June has just flown by! I'm now in Oregon visiting family for a few days but right before I left I had a couple of show adventures.
I got to see A New Brain at New York City Centre's Encores starring Jonathan Groff. It was a very intriguing musical about a man with a brain tumor. Spoiler alert: he lives. It was very upbeat music and a fun story, though slightly odd subject material. Jonathan Groff, of course, was great!
The only downside. The guy sitting next to me had THE WORST BO I've ever had the misfortune to encounter.
Then the very next day I went to see Bette Midler in her Divine Intervention Tour at Madison Square Garden. I won the tickets through a Time Warner Cable online giveaway. I know, I was astonished too! I'm really glad I won these tickets though because otherwise I never would have gone and I had such a good time.
Bette Midler was really fabulous! It's hard to believe she's 70 and doing a show like this. She had several costume changes and she never seemed to stop moving! Plus she sounded great, she was really funny, and she seemed like she was having a good time on stage.
Well you can't say that I don't go outside of the box in my quest to see theatre. Ok, well in this case it was going inside the box.
Theatre For One is this very strange theatre experience that was happening the last couple weeks. I caught a show near my office last Friday.
I forgot to take a picture of the actual box, but you can kind of see it in the background behind the trees. There was quite the line, it actually took about 1 and 1/2 hours before it was my turn. I wouldn't normally have waited in line that long for something like this but I was killing time anyway and it was a nice day to sit outside!
Once it was my turn, I went into the box and sat in a red chair. Then a panel was opened and a girl was sitting on the other side. She started talking to me and telling me a story of how one time she was lost. It was really awkward because she would ask me questions that I was never truly sure if I was supposed to answer or not. There are several shows that are performed by different actors so I only saw one of them. It was a weird but interesting experience!
On Saturday, Seth and I were wandering around the east side and randomly decided to take the tram to Roosevelt Island! It was my first time on there so that was quite cool.
We also passed this very cool Manhattan Mini Storage that used to be a movie theatre. So they had silly fake movie titles up on the marquee.
Yesterday Kari and I went on a New Jersey adventure. Why, you might ask? I decided it would be fun to see the new production of Ever After the musical (based on the movie with Drew Barrymore) that is playing at the Papermill Playhouse. This is the same theatre where Newsies got its start. I figured Ever After would make it to Broadway eventually, but this seemed like a fun way to see it ahead of time.
First of all, Papermill is such a cute little theatre. It's only about a 5 minute walk from the train station, it has a cute little backyard with patio tables and a koi pond next to a rushing brook. Very much your tranquil ideal setting for some peace. It even has these iron arches with different fairy tale characters on it.
The show itself was also pretty cute. I wouldn't say it's the most amazing musical I've ever seen and I do think it needs a little work and some tightening up before it could really make the Broadway leap but the potential is there. The songs were cute and they did keep some of the best lines from the movie. The cast, though, that was the best part. I had heard that Christine Ebersole was in it and she's a pretty big deal. I don't really think I know who she is all that much, but she definitely have an amazing voice. I was really excited when I got my playbill and realized that Charles Shaughnessy was in the show though! He plays the King and he was also Mr Sheffield in The Nanny! Andrew Keenan-Bolger, who starred in the original cast of Newsies, was also in the show. Even though I hadn't heard of the rest of the cast, they all had at least 1 Broadway credit under their belt. So all in all it was very impressive the caliber of talent they are able to get at this theatre. If there was another show that sounded fun I would without question make the trek again!
Here's a little video from the show.
And then lastly, on our way back to the train. We saw a groundhog!! I'm not sure I've ever seen one in real life before. It was just hanging out in its hole in the grass along the walkway. Not something you see in the city, that's for sure!
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.
