Wednesday: Evita

So tonight was the revival of Evita. This a show that I had seen on Broadway a couple of time with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin, who both won Tony Awards for their performances. Bob Gunton played Peron in that production. I have listened to the Original Broadway Cast Recording so many times that I pretty much know the entire score. I later saw the movie featuring Madonna, Antonio Banderas and Jonathan Pryce. Madonna was better than expected but she was no Patti LuPone.

I ran into Shawn Sawyer in FINCO before leaving Nassau for this vacation and he informed that he had seen this Evita revival and he did not like it. One problem that he thought may have caused him not to like it was that the ‘Eva’ alternate had performed the day that he saw the show. Apart from that, he said that the show was just not something that he had enjoyed. I was therefore curious as to how one of my favorite musicals would fare with a new working.

After an early dinner we arrived at the Adelphi Theatre and headed to our very good seats, fourth row center, in the stalls. This production also begins with archive footage. This time the footage was not of ‘Eva’ as an actress but of the funeral procession. This then moved into the actors mourning ‘Eva’s’ death on stage and the introduction of ‘Che’. One of the mourners turns out the be the actress who will be playing ‘Eva’ and once she removes her black mourning clothes she is that character for the rest of the show.

When I first heard her sing, I thought “well, she is no Patti LuPone” but as the show progressed I thought “Wow, I’m happy she is no Patti LuPone”. Elena Roger is a petite Argentine woman. She is a brilliant dancer, a very powerful actress and quite a good singer. Now I love Patti LuPone, she is an incredibly powerful performer but sometimes that power makes her bigger than life and one ends up focusing on the actress rather than the character. Having not ever seen Elena Roger in anything, I felt somehow more attached to her ‘Eva’ than I had been to Patti’s. It’s sort of the Nathan Lane thing that Nico wrote about in her review of Butley and it’s kind of what happened to Greg Lampkin when he appeared in 12 Angry Men in Nassau. Everyone wanted to laugh at his serious character because it was Greg and that’s what they expected from him. I still don’t think that anyone can sing ‘Eva’ like Patti but overall I preferred this ‘Eva’ performance tonight.

Matt Rawle did an equally brilliant job as ‘Che’ and is equally as strong in his voice as Mandy Patinkin. Rawle’s ‘Che’ was different in a few ways, as the focus of the character was changed somewhat from the Original Broadway Production. ‘Che’ was not dressed in fatigues and manhandled by military officers as he got involved in the action but was much more of a narrator. His interaction with the other characters happened when the songs specifically called for them. His rendition of ‘And The Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)’ was equally as brilliant as Mandy’s and again having never seen him it was nice to not think of the star quality of the performer.

Philip Quast was the best ‘Peron’ that I’ve seen. A very strong singer and actor who brings ‘Juan Peron’ to life and exudes power when needed and self doubt when necessary.

The staging is quite different from what I’ve seen and the biggest change is the choreography by Rob Ashford. Dance is used a lot more in this production and subtle versions of the Tango feature prominently throughout. It’s used most creatively during the opening ‘Requiem For Evita’. The staging of ‘The Art Of The Possible’ is also different. This time there are no musical chairs but the generals actually wrestle for their position and in the end ‘Peron’ plays dirty to win his position.

The main thing I thought about as I watched this musical was “What the hell has happened to Andrew Lloyd Webber?” There was Jesus Christ Superstar then Evita and then? As Peron sings in this show, “Then again, it would be foolish not to quit while you’re ahead.”  Lloyd Webber didn’t.  While Nico is a fan of Cats (because of T. S. Eliot mainly),  what follows Evita is, in my opinion dreck.  Nico says it because he stopped working with Tim Rice but it’s not just the lyrics to his later shows, it’s also the music. But this go round, I must give credit where credit is due. Hands down Stephen Sondheim is my favorite Broadway composer but Andrew Lloyd Webber has written a brilliant score for Evita.

This production of Evita was very even and absolutely worth seeing. I would see it again if the opportunity presented itself and I will probably purchase the cast recording but I must admit that I would be torn as to which one to listen to because, at the end of the day, purely based on vocal ability Patti and Mandy are tough acts to follow.

Monday: Touring London & Billy Elliott

Well.

We got up today with little jet lag. Well, Philip got up without jet lag. I, who have not changed the computer time, spent some time awake last night, trying to catch up on my writing (and succeeded). We got up this morning and went down to breakfast, which is included in the room rate, and then, after making contact with Dan (Glaser, for whose 10th anniversary of his marriage to Nathalie we made this trip) we set off from Kensington to Victoria.

We were looking for the theatre where Billy Elliott the Musical, tonight’s fare, was playing — the Victoria Palace around the corner from the station. We walked for about an hour (Philip says “at least” an hour). It was a great walk, with some sunshine and some cloud (just as the weatherpeople said), not too hot, not at all cold, with some cool little detours on the way. Finally, around two, we arrived in Victoria, and toddled along to the theatre, which was open, and picked up the tickets.

Now we had three hours to kill before dinner, reserved for 5:30, and the show at 7:30.

Mr. Burrows has this great idea. There’s a double-decker bus tour — not the one we went on in 1990, but its competitor, the Big Bus — that does a circle around London, travelling over most, if not all, of the bridges, and going through the most famous areas. It was a two-hour tour, so we took it. For £20 each we got tickets that were valid for forty-eight hours, which allowed us to get off the bus and get on at any stop on the route, and which will also cover a number of walking tours. We did the whole circle, not getting off the bus, and returned to Victoria in time for our reservation at a French bistro, Chez Gérard. We ate French food and then trotted off to the show.

Well.

It was a great show.

If you liked the movie, you’ll love the show. The story worked well as a movie, and works extremely well as a stage musical. The key seems to be in understanding the medium. Rather than be faithful to every single scene in the movie, the musical re-interprets the whole thing. Yes, the story’s the same, the characters are the same, the highs and the lows are the same, the conflicts are the same. But the writers understood that musical theatre is about Highs and Lows, and that subtleties are lost — or, at least, delivered differently, in music and movement and song. Something that the team behind The Color Purple could have benefitted from.

Well. Of course, the whole thing stands or falls on whether this kid playing Billy can actually dance.

Hello.

The Billy we saw (there are four), Colin Bates, was brilliant. I hear they all are, but I wouldn’t know about the others. This one was brilliant enough for Mr. Philip Burrows to stand and give him (and the show) an ovation. The last people-shows he gave ovations to were Christine Ebersole (Grey Gardens) and Cherry Jones (Doubt, last year). He stood up at the end of Jersey Boys, but I’m not convinced it was all to do with the quality of the production. Don’t get me wrong. It was, indeed, a good musical; but the seats we were sitting in were extraordinarily cramped and I have a feeling that Philip needed to stand up.

Be that as it may. These seats weren’t cramped, and he stood when Billy, sorry, Colin, took his bow.

So if you are coming to London and are looking for a damn good musical to see, forget Blood Brothers, which has been overrated for a very long time. If you want to see how a musical about northern working class people ought to be made, go see Billy Elliott. And it’s coming to Broadway in 2008!

Tiddly-pop for now.

London!

First, apologies for not having brought the postings up to date.  Just to give you, gentle reader, an idea of what we have seen since the last account:

Friday:  Jersey Boys, a musical about The Four Seasons (Frankie Valli et al).  Verdict:  good.  Very good, when you consider that “jukebox” musicals are all the rage and that they are usually horrid.  This wasn’t horrid in the least; it was well worth going to see.

Saturday:  Butley in the afternoon, with Nathan Lane in the title role.  Verdict:  very good.  The Color Purple in the evening.  Verdict:  a disappointment, unfortunately, but an experience worth having.

More on these later.

Yesterday, we awoke early and checked out of the Casablanca.  From there we went to Newark Airport to catch British Airways to London.

I had forgotten that flying could be like that.  We had:

1. Little pouches with hospitality thingies — eyepatch, toothbrush, and socks
2. Individual screens in each seatback with a huge range of choice of what to watch
3. Hot food served with a smile — and not of amusement at the reaction to the packages
4. Bottles or cups of water with every meal
5. Footrests so that our footprints wouldn’t get on our carry-on luggage
6. Excellent radio — too much choice!

We arrived in London half an hour ahead of time, having had a good flight across the Atlantic.  The pilot had said we might feel some bumps as there was some weather crossing as well as us, but it was nothing compared to the flight up the East coast that we had.

We boarded the free HotelLink bus, which took us to our hotel on a very quiet street in Kensington (quiet in the middle of London is, of course, relative).  The K&K is very pleasant — lovely and Georgian on the outside, but modern and European, down to the light-coloured Scandi-type furniture, inside.  Our room is spacious (for London) and we have a French window that takes us out onto a terrace that overlooks the street.

We ate dinner in a Chinese restaurant on the high street a block away — you reach it by going through a very quiet mews — and then came back.  Philip was sensible and went to bed at a respectable hour.  I stayed up (I’d slept on the plane) and went to bed at 9:30 EST (2:30 GMT).  So I slept in a little today.

We have breakfasted and are sitting waiting for Daniel to phone us — made contact already — and then we will go out for the day, I imagine.  The sun is playing peek-a-b0o behind November clouds, but the air is not a bit cold.  Nice and fresh — in the 60s if you do Farenheit (about 15 if you do Celsius).  Nothing colder than you could get in Nassau.  Not too shabby at all.

So there it is.

Later.

Saturday: Butley and The Color Purple

Now, on Saturday we saw two shows — our second play of the visit, the revival of Simon Gray’s Butley, starring Nathan Lane, and The Color Purple: the Musical.

Now. This has been a remarkable trip in many ways, in that nothing that we’d seen so far had disappointed us. In some cases (Losing Louie, Jersey Boys) that was because we didn’t have huge expectations; in some cases (Grey Gardens, The Drowsy Chaperone) we had no expectations at all. But the point remains that we weren’t disappointed because the shows we saw were good shows.

Butley was no exception. We had tickets to see it as a matinée, but the entire cast was performing, Nathan Lane included. It was not an easy play to watch — it’s very literary, and you have to pay attention to what’s going on. But it’s rewarding.

In brief, Ben Butley is an English don whose life is falling apart in the early 1970s. He’s not a pleasant man, and all his relationships are currently failing — in fact, the play takes place on the very day that this is happening. The cast isn’t huge, but Butley is the focus of the play. His character is on stage for almost the whole time, and the supporting cast has to be excellent as well.

The whole thing was excellent. The cast — most of whom were American — mastered the accents and the attitudes of the time and the place well. The play itself wasn’t easy, and often the people around us — the usual matinée crowd, many of whom had come expressly to see Nathan Lane and not much else — didn’t catch the language or the references. Butley is an English don, and the poets he refers to are British — familiar enough to me, but not so much to an American audience.

The only problem I had is the danger that comes from casting a major star in a lead role, and especially in one that is as much of a character study as Ben Butley is. I am not saying that Nathan Lane didn’t do a good job — he was excellent. But I had trouble forgetting he was, well, Nathan Lane and not Ben Butley, and I was conscious as a result that he was playing a role, and that detracted from the full impact for me. On the other hand, Mummy and I had talked not so long ago about the very same thing with Olivier, especially in his earlier roles. It’s a danger that comes with casting stars in lead roles, unfortunately. But that aside, Butley was very good — and Philip didn’t have the problem at all.

We went to The Color Purple buoyed up by our experiences all week. We walked up to 53rd Street and saw the African American audiences that were missing from the majority of the other shows we’d seen. The audience was the complexion of any normal Bahamian audience, though it was far better behaved — nobody jumped the line to get in — which stretched all the way down the block and around the corner. We had great seats, in the mezzanine (balcony) in the centre, and the set was impressive — a great twisted tree silhouetted against an evening sky and a shack on the other side of the stage.

But we were disappointed. Let me say this now: nothing about the cast disappointed us. They were excellent. The performances and the production were all strong — the sets were spectacular, with all the bells and whistles of a big-money Broadway production; the singing was top-notch, the dancing was strong, and the costumes were incredible. The story moves from the 1900s to the 1940s and the costumes, from hairstyle and makeup down to shoes — change with the times — and every cast member had every change.

But the story and the lyrics and the music were all forgettable.

The problem, in a nutshell, was that the musical tried to do too much. It tried to be faithful to the book, even going so far as putting scenes into the musical that the film had taken out. Now Alice Walker’s book, while powerful, is flawed; it goes on too long, and it romanticizes to some degree the whole Africa episode. But in the book the flaws are minor. The musical, though, rather than recognizing those flaws and working around them, maybe even attempting to avoid them, blew them to major proportions. The whole Africa episode was reinterpreted and romanticized far more than Walker’s original, and it felt artificial and almost offensive. It looked like something out of The Lion King, but it didn’t work nearly as well; after all, The Lion King was a cartoon, and that sort of scene fit better because it was cartoonish. And the story went on and on, including every small episode of Celie’s life, rather than looking for the story arc and playing to its strengths. In all, the musical, which went on for three hours, felt long, and didn’t engage us in the powerful story of Celie and her finding of her strength in any way near the way it should.

Part of the problem was the music itself, which was neither great nor terrible, but which didn’t say anything at all. It sounded like a string of minor jazz, soul and gospel hits all strung together, but it didn’t add anything really to the story. The only bit of the adaptation that had promise was the inclusion of the “Church Women”, who made comments on individuals’ characters and (in the beginning at least) helped move the story along. If they had been used throughout the musical and had been put to work to help move the faltering second half, I think it would have been better. As it was, while we were not sorry we saw the show, and we would probably recommend that Bahamians go and see it, if only for the singing and the production, and for the pleasure of seeing black people working. But we wouldn’t go out of our way to see it again.

Friday: Jersey Boys (by Philip)

There is a phenomenon on Broadway called the Juke Box Musical. It’s basically a show that is put together form a collection of songs by a particular artist or group. A story-line is put together to fit their songs and create a Broadway show. More often than not, the author fails.

There have been successful Juke Box Musicals like Ain’t Misbehavin’ which won the Tony Award for best musical back in 1978. Then there is Mamma Mia which is playing to sold out audiences, even though I think that it’s not the best example of a good Juke Box Musical but then again there is on accounting for taste.

In recent years there have been a number of these musicals that have come and quickly gone. The latest being The Times They Are A Changin’ which is set to close less than a month after it opened after receiving a critical mauling. That show featured the music of Bob Dylan and was created and directed by acclaimed choreographer, Twyla Tharp, who had gotten pretty good reviews for her work on another recent Juke Box Musical, Movin’ Out, based on the music of Billy Joel. That was one of the few successes of this genre in recent years but it was the exception and not the rule.

Lennon, a show featuring the music of John Lennon, Good Vibrations, featuring the music of the Beach Boys, Ring Of Fire, featuring the music Johnny Cash, All Shook Up, featuring the music of Elvis Presley, all died painful deaths and deservedly so. Now there is Jersey Boys, featuring the music of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons.

I approached this musical with great trepidation. Yes, I know that it had won the Tony for Best Musical but so did Spamalot and I was totally disappointed in that show. So, we went to see this musical and could only get tickets for the very last row of the theatre, row Q in the Mezzanine. The set reminded me of similar sets from the musical Brooklyn and West Side Story with chain link fences and a scaffolding type look. The musical began with a very pop/rock version of one the Four Seasons’ numbers, in French, and in my mind I went “oh oh, what are we in for this evening?” That was the last moment of that kind of questioning because as the show progressed it was quite evident that we were in for a real treat.

Now, I like Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons but I would not classify them as one of my favorite groups but this show has given me a greater respect for what this group went through to accomplish what it did and now a greater appreciation of the music knowing that.

Every one of the performances were spot on. John Lloyd Young, who plays Valli, is so convincing it’s as if he is channeling the singer. His voice is quite incredible with a falsetto to die for. Christian Hoff plays Tommy DeVito to perfection. Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer round out the Four Seasons. Not since Beatlemania has any group come as close to impersonating the originals. By the way, all of these actors have been with this show for a full year and they celebrated that anniversary on November 5th.

The book, which is the main thing that sets this musical apart from those others, is written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. Brickman is best known for having collaborated with Woody Allen on the screenplays for Annie Hall and Manhattan. The direction is by Des McAnuff and the last production that I saw of his was The Who’s Tommy which was equally as satisfying.

So, if you hear that there is a Juke Box Musical called Jersey Boys and your first thought is “Oh no, not another one of them”, think again! This is not just a good Juke Box Musical, this a good musical period and should not be missed.

Thursday: The Drowsy Chaperone

The Drowsy Chaperone gives what a number of people would like to get from musical theatre, it gives them an escape. It’s not your Les Mis, Sweeney Todd or Grey Gardens type of show with drama and thought provoking stories, it’s just an evening of escapist fun and I’ve not laughed so much in a show in quite a long time. Pure farce and slapstick comedy done very well through a very simple story.

The premiss is quite simple, there is this ‘Man in the Chair’ who opens the show talking about theatre. He mentions his likes and dislikes which are shared by many of today’s theatre goers. Some of this is done in the dark and then the lights come up on his apartment and he is seated in his chair in the corner of his apartment by his record player. He is a lonely man who loves musical theatre and his favorite show is a fictional 1928 musical called The Drowsy Chaperone. He has played this recording so many times that he knows every element of the show and has decided to share this musical with us. As he puts on the recording the story comes to life in his apartment.

The story within the story is also quite simple. Janet, a beautiful actress, is about to throw away her career in order to marry Robert, a man she fell instantly in love with on a recent boat cruise. Janet is accompanied by her Chaperone, whose job it is to keep the bride and groom from seeing each other on the wedding day. But, this being the Prohibition era, the Chaperone brings her own portable bar with her and indulges at every whim — thus leading to the “drowsy” description. There is a movie studio boss who wants to stop the marriage so that he would not lose his big star and there are two gangsters, disguised as pastry chefs, who are also there to ensure that the marriage does not happen because their boss is a major backer in the movie studio and he also does not want to lose this actress as it would mean a loss for his investment. One of the highlight performances comes from the character Aldolpho, a rather buffoonish, self-proclaimed ladies man who is sent by the studio boss to seduce Janet and therefore break up the marriage. This character is probably the funniest in our story-within-the-story and the actor playing this role delivers a brilliant portrayal which has the entire audience rolling with laughter.

Bob Martin, the coauthor of this work and the person who plays ‘The Man in the Chair’ has great timing and effortlessly brings us into his lonely life to experience the thing that makes him most happy. His delivery is spot-on and, with the cast, delivers some brilliant moments such as the time the record skips or (during one of my favorite moments in the show) when he starts off the second act by putting on the record and immediately leaves to go to the bathroom only to realize, upon his return, that he has put on the wrong recording so, during his absence, the audience is treated to a brilliant take-off on a ‘King and I’ type musical.

The Drowsy Chaperone was a great way to spend 90 minutes in the theatre (no intermission – The Man in the Chair does not like them) and we had a blast watching this musical. For pure escapist fun, this is the show to see.

Thursday: Central Park

So yesterday (I write this in the wee hours of Saturday morning, so really I mean “So Thursday”) was as different from the day before (Wednesday) as any day could be. Wednesday was wet. My Gore-Tex was soaked around the left cuff, because even though I had the umbrella I walked around with my left hand swinging free, and the cuff got wet. Our legs were soaked from hem to thigh, and we looked like Junkanoos, with our pants pasted two-thirds of the way. Our shoes were soaked. Our socks were soaked.

And then it was Thursday.

The sun shone. Not to be cliche, but there was not a cloud in the sky, as the pictures we shall post will attest. Not only did the sun shine, but the temperatures soared. It was almost shirtsleeve weather. We left our jackets behind (good thing, too, because they could hang up and dry properly) and sallied forth in our fleeces alone. Philip wore his brand-new polarized glasses. He has yet to see stripes and spots, but I am confident that he will.

We walked over to Fifth Avenue, and then walked up to Central Park. On the way we had to pass the Apple Store. You know, the one with the great big cube. The cube is the entrance to the store, which is underground. The one by FAO Schwartz. FAO Schwartz is a toy store. So is the Apple Store. Here are some pictures, including a not-very-good picture of a very big boy (nearly 50) in a very 21st century toy store.

I managed to tear Philip away from the Apple Store after some time, but not until after he showed me the newest iPod Shuffle, a piece of technology so small I would lose it before I even got it home. It is the size of a couple of squares of chocolate. I kid you not. It is the size of a matchbook. Not a matchbox, which would be too thick; a matchbook. But it costs as much as something thirty times as big.

(“$79,” Philip says. I have read the above out loud. So, OK, it costs as much as something four or five times as big — say a cell phone.

I would still lose it. I have jewellery bigger than it. And I don’t wear much of that.)

When we get to Central Park the whole thing is so lovely we take photographs. We’ll let them speak for themselves.

After Central Park we come back to the hotel. We have arranged to meet Sonia Farmer, daughter of John & Pia Farmer, whose (John’s) family were longtime neighbours of my parents’, in the lounge of the Casablanca, and we do so, spending a lovely two hours talking about all kinds of things, most of them pertaining to theatre and to writing.

And then it’s time for the evening show. This night, it’s The Drowsy Chaperone, the latest Canadian invasion.

I will let Philip tell you about that.

Wednesday: Losing Louie and A Chorus Line

Today was a Wednesday, which means there are matinees on. And because there are matinees on, we went to two shows today. But more on that later.

Two or three months ago — before we went to Trinidad and Tobago for CARIFESTA — I broke my glasses. I was taking off a t-shirt and the frames snapped in two. They were progressive lenses that I’d got in 2003 to replace the glasses I’d got in 2000 when leaving Canada. Luckily I’d kept the 2000 glasses, and I had a pair for reading as well, and so I’ve been able to make it for the last couple of months. But in Miami Airport — in good ol’ Terminal C — I slid my reading glasses into my carry-on, and when I took them out I found I’d bent the frames.

So today Philip and I went over to Lenscrafters on Fifth Avenue and got ourselves some new glasses.

It wasn’t cheap, but we got eye exams, and two pairs each. He selected two identical frames — identical — and put progressive lenses in one and tinted lenses for sunglasses in the other. Me, I got two pairs of progressive lenses in two different frames. One will be my everyday pair; the other will be the back-up.

But I neglected to say that it was a rainy day today. (Philip: *snort* — understatement; it pissed down rain.) Good thing we bought our coats in Victoria, which is no stranger to rain. But even our trusty Gore-Tex was no match for this rain, and so after spending near to two hours in LensCrafters, we strode out into a downpour, and the first place we could we ducked in and bought two umbrellas. These kept our heads dry, but our legs were soaked.

Not to worry. We ended up at the Biltmore Theatre, home of the Manhattan Theatre Club, in good time to get our tickets for Losing Louie, one of three plays that we’re seeing in New York this go-round. Now the track record for plays over the past few years hasn’t been great. There have been excellent examples, of course. 2004’s I Am My Own Wife, by Doug Wright, the same writer who penned Grey Gardens, was an exception, as was John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, which we saw last year. But on the whole the plays we’ve taken a chance on seeing have disappointed. In 2004 we went to the Manhattan Theatre Club to see Mary Louise Parker and others in Reckless, which we’ve since seen in its film version; it’s a weird piece, but not brilliant; too random for that. In 2005 we invested in The Naked Girl on the Appian Way, a great disappointment. Another weird piece, but self-consciously so, and therefore eminently forgettable.

Losing Louie was better than both of these. Perhaps we’re fuddies. But what it had that the others didn’t was characters you could care about, whose fates you invested in, and a story line that had a modicum of suspense and a touch of believability. (In these regards, Reckless was better than Naked Girl. Reckless was about weird people, while Naked Girl tried too hard to be Out There and failed.) Off-Broadway, we saw Bug in 2004, which had energy and a spark even though it, too, was weird.

Losing Louie was a play about loss and reconciliation, and it worked. It didn’t hurt that the acting was strong and the direction was excellent. But we thoroughly enjoyed it.

And tonight we went to the revival of A Chorus Line. And perhaps I’d better let Philip talk about that.

[Philip] This musical is perhaps the show that I’ve seen more than any other since I started going to Broadway shows back in 1974. I was so pissed off when the movie version of A Chorus Line came out because in my humble opinion it ranks as one the worst stage to screen transfers along with the movie version of The Wiz, another show that I had seen a number of times.

I was not sure what this new cast would bring to the table and was quite interested to see if they lived up what I remembered being an inspiring show for all performing artists, knowing what we all did for love.

From those opening five notes and the count off by Zack “A five, six, seven, eight” we are back into the story of A Chorus Line. As I watched, everything came flooding back. I was comparing actors to the ones I had seen years ago, listening to the difference in specific song arraignments and I have to say that this version did not disappoint. There were definite differences in the way certain roles were played, not better or worse, just different.

I was happy that they did not try to update the story but kept in the 70s. From what I can remember they did not change anything and I was quite pleased. The highlights for me have always been “At the Ballet”, “The Music and The Mirror”, “Dance Ten, Looks Three” and of course “What I Did For Love”, and they did not disappoint. Strong performances from the characters Diana, Paul and Cassie, to point out the standouts but overall not a weak performance in this cast.

I’m glad I returned and this has wiped out any recollection of that godawful movie version. I’m now interested in what we will get from the Les Mis and Evita revivals.

Tuesday: New York City, 2006

So here we are.

We arrived in the Big Apple yesterday, which was a long day. We were up at 4:30 a.m., and Mummy came to pick us up at 5:15, as our flight was leaving at 8 a.m. and we had to check in two hours ahead.

The airport was not too busy and not too dead — just about what one might expect to be “normal” on a weekday. We had to wait in line at immigration, and a little longer at customs, and then we were through. First hurdle cleared. We waited for our flight to Miami, which was uneventful.

When we got to Miami airport, we discovered we were leaving from Terminal C. Now we are not infrequent travellers. This year alone we’ve been south, to Trinidad and Barbados between us. Last year Philip went to unusual destinations like Michigan and China. But we have not often left from Terminal C in recent years. Terminals A and E are I think I remember the terminal from years and years ago, when there weren’t many terminals to choose from. Close to planes, big plate windows back from when it was cool to look at planes. Nine gates. No Wi-Fi.

Anyhow, our plane was on time, even though the airport CNN feed was predicting lots of rain for the tri-state area and delays in the late afternoon. Our flight up the east coast was fine, but a little bumpy in places when we hit rain. Not as much shaking as the Trinidad earthquake, but the turbulence lasted a little longer.

We got in early, and arrived at the Hotel Casablanca exactly at the time Philip scheduled, despite traffic. We checked in, and Philip went out immediately to get his city fix. He said he might go pick up the tickets for today’s matinee but really he just wanted to breathe that good old healthy New York City air (*cough*). Me — well, I’d been up since 4:30, so I took a nap.

We left the room at 5:30 to go downstairs to partake in the Casablanca daily wine and cheese service in the room they call Rick’s Cafe, and when we’d imbibed, we set off for the Walter Kerr Theater to see Grey Gardens. At this point I am not going to get too carried away about in-depth reviews, but suffice to say that we were not disappointed in the least. This musical, which played like a play (one day I’ll try and explain what I mean), is inspired by a 1970s documentary, The Beales of Grey Gardens, about Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edie Bouvier Beale, aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (nee Bouvier). They lived all their lives in an East Hampton mansion named Grey Gardens, which by the seventies had become a ruin inhabited by two batty ladies and scores of cats, and which was cited by the local authorities. The resulting musical is riveting — as is the performance of the lead, Christine Ebersole, who plays Edith in the first act and Edie in the second.