Trip to NYC
When Julia was four or five months old I started making plans. First was the trip to Italy. The next is a trip to Disneyland and a 10k race (which is over Mother's Day). And then there was my trip to New York.
I have always enjoyed the theater. I've seen shows since I was a girl scout and we went to see Beauty and the Beast in LA. I just enjoy the experience; you dress up, usually there's a dinner, and you get to sit with a large group of usually friendly people and watch something pretty that sounds lovely. And live orchestra is just so fun.
Fall 2015 my friend approached me about season tickets to Dallas Summer Musicals. Our first season was the 15/16 season.
I missed Elf and Bridges of Madison County due to conflicts, and I gave my friend the Little Mermaid tickets to take her daughter ... but Sound of Music was lovely, Ragtime is a fantastic show that you really should see, Bullets over Broadway was fun, 42nd second stress was just okay, and it was an off night for the cast of Wicked. It was understudies and the opening number was a disaster. Glenda dropped the high note in the opening song. Just dropped it. Didn't even sing it. It was the craziest thing I've ever heard. It was also my fourth time seeing Wicked, so my expectations might have been up there.
So after the 15 season concluded we looked around and living in a big city has the advantage of choice. We felt confident that Hamilton (then a Broadway smash) would end up at the Winspear when it came through. And season ticket holders get first dibs. So we switched over to ATTPAC for the 16/17 season.
So far ... if I'm honest ... I have not loved everything. Rent is always good. A Gentleman's Guide was new to me and actually pretty funny (one man plays like 9 characters and it's really funny). Next was Book of Mormon which I did not love. Some of the things were done just for shock value and I didn't find them shocking so much as I found them ... off. It didn't work for me. I did laugh, there were funny jokes. The whole concept is funny ... rich Americans go visit Africa to bring Jesus and the locals are like ... yes, yes, that's great, do you happen to have food? Or medicine for AIDS? But some of the jokes were flat, as jokes often are.
Curious Incident is a play and not a musical and I didn't like it. It's from the perspective of a kid with autism and there's a lot of strobe lights and loud bangs to kind of symbolism what folks with sensory issues go through and maybe I have sensory issues because I was going to throw up.
Hedwig I did not expect to enjoy but it was really funny. I kept picture Neil Patrick Harris (who starred on Broadway) and it was well done. It had some raunchy parts and so many strobe lights and I almost threw up in this one too. I had a headache when we left. But the story was well done, I feel. Worth seeing.
But the real reasons I wanted to see this season are coming up. I can't wait to see Something Rotten and Finding Neverland and Into the Woods. Squee!
All this to say. In all of this show watching me and Shanda have been doing it's come up that I've never seen a show on Broadway. Shanda took weeks during summers in college to go up and see Broadway shows. She's seen lots of amazing things. And we decided that we had to change my "never seen" status.
So we planned. And it all came about last week, the last weekend of spring break for me, the first weekend of spring break for her. And the weather gave us a fright (they were originally thinking the snow was going to dump on NYC on Sunday, not Tuesday) but it worked perfectly. We landed after the first storm and took off before the Nor'Easter.
We stayed on 43rd and 8th street, blocks from Times Square and two blocks from our first show, Dear Evan Hansen.
This show is amazing. So good. It's the current hit (Hamilton withstanding) on Broadway is likely to win the Tony this year, for both Ben Platt and Musical. It's amazing and I cried through the whole thing. Teen angst and fitting in hits a cord for all of us but me with two boys I just kept thinking ... please God my boys find their people and have their one or two friends that will play video games and watch movies with them. Help me help them find their people.
The next day at 8AM we signed up for the Hamilton lottery for our matinee show. By 10AM we got the news that we had not won. We were on our way to downtown and One World Trade center and Trinity Church. We saw Hamilton's grave and the Brooklyn Bridge from a distance. It was bitter cold and the wind chill was brutal!
So back at the hotel we were on our phones deciding on our matinee. I had been thinking about Waitress (a new play with music by Sara Barielles) since we had started planning this trip, but my friend wasn't interested, she had heard some of the music on the Broadway XM channel and thought it was too country (not her favorite). But she encouraged me to see the matinee and we could separate.
So we did.
It was magical. It was so good. I wish I could go back today and see it again. Jessie Mueller was amazing. This show has gotten mixed reviews and I can't see why except that it's kind of a provincial story, not very modern. But it is real life for a lot of people and it resonates with me. I loved the movie (the musical is very similar and even has much of the dialogue) and I love the musical. LOVE LOVE LOVE.
Our second evening performance was Amelie, the new show Philippa Soo is in. And while I wish I could tell you that this show is amazing and go Philippa! I can not. It was kind of a mess. It is in previews and opening night is like end of the month. My and Shanda are not sure it's going to make it. But if they have enough sales ... will they just let the bad show go? And capitalize on Soo's popularity due to her stint in Hamilton? I don't know.
Bringing us to Sunday. Our flight was late afternoon and we needed to get a run in for our 1/2 marathon training so we did 1:35min in Central park. It was cold cold cold and my calf was hurting and it was a slog for me. I was sucking air a lot of it. But the location! Jus an amazing thing to put on my bucket list.
And that's the entire trip really. My first visit to NYC I was 11 years old and with my family. We went to the top of the Statue of Liberty. And it was a long slow climb and the windows at the top were postage stamp size and dirty and you couldn't see much.
My second visit was in 2003 with Lewis and our friend Drew (who was there on business). We did the central park ride, Macy's to see Santa, dinner downtown and pictures in Times Square. But we didn't see a show. And we stayed only one night I think, in New Jersey, bc I was 22. Broke broke broke.
This time ... travel points are the bomb, lets just say that. And there's a perk to a husband that's gone three nights a week, every single week. Even if the actual time away is a downer.
I may never get to do something like this again. It's a complete decadent extravagance and I'm super lucky that it worked out. But with planning and spreading costs out I was able to do it (and points, lots of points). And I'm so glad I did. I had a fabulous time just walking around and talking to strangers in lines for shows and gushing with them about who's in what and where Hamilton is going next and how in the hell are any of us going to get to see it on Broadway? And drinking Pinot with lunch and chatting and reading. It was great. I can't wait to do it again. When they release the next block of Hamilton tickets for 2019 ... I'm there.
Aside - I read Girl on the Train and it was a good read. There are not really any good characters, your heroine is an alcoholic with a history of bad behavior and choices, though the author makes her sympathetic by circumstance but this gets old for me, even if life is crap you still have to do right. Anyway. The twist wasn't the twist I thought it would be. But once I got into it I flew through it.
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