Yesterday (Friday) I tested negative for COVID for the first time since Saturday. Oh! OK, what now?
I’d come off a four day weekend last week where I got a ton done, and of course I’ve been mostly cooped up in the apt since then, so was very much caught up on projects and stuff. So I was like, I need to get out. And probably go see shows, since there have been a lot of post-Tony closing announcements.
We have half-days on Fridays during the summer (which is awesome), so after perusing Playbill, I decided to go into town and try to get tickets for two shows that are closing this weekend: The Picture of Dorian Grey and Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends (one for the evening, one for the weekend). Which would leave me time to see a movie in the afternoon before the Friday show.
Dorian Grey had tickets, but I got a better deal by buying one for Saturday’s matinee, so more on that later. For Old Friends, I ended up splurging for what turned out to be a great ticket in the balcony that night, second row on the aisle. (Broadway ticket prices are getting up to opera level, and normally I’d do TDF or TKTS, but time was of the essence.)
Since the Friday curtain for Dorian Grey was 7:00, but for Old Friends was 8:00, the plan firming up meant I was going to go see the 3-hour movie (Mission Impossible) rather than the 90-minute movie (Elio) I’d scoped out. I’d seen most, if not all of the MI movies (which have been going on for 30 years, can you believe it?) and remembered really liking the last one, which was very much the first half of a story that this movie was wrapping up.
Enjoyed the previews, although can’t say it made me want to see any of the movies. Certainly not Smurfs (“I think I just Smurfed my pants!” No thank you.) And not even Superman. My Superman is Christopher Reeve, thank you.
Then into the movie – which starts in a very weird way, lots of flashbacks to previous movies, and an overwhelming movie score than didn’t stop. I found it annoying that there really weren’t concrete scenes happening, with a start and finish and any resolution. (although it was helpful to get kind of a ‘previously on’ set of info delivered to you) Eventually the story picked up and started doing some interesting things.
But mostly I found it ridiculous. The nonsense level was off the charts, so much that I was laughing inappropriately. There’s a huge set piece where Ethan has to do a deep dive in incredibly cold waters to a sunken submarine to retrieve a thing, and there’s a hundred different obstacles, any one of which would be enough to derail or kill him, and of course he succeeds (spoiler!). But it would have been exciting and dangerous enough for him to just go down, get in the sub, get the thing and leave, without the sub rolling over and headed for the underwater cliff and and and… it was just absurd.
I’m sure the other movies are equally absurd, but not enough to bug me like this. Of course, the other thing is that Tom Cruise is (not all that) older than I am, which means he’s in his 60’s, but has had lots of help to not look like, say, me. But I just watched A Few Good Men a few weeks ago and he doesn’t look like he did in his 30’s, he looks like someone who shouldn’t look as good as he does in his 60’s. There’s another character in the movie who they brought back from the first movie, and he looks very much like he’s 30 years older (appropriately), and when this young guy is now a bearded elder, and Ethan looks (at a distance) the same as he did 30 years ago, it’s just very distracting and you’re wondering how that works at all.
So… bottom line, I didn’t like it nearly as much as I thought I would, but I’m glad I saw it.
I had a nice-sized amount of time to grab dinner between the movie and the show, and the goal was to get off the beaten track to avoid the tourists and tourist restaurants. I decided to head west on 44th to go maybe to Don Giovanni, but there was a restaurant across the street that caught my eye, Miss Nellie’s. I got in and got a nice table, but it turned out to be very much a tourist-aimed restaurant. The food (short rib burger and fries) and drinks (two cosmos, both excellent) were fine, but it was quite expensive and you definitely got the feeling they’d love you to wrap it up so they could turn over the table. I won’t be rushing back.
Off to the show. Ran into my married buddies Mark and Bill in line to get in, that was fun, hadn’t seen them in a while. Also in line, and kind of running around and talking to people, was actress Veanne Cox, that was a fun celeb sighting. She knows her way around a Sondheim, was in one of the Broadway Companys I didn’t see.
As I said, my seat was excellent. I have not mastered the art of the ‘selfie with the program’, I always have to hold it in my teeth.
Show was excellent. The star power was Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, both of whom I’d seen on stage before. But there were other Broadway greats in there too, such as Beth Leavel and Kate Jennings Grant and Gavin Lee.
There were no great revelations. Singers love to do Sondheim, and this was just another opportunity to present great songs in a great setting with a great cast and orchestra. (Matthew Bourne directed this, I hadn’t realized that.) There wasn’t a lot of material that you haven’t already seen a zillion times before, except for a bit from “Bounce” I didn’t know, and a feature spot of “Live Alone and Like It”, and a nice rendition of “The Boy From…”. Mostly, I found it just reminded you how amazing so many of these songs are. I’ve really come to appreciate Company more as I’ve grown older, and yeah, “The Ladies Who Lunch” never gets old. Also, “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” (with Bernadette as Mazeppa, which was literally a blast). And “Weekend in the Country”. Just brilliant. They had Gavin Lee do “Leave You”, a song that works for any gender. I love a good “fuck you” song and that’s one of the best.
Bernadette doesn’t sound great any more (although who cares? I’d watch her read the phone book) and she’s also someone who is working very hard not to look her age, and I find that disconcerting rather than pleasant. Salonga does look (appropriately) her age and sounds fantastic, even in stuff that wasn’t about vocal beauty (Mrs. Lovett).
So, bottom line – extremely well done, and I’m glad I saw it, but I don’t know if I learned anything.
Back into town today for Dorian Grey. I might do some pre-Pride bar-hopping afterward, but I shy away from crowds, so if history repeats itself, I’ll poke my head in, go ‘ugh’ and leave.
The Toast Point Page 