So, I had two weeks last month where I had eye surgery on Monday and had to take off work for three days, not because surgery recovery was onerous or tiring, but because the eye doctor had said “no screens for three days”. So, on both Wednesdays, since I had to go into town anyway for my post-surgery checkup, I got Wed matinee TKTS tickets.
For the first one, I really wanted to see Death of a Salesman. (OK, does anyone really want to see Death of a Salesman?) It’s a long show, so a matinee sounded great. But by the time I got to the front of the line, it was sold out, so I got Operation Mincemeat instead. Had enough time to go get a nice lunch at Bareburger on Restaurant Row, then off to the theater.
I was excited! My buddies Mariah and Josh had been trying to get all of us to go a few months ago, but it never worked out. And my buddy Marisa adored the show (which she’d seen in London) and there’d been a bunch of fuss about when the original British cast left and were replaced by Americans. People care about this show. I can’t say I’d been excited by what I’d seen on the Tonys, but, hey, trust my friends.
OM is a high-energy show about a spy operation that took place during World War II. It actually resonated a lot with one of the plotlines in one of my favorite books, Cryptonomicon, where (in one of the many plotlines) our heroes plant fake evidence of things that didn’t really happen in order to throw off the enemy. OM features five actors playing all the roles (a mix of genders in the cast, and everyone plays roles of both genders), and it’s super energetic and wordy.
I didn’t love it. The music was fine, but not entrancing. It was so zippy and wordy it was hard to get the lyrics. The gimmick of having five actors play all the roles, particularly in such a deliberately ‘everyone’s running around all the time’ frantic production, wasn’t fun for me, it just looked exhausting. (although the actors were good and the portrayals were all fun) I may have not been in the right mood for it. However, I was absolutely hit in the gut by what most people agree is the show’s highlight, Dear Bill. I just wished more of the show had been like that.
So… OK, I have taken it in. I’d give it another shot if an opportunity came up. I was in fact tired enough that I was almost falling asleep, a tough thing to do in a show that loud and in-your-face.
Two weeks later, I did much the same thing. There were some other options for shows that may not be running long that I thought about getting, but really had set my sights on finally seeing Hadestown.
Digression: it was a slightly chilly day, so I decided I wanted Chinese food, preferably involving hot and sour soup. I looked on my app and realized there were a couple of options on Restaurant Row. I went to Mountain House rather than the dim sum place. This turned out to be a fancy more authentic Szechuan restaurant (which was fine). But when I ordered my soup, the waitress did my best to talk me out of it. It was very large, she said, and had no noodles, and wasn’t a good meal choice or a good appetizer for one person. OK… after an inordinate amount of discussion, I told her that I would take my lumps if it was a poor choice, because I really wanted it, and yeah, bring me a side of rice so it’s not just a big bowl of soup.
So that was weird, and what was also weird is that it took forever to come out. Usually, Chinese restaurants are too quick to get your food on the table, but not this one – to the point I was worried about getting out in time to get to my show. They did keep coming by to give me timing updates. (I guess fancy Chinese restaurants don’t just have a pot of it going, they had to make it from scratch.) Anyway, it finally hit the table and was in fact way too large, but also delicious. I did eat most of it, being super-cognizant that taking in a lot of liquid before being trapped in a seat for two acts was maybe a problem… although I am now in the habit of getting aisle seats when I can for just this reason. Bottom line – it was really good, but next time I go there, I’ll go with other people and without a time crunch.
So, Hadestown. The show was the toast of Broadway when it opened pre-pandemic, won all the awards, and is beloved by most. It’s even getting “Hadestown Teen Edition” performances in high schools now. It’s a jazzy retelling of the Orpheus myth. But I will say, it had never seemed like my kind of thing, especially with the clip I’d seen on the Tony awards. But, hey let’s give it a shot.
Let’s cut to the chase: I loved it. It was beautifully staged and very well-acted, and I actually liked the music a lot (ordered the album pretty much as soon as I got home). I do tend to bitch and moan about Broadway shows that don’t give us actual sets, but here – although it was not a representational set, it was a really interesting one, looking like a cafe and street in New Orleans. The name in the cast I recognized was J. Harrison Ghee. They are a non-binary actor who won the Tony for Some Like It Hot, but I had never seen them, as they were out when Dad and I saw (and liked) that show. They were Hermes, and were fantastic.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Eurydice was Jordan Tyson, who I’d seen as Dainty June in the Audra Gypsy. I liked her fine, but she did often resort to the “I’m miked, so I don’t have to support when I sing” thing which I hate – although that might have been a directorial choice, not hers. And Orpheus was Joshua Colley, who’s more famous that I knew, although I’d seen that popular miscast Schuyler Sisters video with him and two other child (at the time) actors. He was fine – it’s a weird role vocally and is mostly done in falsetto, not my thing.
But the staging was great and mostly the company was great, including one male chorister I couldn’t keep my eyes off of (Alex Puette). I was happy to be proven wrong – yeah, it in generally isn’t my kind of thing, but specifically, this is a great show and a great production. (Eric has lost his thesaurus again. That’s just great.)
Some brief notes about other shows: I went straight from Operation Mincemeat uptown to see my friends at the Blue Hill Troupe do Ruddigore. Then on Saturday, I went to see my friends at NYGASP do a matinee of Utopia, Ltd. and then back to Ruddigore for the evening to see the other cast or principals.
This production of Ruddigore was a top-tier production for the Troupe – very well cast, with a lot of good actors in roles that fit them beautifully. Excellent set and stage pictures. Fun stuff in the ghost scene, including two skeleton marionettes handing from the fly space, with glowing eyes. I won’t go into detail, too many friends in the cast, but overall, this was a wonderful show and I was happy to see it twice.
One quibble – there was more than one moment where the director inserted ‘schtick’ that was, ok, kinda funny, but distracted from what was actually supposed to be happening on stage. One of these was during Rose’s etiquette aria and was not fair to her, pulling focus in the second verse. And they chose to have Margaret appear in the Act 1 Finale before her vocal entrance, which I think undermines what is a very funny moment – when Despard mentions her for the first time and (usually) she pops up out of nowhere. Eh, no one asked me.
Utopia was also excellent, which wasn’t a surprise because NYGASP has been doing such quality work in the last few seasons, but kind of a surprise because it’s such an awful show. (Ruddigore is the opposite of an awful show. As I said to friends, I got to see top-notch productions of my favorite G&S and my least-favorite G&S in the same day.) But this production, which was pretty faithful to the script, was very well-cast and had lots of energy needed to make some awful bits interesting. I was very happy to see Vince Gover, who’d played Scaphio in the same show when I played in the orchestra for it in 2023, playing the role here with Lance Olds as Phantis – both great. My buddy Cameron Smith had the charm and the high C’s for Fitzbattleaxe. Actually, everyone was great, but the standout to me was a hilarious Hannah Holmes as the severe Lady Sophy. So, bravo to director James Mills and the whole company. This is their first fully-staged Utopia and it’s definitely worth keeping in their rotation.
And after Hadestown, I had tickets to see that cabaret at 54 Below… and I realize, hurrah, that I covered that in the last post.
More soon!
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