So behind I might as well just blitz the month. It hasn’t been that interesting, but let’s see.

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We had an earthquake! Not a common thing on the east coast. Even odder, I felt nothing for the earthquake or the aftershocks, even though pretty much everyone else did. I was at home in my (admittedly solidly constructed brick) apartment building. Maybe I’m just oblivious

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People came in from out of town! Easter Sunday (not by plan, just coincidence), my old friend Will from Philadelphia band days (we did a cabaret together!) was in town to see theater and we had a nice catch-up session.

Then, just a couple of weeks ago, Bunthorne Boy and the Viking finished up a two-week US trip (which took in a lot of the west side of the country) with a few days in NYC, staying with me. Nice to pay them back for their extraordinary hosting in Norway and Sweden last summer. That Thursday was Trond’s birthday, and he’d put together a dinner gathering at our wonderful local restaurant, The Queensboro, literally right next door. Then over to my place for cake (I got a fancy one from Cannelle).

As I’ve said before, Charles very much bought and furnished our home for entertaining, so we are all set up for parties and such. I hadn’t hosted a gathering of this size by myself, other than Charles’s celebration last year – which was all close friends and relatives – and I was nervous, but it went great and everyone had a good time. I got to use the gold-plated flatware, always fun, but didn’t go as far as to get out the good china…

One of the nice surprises was that Trond, unbenownst to Brad, got Brad’s sister Molly and her husband Bill to come up from the DC suburbs. Brad was very (and happily) surprised, and it was great to see Molly and Bill again. (B, T and I had lunch with them again the next day before B&T headed to the airport.)

There were other gatherings as well: Renee, Susan and I had brunch somewhere in there. And I finally got together for a Thai Sunday lunch with Tony and Nancy, two old friends of C’s I hadn’t seen in quite a while – and then afterward, I joined Vance and Craig (and their friend, drag queen Delighted Tobehere) for drag bingo. That was fun as always, and there were several minor celebrities in the audience.

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I spent a day in the hospital! Relax, I was fine, but I wasn’t sure, which is why I went. I had an odd very specific sensation kind of around my heart, lower than the pacemaker site (which does twinge me regularly, but that’s mostly about my body getting used to it being there). This new sensation wasn’t even pain, more of just an awareness – so I decided to be cautious and went to the ER. A long boring day of tests, surrounded by people who were actually sick, and it turned out everything was fine.

I did also have a colonoscopy and endoscopy a week or so later, and it turned out my reflux is something fierce, so maybe the weird sensation was that. I’ve certainly noticed the reflux more now that I’ve been made aware of it.

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I saw some shows! I think I’ve already covered Spamalot and Back to the Future, which I saw recently (and a community production of Songs for a New World). But I finally saw the current Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd! I know and love this show so well, I actually avoided listening to a cast album for a long time so I could enjoy the show reintroducing itself to me. I thought the production was excellent, and was well-cast from top to bottom. (I saw understudies for the romantic leads, and even they were great.) Caveat: the two leads were Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster, both wonderful musical theater actors, but neither are obvious casting choices for those roles. That being said, they each delivered well-thought-out performances and I was fine with that. (I still wouldn’t have cast them myself.)

Then I saw two performances of Blue Hill Troupe’s HMS Pinafore. This was their 100th anniversary production, planned for years, and it was delightful. They’d brought back my good friend Gary Slavin to direct it, and former conductor Zach Schwartzman to conduct. There were, as always, two sets of principals, pretty much everyone on stage a friend of mine.

One clever thing they did was have a ‘1924 chorus’, setting this production up as if it were the very first BHT Pinafore, and the 1924 chorus, in period costume, had a little party scene during the overture, then sat on chairs on either side of the set, to watch and sing the choruses with the onstage cast. It worked very well, was charming, and gave busy or less-mobile Troupers a chance to do the show.

Mostly, it was a traditional production, except Gary made it clear that Buttercup is lying in her final revelation about the baby-switching, in order to get everyone where they really want to be – and Hebe’s in on it. That was fun. Also some great sight gags in “A British Tar”, with an immense amount of sheet music – and Josephine getting tipsy during “Never Mind the Why and Wherefore”, leading to her blithely shouting out her final, “and a tar who ploughs the water”, leading the two men to look at her quizzically. That was a hoot.

So, bravo, BHT! Well done. (I can’t compliment individuals – I knew more than half the cast and orchestra.)

(I’m sure I’ve told this story before. My freshman year in college, when I was just discovering G&S, I read Martyn Green’s famous annotated book of the libretti. By the time I got to The Gondoliers, I was getting a little tired of the whole thing. And about halfway through Gondo, I sighed and went, “it’s another goddamn baby-switching, isn’t it?”, turned to the end and went, “yep”.)

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Other stuff – my company had a volunteer event on Friday at Materials for the Arts, which I participated in. That was fun! We get a day’s worth of volunteer time a year, paid, which you can use either for this sort of thing or for your own volunteering. I’d heard of Materials for the Arts – it’s great for theater groups or any non-profit just to go grab free stuff. And it’s in Queens on Northern Boulevard, right down the street. Anyway, after a tour of the warehouse, we spend the afternoon unpacking and organizing books, which was really fun. I did spy a Mikado score, and almost walked off with it. I still have a half day left of time, which I have the rest of the year to use, and I could easily just go back there on my own and spend another half day organizing stuff. As I said to my upstairs neighbor, Josh, I want to volunteer, but do things that don’t involve Interaction with People.

Josh was wife- and kidless last night, and the Queensboro was having a funny drag event, so we went to dinner together, then went to the drag thing. It was seriously local drag, like not polished at all, but fun. The two queens, Patsy In Decline, and Ducky Sheaboi, billed themselves as Southern girls, and did some fun numbers and also read some internet smut that other people had written (this was hit or miss – the Paula Dean one fell flat, but the corn one was hilarious). It was a fundraiser for a drag queen story hour, and it was fun to participate.

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Yep, I think that’s it. Let’s see what May brings!