My Obsession with Broadway

I had an excellent time in NYC this past weekend. I enjoyed spending time with AL as well as seeing new things. So this is the Good the Bad and the Ugly of my trip.

The hotel had feather pillows. I DETEST feather pillows. I can never get comfortable using them and I don’t think that they are very supportive. I always feel like my big giant head falls through the layer of feathers and ends up flat on the bed. I couldn’t get rid of them. I called the desk people to request non feather pillows and they said sure no problem. But, that is not what was delivered to our room. I just decided to live with it…and by live with it I mean complain about it every day until we left.

When we checked in our hotel they only had rooms with 1 King bed so we had to share. That ended up being fine but at first we considered getting a roll away bed for our tiny room and I thought that was just going to be way too crowded. One King bed is plenty big enough for two people.

When both were starving when we arrived at the hotel so as soon as we were settled in, we headed out to the closest café to enjoy a delicious lunch. I didn’t anticipate how costly this lunch was going to be. The place was called Lindy’s and the food was fine enough but seriously overpriced. A fountain Diet Coke was $4.95. How could they charge that. It seemed outrageous. I ordered a Cheeseburger and fries and that was $16.95. Let me tell you this was not the kind of place you would expect to pay $16.95 for a cheeseburger. It was simply a casual diner that was vastly overpriced. My food was good and played a large part in elevating my mood but we never went back to the diner. If we had just walked a bit more we could have found a much better place. O well…that is what we get for being tourists.

The Plays:

This is the main focus of our trip to NYC. AL and I both love musicals and especially the Broadway musical. We both spent large quantities of time pouring over the Broadway.com website trying to decide what plays we should see. It took some time but these were our final choices:

Hair (2)
Next to Normal (1)
Rock of Ages (4)
West Side Story (3)

They are listed in the order in which we saw them and the number next to the name indicates my order of favorites. We saw Hair first and it was a good way to start off our weekend. I enjoyed the music, costumes as well as the energy in the room. The actors used the entire theatre and were often mingling with the audience. During the first act the main character heckled the latecomers as they were arriving. I am very glad that I arrived on time. I am probably going to download this musical to my IPOD and might at some point be found singing to the songs. AL and I decided that we wanted to make this trip as cheap as possible so we decided to purchase the lowest price tickets. I regretted it in this instance as it was a gigantic theatre and we were in the very back row. I felt that the acoustics were not very good in the back of the room and I often had a hard time understanding what the actors were saying and singing. The next time I would choose a middle of the road ticket..

Next to Normal was next and this was a new musical. The lead female character had just won this year’s Tony for best singer. She was dynamite. This musical was very dark and delved into tough topics. It was about a women who was manic depressive and how she related to her husband and child(ren). The musical took her through the many phases of her disease and had a fairly surprise ending. I thought all of the music fit the story and all of the actors did a fabulous job. This was my favorite show while we were there. This was AL least favorite show as she didn’t really like the subject matter.

Rock of Ages was our Saturday afternoon show. When we arrived the theatre had a party atmosphere and the audience was very lively. It was like being at a 1980’s rock concert. This musical showcased Constantine Maroulis from American Idol as the lead male character. This musical utilized the songs from 1980’s hair bands to tell the simple love story. The whole thing was kind of cheesy but I did smile throughout the entire performance. I am glad that I went but I cannot imagine ever seeing this show again.

Our final show on Saturday night was West Side Story. This was the show that AL was the most excited to see. The dancing was terrific but I found that the singing was just OK. I expected more from a Broadway performance. The other thing that annoyed me was that the Hispanic characters spoke in Spanish in the play. I found this very aggravating since I don’t understand Spanish. They even sang some of the songs in Spanish and that included my favorite WSS song "I Feel Pretty". I was very disappointed. I think that the men were cast to look tough and to dance but they were not necessarily the best actors or singers. I guess it is hard to find that perfect combination of traits.

Due to our extravagant Broadway habit we tried to make the rest of our time in NYC very low key and cheap. On Friday we took a cab to the lower East side Tenement Museum. This was a very excellent and interactive tour. They took us through two typical Tenement apartments and told us stories of the people who lived there and how there life was back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. They have six different tours and I would like to go on more of them upon later visits.

After the museum visit we had planned to eat at a famous NY Pizza place in Little Italy. I was very excited to try some “special” pizza but I was very disappointed. I just didn’t find it very good or tasty as well as the restaurant was very bossy. My $3 fountain Diet Coke didn’t include free refills and they didn’t take any credit cards. I just don’t like it when restaurants have so many rules. I am the customer after all….shouldn’t they be trying to please me and not the other way around.

Next we walked through some shops and then over to China town. I didn’t really find China town that interesting and it was kind of smelly. But they were selling fake purses on the street. They had this laminated card that had photos of their stock and you could choose the one you liked, negotiate the price and then they would be back in five minutes with your new purse. I didn’t buy one as I didn’t find anything that was appealing to me.

We then took a cab the gigantic Macy’s store. I have never been in one store that is so big. The store took up two 8 floor buildings with a gamut of merchandise. I looked through the purse section and I decided I wasn’t willing to part with so much of my money for a purse. I also looked in the bedding section for new sheets to the same result. I just hate overpaying for stuff. I ended up purchasing a three pack of athletic socks and sitting in the starbuck’s texting my friends as I waited for AL to finish her shopping.

I decided to go to the Guggenheim museum on Saturday morning before our first play and AL apparently didn’t get enough of Macy’s on Friday so she headed back to make some additional purchases. I enjoyed seeing this Frank Lloyd Wright building and it's beautiful architecture. They had a display of his drawing's to a variety of his famous houses and buildings as well as some models. They also had some 1800 and 1900 paintings and that ended up being my favorite part of the museum. I wouldn’t like to go to museum's every day, but being in such a smaller place is much less overwhelming than large colossus museums like the Louver.

I was on my own on Sunday prior to my flight as AL had to leave the hotel at 9:30am to go to the airport. I decided to rent a bike and tour central park. I wasn’t disappointed. I found it very beautiful and full of life and interesting characters. I ended up on a horrible and cheap mountain bike that wouldn’t change gears. But it gave me a great appreciation for my beautiful bike at home. The park has a 4.5 paved road around the outside of the park with various paths that cut through the middle. There are only certain places that you could ride the bikes in the park as most of it is designated for walkers and runners. The park included several ball fields as wells as a gigantic public pool. I also discovered a trio of Jazz musicians giving a free concert so I took a seat and absorbed the atmosphere for several minutes.

This was a good visit and loads of great things to see. I am so very glad that I had the opportunity to go back this year. I hope AL and I can make this an annual pilgrimage to see great Musicals.