Wrap Up

After all the drama on Friday, I can't believe this trip is almost over. This has been the best theatre trip since my first time coming to NY when I just saw Wicked. All the shows have been A+'s.

Saturday morning my companion and I met his college roommate at HK on 8th and 38th for brunch, which was excellent. The restaurant was rather loud due to the concrete floors and walls, and the huge groups of queens all over the place, but they had all you can drink mimosa's, and that made up for a lot. We then went to Boeing-Boeing, which was terrific. Rebecca Gayheart was out, but her understudy did a great job, and Christine Baranski was excellent as always. Mark Rylance's character was exactly like he was when he gave his Tony acceptance speech. Some parts of the show are dated and just silly for the sake of being silly, but overall it was excellent, very funny and well done, we left in such a good mood.

We then walked around for a while killing time and met another college friend of his at Malone & Porcelli (I think the P part of that is spelled right). We had a fantastic dinner and then headed for August: Osage County, although we ended up having to run to get there on time, we just slid into the seats as the lights were going down. Again, excellent. Estelle Parsons played a much more extreme version of Roseanne's mom, but made it so different and so perfect in the context of the play. It was great to see Amy Warren again after her fabulous performance in Adding Machine in June. It is truly a great play, and I can guarantee it will still be relevant 100 years from now.

Then it was back to the hotel and to bed, after a long day, and today we really slept in and then went to Aquavit for brunch. It was very different than I was expecting but completely in keeping with their Scanadavian cuisine. There were no Eggs Benedict, no waffles, no carving stations. Instead, they had all sorts of seafood salads, pickled fishes, Swedish Meatballs, and excellent deserts, and I had a Swedish Bellini. It was very filling and we then headed to Studio 54 for Pal Joey, probably my favorite out of everything we saw. The set design was great, and Christian Hoff, Stockard Channing, and Martha Plimpton were all fabulous, particularly Martha's performance of Red Hot Woman. Studio 54 is kind of an annoying theatre, but our seats were good and I put in an advance order for an intermission cocktail, which kept me in a good mood. Pal Joey should be in top contention come Tony time.

We then made a quick stop at the hotel and then walked all the way from 57th street to SoHo. We weren't hungry, so we stopped at Le Petit Cafe for some coffee and then went to the SoHo playhouse. We got some more caffeine at the basement lobby bar and then found our seats. We were towards the back, only about 3 rows from the back, but about 3 minutes before curtain, the usher informed us that if we wanted, we could move up to the second row, so of course we did. Mindgame was fabulous, probably the best thing Ken Russell has ever directed. I was a little worried during the first act that it was going to just be a rehash of Don't Go In The Basement, but oh my god, it turned out to be so much more. Keith Carradine was fabulous (it was a big Carradine family day for us), and we were so close we could see his stray strands of hair flopping about. The set design was fabulous, and all three performers were terrific. I highly recommend the show if you find yourself in New York. It was exactly the kind of theatre people go to New York for, small and intimate with a big star, telling a great story, and so unique that you won't find anything like it anywhere else. We then had a very late dinner at an Italian place a couple blocks away on Spring Street. We then hopped in a cab and are now back in our room. I've got to start packing and then tomorrow we're doing some shopping in the Village, with our obligatory stops at the NYU bookstore and Strand, and then our flight leaves LaGuardia at 7, hopefully no delays this time, and I can almost guarantee that since I'm not in any hurry to get home and don't really care if we get delayed or cancelled, tomorrow's flight will be the smoothest I've ever had.