Shows!

Saturday night I won rush tickets for the Prince of Broadway.

Hal Prince is a Producer and/or Director of several of my favorite shows including Sweeney Todd, Cabaret and West Side Story.  I just finished reading a book about the making of Fiddler on the Roof so it was fun to see another show involving one of the major “characters” from that book.

The actors each took turns narrating the show as Hal, telling his story interspersed with songs from the shows he worked on.  Some of the performances were mesmerizing like the songs from West Side Story and Showboat, and some dragged a little like the ones from Phantom of the Opera and Company, but overall it was an evening well spent.

Then on Sunday I won the lottery for tickets to Groundhog Day.  I was on a roll!  Amanda and I watched the movie before the 3pm curtain so it would be fresh in our minds.  Well, in my mind.  It’s one of Amanda’s favorite movies so she has the whole thing memorized.

While watching the movie again for the first time in YEARS, I noticed that Andie MacDowell’s character was pretty lame– she didn’t have much personality besides having inhuman patience and delight for Bill Murray’s jerkiness.  I was pleased to discover that they had updated the character for the Broadway show.  She was great– she was strong, independent, in the market for love but it wasn’t on the top of the list of things she needed to be happy.  I love when women are complete characters regardless of their relationship status.  I liked the character and the actor who played her so much that she made the show in my opinion.

The Billy Murray character (Phil) was young, attractive and up for the challenge of such a demanding role. I mean, this guy took his clothes off and put them back on more times than I could count.  From an actor’s perspective, I was curious about the experience of doing such a repetitive show– how did they remember the subtle changes scene by scene, especially when they did the show eight times a week?! There were some fun sleight of hand tricks where the main actor seemed to be in two places at once, but after the first one I kept an eye out for it and usually figured out how they did it. I thought it was interesting how the Ted character seemed so over the top on film in a way that was physically impossible to emulate on a big stage. Some of the towns people had songs that gave them backstory that didn’t always make the show better and more meaningful. But eventually Phil arcs from being selfish and angry to present and generous and he wakes up on February 3rd.  It was a fun show and I was glad to see it before it closed.

We walked out of the theatre through a cloud of marijuana. I didn’t remember marijuana being as ubiquitous as it was in Denver! I guess the laws have changed.  Now I get a nice second hand high through my bedroom window every night (and bacon smells on Sunday mornings).

On the elevator from the subway platform to the street back up in the heights, a man carrying large instruments noticed Amanda’s program peaking out of her purse and asked if we had just come from Groundhog day.  So did he!  He was in the orchestra.

Later that week I left the house early to get rush tickets for Bandstand– it would close on Monday and Amanda said it was really good.  I got the tickets and then walked around central park for a few hours.

It was fun to retrace the steps I had walked years ago, to watch people rowing boats in the lake (when I was 16 we named our boat the great ship Uberbabe) and watch the tourists ride through on horse drawn carriages.

Finally it was 2pm and I ducked through a curtain to find my box seat for Bandstand.

This show was directed and choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler (who choreographed Hamilton and In the Heights) and tells the story of war vets who start a band and enter a song contest.  The name and premise of the show do not do it justice.  It’s a moving story about PTSD and the healing transformative powers of music.  The actors really play the instruments in the band.  I mean, that just rocks my world.  It’s hard enough to find people who can sing, dance and act at Broadway caliber, but to play an instrument that well too?  The choreography was fasinating.  The chorus played the crowd in the present as well as the ghosts and feelings of the characters.  I was also impressed with how the play addressed the consequences of fighting in a war without commenting on war itself — I, as someone who doesn’t think we should be fighting in wars, enjoyed the show as much as someone who appreciates that the soldiers go out there to ‘defend our freedom’ would.

My favorite film at the last Mountainfilm I attended, Almost Sunrise, tells the story of two vets who come back from Afghanistan spiritually broken and how they put themselves back together.  This musical told a similar story, though their paths and means to heal were different, and I loved every minute of it.