There's a bakery in Times Square called Schmackary's that every year does this even called Broadway Bakes. Broadway actors take turns doing two hour shifts working the counter and selling cookies to the public. 50% of the proceeds of sales and 100% of the tips go to Broadway Cares.
Kari and I went down for a couple of the actors as well as to get some delicious cookies.
Selfie with David Burtka - currently on Broadway in It Shoulda Been You Also married to Neil Patrick Harris
Selfie with the girls who play small and medium Alison in the new musical Fun Home. I'm still in awe of their talent! Especially the little one.
My mom and aunt were here visiting this last week and it was so great seeing them!
Yesterday we got to go see The King & I on Broadway. It was wonderful! It's been a while since I've seen the show but I love the music. This was a great production of the show too. I think it has a good shot at winning the Tony for Best Revival!
My birthday was Monday! For birthday festivities first my friend from upstate came to visit me, which was sooo much fun, and we went to see Pitch Perfect 2!
I thought Pitch Perfect 2 did everything a good sequel should. It was enjoyable in the same ways the first movie was enjoyable, it did just enough call backs to the first movie to be fun but didn't overdo it, and yet it had it's own storyline. Plus, it had some great mashups!
And Kari, who of course is a baking GENIUS made me the coolest birthday cake ever (and it was pretty hard to top both the Hogwarts castle cake and the rainbow piñata cake). She made me a Hedwig cake!! It was adorable. The design comes from a song in the Sugar Daddy song where Hedwig says "I'll be your Venus on a chocolate clamshell rising out of a sea of marshmallow foam". So Hedwig is standing on a chocolate covered clamshell which is rising out of a sea of marshmallow foam (the frosting was marshmallow too!). So unique, so adorable, and so special!
Well it has certainly been a busy few weeks!! With absolutely no time to blog post! So here's a summation of shows.
Hedwig x 2
Ok yes, I saw Hedwig two more times. I admit! I'm a fan! Katy was visiting so the three of us went both Thursday night (also getting to do the stage door) and then again on Saturday. I stand by my decisions! Oh yeah, it was also wonderful but that is to be expected.
I was bad and took a picture of the stage. Whoops!
Yay showtime!
At the stage door
Robyn then very wonderfully invited me to a whole slate of shows, which was amazing!
The Visit
This is actually the second time I've seen this show so I won't say too much of a review since I already discussed it. But I still loved it the second time. Such a wonderful piece of theatre!
Hand to God
Hand to God is more or less a play about a sock puppet that takes over and is possibly the devil. Sounds weird, I know.
I've heard so much about this play that I was really excited to get to see it. I actually thought it was great. It's extremely raunchy, worse in that respect than probably anything I've ever seen, even shows like Avenue Q. I thought it was great though. It was very funny yet had a poignant message about how one deals with loss. I honestly didn't expect so much emotion to come from a play that was billed as being so comedic and raunchy.
The other great thing about the show was the set design. It was so detailed and turned in such a cool way to open up to new spaces. It's pretty rare for a play to have such an intricate set like that I think. I also think the main actor deserves a Tony for his performance. There were many moments on stage where the guy is having an interaction with the puppet on his hand and you forget that the guy is talking to himself as you watch him grapple with a sock puppet. It was fascinating to watch.
Something Rotten
Again, this is the second time I've seen Something Rotten. But it was hysterical! I laughed the entire time! And now...there's a clip out to share!
Fun Home
This was a new show for me. Fun Home is based on a graphic novel memoir by Alison Bechdel. It's a bit of a downer as the play is more or less about a woman who comes out as gay roughly around the same time she finds out her dad is gay and then her dad kills himself.
Even though the subject matter is a bit depressing, the play was masterfully done. There were 3 actresses playing the character of Alison at 3 stages of her life (a child, in college, and as an adult looking back). It was done in the round, which is not something you see every day and was cool to see. All of the set pieces came in and out from the floor on lifts and was so seamless you barely noticed it was happening. The Alison actresses were superb, I particularly enjoyed the performance of the youngest Alison as she stole every scene she was in by being both thoughtful and adorable.
The show is a musical, but it's more of a play with music rather than your typical Broadway musical. It was wonderful music too though. I don't think it will ever be one of those musicals that is really successful touring around the country, but it will definitely do well in NYC and I think it's great that show like this can exist.
Yesterday I met up with my friend and we went to go see one of this seasons' new plays, Living on Love. Afterwards, we went shoe shopping.
I was able to get cheap (and I mean cheap) tickets to this show. Sadly, it didn't do so well and it closed today. Unfortunately...I can see why it closed. The biggest issue is that I thought it wasn't written very well. It was acted great (it starred the opera diva Renee Fleming) and there were definitely some fun moments. But I sort of fell asleep in the first act. It picked back up in the second act though and ended on a high note.
Then, today, I decided to buy a ticket to go see a preview screening of I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story at the Museum of the Moving Image. The movie is a new documentary about the life of Caroll Spinney who originated and plays Big Bird on Sesame Street. The best part was Caroll and his wife were both there to do a Q&A session after the film. I had the best time! It was such an interesting documentary and then getting to hear Caroll and Debi Spinney talk about their lives was a lot of fun. Oscar the Grouch even paid a quick visit!
Here's the trailer for the movie. I definitely recommend watching it! And below are some pictures from the Q & A!
Yes, yes, yes. I went to see Hedwig. And yes, it's the 4th time I've seen it. And yes, I already had tickets to see it in a week. But 2 prime seats in the orchestra opened up so Kari and I went to Darren Criss's opening night starring as Hedwig on Broadway! No regrets!!
I think he did a wonderful job. It will be fun to see him again soon when the nerves have settled. I'm sure he'll be even better! It was funny, we actually ended up sitting next to Darren Criss's parents for a little bit, until they moved for better seats in the middle. ^_^
I was supposed to see this show with my dad when he came to visit, but unfortunately the timing didn't work out, so he sent me and Kari to see it Friday night instead.
Sequence 8 is a dance/acrobatics show done by a company called 7 Fingers. They actually created all of the circus bits in Pippin. I have to admit, I was expecting the show to be very artsy contemporary dance with a few flips thrown in. What it was in reality, was amazing!
There was definitely a lot of contemporary dance moments, but it was so well entwined with the extremely impressive acrobatics (and also quite a bit of humor!) that I watched practically the whole thing with my jaw on the floor. Some of the tricks these dancers perform are incredible. I can't even imagine how strong they must be.
If you think this video is impressive, it was about 100 times cooler to see in person. Most of the best stunts are not shown but you definitely get a sense of the show.
My dad came out last week to see me! He flew out just for a few days so we could visit and have an adventure in the city. So here are a few of our adventures!
My dad ended up staying at the Hotel Edison in Times Square and I got to crash. That meant 1) we got even more hang out time and 2) the two days I worked (I took a couple of days off as well) I was able to walk to work and didn't have to leave until about 9:15am.
When he got here on Sunday, I met him at the airport and then we took the LIRR back to the city, got all checked in, and found a spot for dinner. Dessert took place at The Rum House, the little bar attached to the hotel. A certain sleepy dad then may have fallen asleep around 6pm.
I don't even remember what this drink was -
but it was delicious!
I worked on Monday, so dad had his own adventures with a trip to the Met Museum, a peek around Grand Central, and a lot of walking! When I got out of work, I met him and a friend for a quick drink at this place called Parker and Quinn. We then stayed at the same place for dinner. It was delicious!
I had chicken and fries - dad had the steak
Flour-less chocolate cake for dessert
Hi!
Tuesday I took the day off of work. After some breakfast at a diner on the upper west side and a quick trip to my apartment, we were off to our first show!
The Easter Bonnet Competition is one of the fundraisers for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids. Various Broadway shows and organizations put together skits and also have to make a giant easter bonnet. The winners get crowned both for presentation and bonnet. There are also awards given out for the shows who raised the most money during this collection season. I've seen clips on youtube before, but never actually gotten to go (due to the fact that it's always during the work day). This was a perfect opportunity to go and I loved it! The skits were so much fun to watch and the whole event was basically one giant love-fest with the theatre community.
I couldn't pick just one video so here is an assortment of videos that Broadway Cares put up on their youtube page from the event.
Behind the Scenes:
The really awesome dance done by cast members of various touring shows:
The Lion King parody presentation by the cast of Avenue Q:
And finally, a montage to round things out:
That wasn't the end of our shows, however. After the excitement of Easter Bonnets we met up with Kari to first have dinner and then go see On the Twentieth Century. Of course I had to take my dad to Virgil's since he had never been.
Nachos - a Virgil's staple
Cool glass window on display at the theatre
On The Twentieth Century is a mad cap comedy musical about a bunch of people on a train. Oh yeah and it starred Kristen Chenowith who is amazing. The best way I can describe this show is that it was a really great production of a dumb show. The plot was pretty ridiculous but the actors were amazing, the sets and costumes were great, and the overall production value was a lot of fun. So all in all, I enjoyed it!
Here's a little taste of the show.
On Wednesday I took Dad to the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. I have to say, it's one of my favorite museums. I just love how interactive it is, plus it's really interesting to see all the props and costumes and other film items they have on display.
In the 70's room
Gotta love the shag on the wall
Dad doing some voiceover work
I think he's found his calling!
One of the interactive bits you can do is do some voiceover work from famous clips. Dad did a clip from Some Like It Hot and I did My Fair Lady. It was pretty silly!
After our museum adventures we wandered around Manhattan some more. Dad wanted to see the food network building so we went to Chelsea Market and walked around. It's just a bunch of fun shops but in a very cool building.
Cool waterfall into a well
I love the lights down the hall of the building
After our wanderings it was time for one more show. The Visit starring Chita Rivera. It was really neat to see such a Broadway legend on stage. This will also probably be her last show so it was great to get to see.
The set was really interesting as well
The Visit is a very weird macabre musical based on an old German play. Basically, the richest woman in the world returns to the town where she grew up. The town is desolate and pleads with her to help save them. She offers them a lot of money, but in exchange they must kill the man who was her lover and wronged her when she was 17. The whole thing was very strange but I also thought it was wonderful. I liked how they used the color yellow throughout and there was a coffin on stage that they sat on and moved around on. It's a really hard show to explain because of how weird it was, but I'm really glad I got to see it!
Here's Chita singing one of her numbers.
Then early Thursday morning Dad caught a flight back to the opposite coast. I think we had quite the adventure in such a short amount of time. Thanks for coming to see me Dad!! ^_^
This one is just a tad delayed but a couple weeks ago I saw Simon Amstell perform his standup show. I went with Kari and a bunch of my coworkers and we had a fantastic time! Simon Amstell is a British comedian who isn't super well known in the US, but I really enjoy his stand up.
I don't think there is anything from this particular tour on the internet, but here is Simon doing some standup from a couple years ago when I also saw him in New York!
Last night I saw yet another show in previews, that actually opened today! I saw the new musical Gigi starring Vanessa Hudgens.
It was such a cute show! The costumes were fantastic, the acting was fun, the singing was great, and Vanessa Hudgens was adorable! I had never seen the movie that it is based on, so I quickly watched it Sunday night before I saw the show on Tuesday and I'm really glad I did. It was enjoyable on its own, but I liked having the backdrop of the movie to compare it to. They made a few changes here and there but nothing that didn't seem like a change for the better.
For comparison, here's the original movie trailer.
And here's a cute overview of the show where you can really see how amazing the costumes were.
And here's a cute video of Vanessa talking about the show and the cast singing "The Night They Invented Champagne"
