Sunday night I went to see a performance that was done by a friend of mine who I used to do theatre with in high school. I saw him perform several months ago, but this time not only did I see Blake, but I also saw Rachel, another Youth Rep theatre alum, who sang as well!
It was all original music sung by extremely talented performers. I had a blast and was so glad I could be there!
This was the opening song, Blake sings first and then about halfway through Rachel sings. Plus I really like the song she sings.
On Friday night Kari and I decided we would try entering the Matilda lottery. As you may have guessed by the name of this post, we did not, in fact, end of seeing Matilda. Our names were not called so it was not to be.
As we were walking around, we thought we might check out the half price ticket booth, just to see what was available when we passed by the Jekyll and Hyde theatre. This is a show that did not do amazingly well, as it is closing this weekend (and was originally supposed to close in August). I figured that of all the shows that have a rush ticket policy, this is probably the only one where we could show up 2 hours before the show started (instead of when the box office opens) and there might be tickets still available. Taking a shot, we asked and it turned out there was! It's also possible the guy working the box office figured he might as well fill 2 empty seats even if it was at a severely discounted price.
After we bought our tickets, we wandered around Times Square and also ended up buying tickets to see Annie in a couple of weeks. Jane Lynch (from Glee) is going to be playing Miss Hannigan and so we were super excited to see her.
Jekyll and Hyde was...interesting. I really like the music, but the plot is pretty terrible. They were good singers, except that there was so much vibrato in their voices that you could barely make out the words. And they all had the most ridiculously terrible fake British accents. It was more or less a similar train wreck as Spiderman was, but with better music.
Saturday night (before I got a cold and spent all day Sunday in bed) I saw a really awesome show!
The Last Five Years is a revival of an off broadway show from a few years ago. It's a 2 person cast, a guy and a girl, and tells the story of their failed marriage through song. The girl starts from the end working backwards and the guy starts from the beginning forwards. They meet in the middle where they have their only duet. Otherwise only one person is singing at a time and singing to someone who isn't there.
It's a little strange of a concept, but the way it played out was amazing. I had heard a lot of good things about it by Kari (who saw a production a while ago) and so I was pretty interested in seeing it as well. I have to say, this production was seriously amazing. Not only were the actors wonderful singers and talented at acting while they were singing, it also struck me that the sets and the lighting was amazingly done. First of all, the orchestra was in plain sight at the back of the stage. They were raised at different levels, which created a fun picture. The set pieces were fairly minimal, but rolled on and off the stage by themselves (ok, well presumably by some kind of rolling contraption on the floor). And the lighting really added to the different songs. Basically I was awe-struck the entire show and I can't say enough good things about the performance. I'm so glad I went!
This clip is from the two characters duet in the middle of the show:
And here's a little bit longer of a preview where you can see some of the interaction between the characters and the set and lighting:
Last weekend Seth took me to see my first ever Mets game! (Baseball for anyone who might not know). There are 2 New York baseball teams, the Mets and the Yankees. Seth is a huge Yankees fan, but likes baseball in general so enjoys seeing the Mets play too. It was a lot of fun actually! I ate 2 hotdogs and french fries and, after all, isn't that really the point of going to a baseball game?
Seth brought me a Yankees cap! I love that the logo is pink!
The outside of Citi Field
Still outside of Citi Field
The inside of Citi Field
Sitting waiting for the game to begin
I think we had pretty good seats! We were right behind home plate
Matching caps!
The big round bright thing towards the right is the moon. It was a crazy shade of orange when we left but doesn't really show here
I made this collage using an app on my new phone!
The other fun thing that happened is I got a fun new phone! It's an iphone which I LOVE, and I found the best case for it that I also LOVE!
Kari's family is visiting this week which is a lot of fun! They've been playing tourist all over the city and last night I ended up going with them to get rush tickets to see Mamma Mia. I knew that Mamma Mia is a fun show and I had never seen it on Broadway before, only on tour. The songs were as fun as I remembered them and I actually thought the singers were pretty good.
Kari's family with the Mamma Mia poster
We all wanted to pose with the poster and make the same motion! Ok actually I wanted everyone to pose with the picture and make the same pose as the woman in the poster...and everyone said ok.
This is the original cast from the Tony Awards. This is definitely not the same cast I saw but its the same music!
For a long time Seth and I kept talking about how we wanted to go to the MTA museum. It's close to his apartment in Brooklyn and so it always seems like a good idea. It's a museum that is in an old subway station and basically shows the history of New York transit including buses and subways. They have a whole sections with old subway cars from different eras (with the advertisements to match!) and they even had a section of how the turnstile has changed through the ages. It was a pretty interesting couple of hours and I think I learned a little more about the city where I live!
Ticket please?
This was one of the old ads that made me laugh
The other crazy thing I did this weekend is I took a trip down the rabbit hole into the world of ordering things on the internet. In NYC, one of the things one can do is order their groceries online. I've been thinking about it for a while, but I finally decided I would try it out and maybe order some of the heavier items that I would normally not enjoy carrying back from the grocery story. I also found some good introductory coupons so I saved quite a bit of money. My order was delivered today! It was pretty fun to just have someone show up at my door and then all of a sudden have a ton of food!
You probably know this, but over the weekend was Easter! My roommates and I decided that since we didn't have a chance to have a roommate Thanksgiving since we all were doing our own thing, we would instead have dinner on Easter. And thus, Eastergiving was born. We had the best time cooking and hanging out and then eating, oh the eating! The food was delicious and I was pretty sure I would never eat anything ever again...until it came time for dessert...
We also decorated the apartment some this weekend!
The hallway is so much more colorful now!
Our apartment is now so whimsical!
Kari also made hot cross buns for breakfast. I've never had hot cross buns before! They were kind of like cinnamon rolls, only in bun form. I also didn't want a cross on mine so I got a swirl that sort of melted into a giant pool of frosting.
And then we get into the main part of Eastergiving. We all decided to wear Easter dresses too, so that was a lot of fun.
How to make a turkey: 1. Buy a turkey 2. Put in oven for 4 hours
Peeling potatoes!
Kari making potatoes au gratin in her cute apron
Turkey!
potatoes getting ready to be mashed
mmmm turkey
mashing potatoes
Stuffing!
Monica's pretty Easter dress that she stole from Kari!
Well, I always love my mom, but this last weekend was special because she came to visit me for a long weekend! We had a lot of fun (as we always have fun together) and shopped, chatted, and saw shows to our hearts content. On a related note, I'm getting a new mattress that should arrive on Saturday! And yes, this is exciting news.
I also saw 2 shows with my mom this weekend. On Saturday night we saw Cinderella. It was sooo cute and included some surprising twists that I didn't expect. The only problem is that the general public is so completely obnoxious. We were on the aisle and of course the entire row of people sitting next to us came in 10 minutes after it had started, people had their cell phones out, and since it's more of a family show there was a lot of chatty children. But, the show itself was pure magic and I definitely wouldn't mind seeing it again.
Hopefully a better video will appear at a later date, but for now this is the best one available.
The other thing we saw is called Broadway Backwards, which is a one night benefit for Broadway Cares and the LGBT Center. It's a great cause, and the show is basically a bunch of amazingly talented Broadway folks singing songs from musicals. The twist is that they sing songs that they generally would not be able to play on stage. (Mostly men sang songs written for women and women sang songs written for men). Here are the highlights!
It has taken me so long to update from this weekend because, well, it's been a busy few days! The exciting news is at the bottom so stay tuned...
First, Saturday night Monica and I went to see Nick Offerman's one man show entitled "American Ham" For those that don't know Offerman plays the character Ron Swanson on the tv show Parks and Recreation. He's awesome on the show. His stand up was...ok. I have mixed feelings about it. One minute he would be really funny and then the next minute the joke would be so crass that I was just turned off by it. The other thing is that since we accidentally waited to buy tickets, we went to the show at 10pm. It did not end until 12:45! I was really ready for it to be over about 11:30 so the length could have colored my opinion about the situation. Oh, it was also being filmed live for a special that will air at some point, so that was actually really really neat. We were in the upper balcony so you could watch the big camera swinging around.
Then on Sunday, I had decided that only one show was clearly not enough for a single weekend. So Ju Yeon and I decided to try for the lottery tickets for Annie. And her name was pulled!! I am clearly getting pretty lucky with these show lotterys. So we were able to get cheap tickets to the show, and we were sitting in the front row! We had great seats and the show was really cute. The actress who played Miss Hannigan was also in the performance of Promises Promises I saw a couple years ago (and won a Tony for her part in there!). The little girl who played Annie had a really amazing voice and the other little girls in the show were adorable. The other funny thing is that since we were so far off to the right, you could see into the wings on the stage and there were definitely a couple of times where I could watch the dog trainer gesturing emphatically as "Sandy" crossed the stage.
Also during the performance we saw, when Annie is supposed to be calling Sandy and at first he doesn't come but eventually he does, the dog was a little overeager and launched right into Annie's arms while she was trying to explain that maybe he doesn't really know his name. She recovered extremely well and I was impressed it didn't seem to throw off her performance at all!
Now onto the super exciting news!!!
I HAVE A JOB!!!!!!
That's right, One of my coworkers left the company on Friday, and I was offered her position! So I was offered the position on Friday, then officially started on Monday! So over the weekend I was also filling out a small novel's worth of paperwork. I will be doing more or less the same kinds of things, but will have more responsibilities and will be more involved with some of the financial and social media/marketing things. I also am finally a permanent staff member of the BBC with an ID and everything! Plus my benefits will kick in soon. It's like Christmas in March!
My coworkers and bosses have made the transition so great. They all know that I'm kind of hitting the ground running in this position and working with them during this transition has only cemented the fact that I enjoy my coworkers tremendously. They are all really amazing, talented people and I'm so glad to finally be "official"!
Thursday night I was invited to see the Premiere US screening of One Life, which is a natural history title from BBC Earth. Despite some technical difficulties and a late start to the movie, it was a fun evening. The movie was fantastic and afterwards the director did a question and answer session. It was interesting to hear him talk about how they filmed the animals. He was pretty funny and clearly very passionate about the project.
Here is the trailer for the movie:
And then Friday night I saw a musical called The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It's a very silly musical about a bunch of actors performing a musical rendition of the novel by Charles Dickens. Dickens died before he finished writing it however, so at the end of the show the audience votes for things like who they think the murder is, who the romantic pairing is, etc. Then, the show has 8 or 10 different endings depending on what the outcome of the audience voting is. So basically it was a lot of fun and I'm glad I saw it before it closes in early March.
The stage
And of course because I like to include some kind of video usually:
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