More adventures and Newsies!

This weekend was so awesome!  First of all the weather was (and actually still is) gorgeous so that was wonderful.  Plus Monica was down visiting and we had a great time hanging out and playing tourist in the city.

Highlights of our wanderings:

Going to Central Park and walking by the Imagine mural and Strawberry Fields.

The Imagine Mural

We also went into the International Center of Photography, which is actually right across the street from my work.  They were having an exhibit on a photographer named Weegee who I guess was a famous tabloid and newspaper photographer in the mid-1930s.  It was a pretty interesting exhibit even though it was a lot of pictures of dead bodies, which was kind of weird.

We also found this super awesome used bookstore called Book Off on 45th.  About 3/4 of their books, I swear, were $1!  They also sold DVDs and CDs for ridiculously low prices since they were used as well.  I bought a couple of books and I am definitely going back there!

And last but certainly not least, we got to see Newsies!!!!!

First I'll tell how we got the tickets, then give some more info about the show :)

So Newsies doesn't have a standard rush ticket policy, they follow in the same vain as Wicked and Rent and Book of Mormon and instead do a lottery rush.  So basically you show up a couple hours before the show and if they draw your name out of a hat you are allowed to buy up to 2 tickets for $30.  Monica and I tried 4 times over the weekend (2 shows on Sat and 2 shows on Sun).  And then the evening performances Kari joined us.  We didn't really expect to get tickets, especially Sun night when Kari was with us.  If you're following the math, if you have 3 people but only one person's name gets called, only two people can go :(  So we were waiting for rush anyway, just for fun, and of course Kari's name gets called!  Kari being the amazingly nice person that she is had decided that she didn't really need to go and that if her name was called she would just send me and Monica to the show instead.  The sweetest thing ever, right?  So when her name was called we were really happy, but felt really bad because I'm sure she wanted to see the show too and I was definitely gonna get ready to say for the two of the them to see the show and I'd try to catch it another time.  BUT....a few names later....MY name is called!  So we were super super excited because that meant all three of us could go!!  And then, in an amusing turn of events a few moments later...Monica's name was called!  Haha.  We still only bought the 3 tickets but we were so amused that all three of our names were called during one lottery draw.  Oh, and the show was AMAZING.

Now on to the show itself. Newsies is based off the Disney movie of the same name that came out in 1992.  It was more or less a flop when it came out but then went on to become somewhat of a cult classic.  The show is about the newsboy strike in 1899 when the head of the newspapers wanted to raise the price of newspapers so the newsboys would have to sell more to make the same amount.  They weren't going to have that though and formed a strike.

The trailer for the original movie:



The plot is not the reason to see this musical, haha.  But the dancing and the singing is.  The talent in this show is seriously unbelievable!  I kind of geeked out when I saw it too because there are several dancers in the ensemble who were on So You Think You Can Dance.  And a couple of them were some of my favorites :)

Here is the cast performing on The View.  If you watch it you'll see what I mean about them being ridiculously talented:



And after the show we stopped for autographs :) All of the cast were really nice and seemed genuinely happy to come out to sign autographs and talk to everyone. I got several comments on my hat, which I suppose is in Newsies style ^_^

Signed playbill

The majority of the cast also have these little playing cards which are really cute.  I only got Alex Wong's though (He was on So You Think You Can Dance)