-heard phrases and comprehended maybe sixty percent of what was going on.  Very, very frustrating.  But after that crucial visit to the Lady's, I approached Act 2 with headphones, and I heard every single word.  Eureka!!

This was vital because, as it turns out, Act 2 was a league apart from Act 1 (what I could hear of it, anyway).  The second act was gripping and powerful and moving right from the start, as the two brothers, Richard and Sharkey, host a Christmas Eve poker game, in drunken revelry, with two friends and a stranger, Mr. Lockhart, who happens to be the devil incarnate.  This creature, who describes himself as "dressed in this man's clothes," is played by the wonderful Ciaran Hinds, upon whom I now have an incurably deep and abiding crush.  (He's a Boomer, born in 1953, in Belfast.)  He was riveting and sexy as Caesar in HBO's Rome;  here, he's a knockout as the embodiment of evil, and his description of Hell, as a place that is cold and dark and lonely, is terrifying.  Plus, he looked younger and darker and way handsomer in person (at least from the somewhat distant mezzanine) than he does on screen (in There Will Be Blood and in Munich) or on television.  Finally, read this Times review of the play, and then rush out and buy tickets, before it closes on March 30.

This play is steeped in alcohol--even the devil ends up drunk and disorderly--and it's grim and bleak but also utterly uplifting.  Well worth the sale price of our $55 tickets.  If I could go to the theater for, say, $20 a pop, I'd go every single week.  Especially with those awesome headphones, so that I can hear what's going on!

Rent, Redux

Here's a Boomer-friendly activity:  Broadway shows.  Especially with the coupons (yes, coupons!) in last Sunday's New York Times.  Apparently, the last few weeks of January are so deadly slow, business-wise, that they have to entice theatre-goers with massive discounts.  Worked for me.

So I drove into New York City (48 minutes, no traffic), paid $25 to park, and had a night on the town.  We went to celebrate my (very late) birthday dinner at a Turkish restaurant, very exotic wine and cherry juice and stuffed eggplant.  Then, on to Rent, a show I'd seen with RioGringa about 10 years ago, when it first opened.  (Curtain up in 1996, according to the Playbill.)  This time, I took Engineer Boy, because he'd heard so many raves about it from his sister that he wanted to see for himself.

The good news:  The music is still wonderful.  Especially "Seasons of Love," all 525,600 minutes.  (I checked:  60 x 24 x 365 = the number of minutes in a year, which is 525,600.)  Some of the performers I saw, too, are nearly perfect, including Michael McElroy as Tom Collins, and Justin Johnston as Angel.  Oddly, the youngster who plays Mark Cohen, Harley Jay, looks exactly like the kid who played Mark 10 years ago:  young as a baby, skinny and frail with a powerful voice.  But he couldn't possibly be the same guy, a decade later.

The bad news:  The premise--that AIDS is the apocalypse at the end of the millennium--seems almost quaint and naive now.  In fact, it makes you long for the good old days, when a nasty, sexually-transmitted virus was all we had to worry about.  Now, we have unknown enemies targeting us and our cities and our buildings, we have an endless, far-away war, and our planet is falling apart from misuse. 

Also, not a Boomer in sight in this cast.  Even the moms and dads are played by the same young actors who play several other parts.  But I'll excuse this oversight;  after all, Rent was, is, and always will be, a poetic prayer of youth and promise.