NYC Theatre

And Then William Shatner Started Singing (A NYC Road Trip Story)

March 22, 2012

Trips to NYC are never complete without a Broadway show.

And Broadway shows are never as exciting as when they reference Star Trek.

(Unless they have glitter and/or dinosaur heads.)

(Nothing tops dinosaur heads.)

(Nothing.)

So when I saw tickets were on sale for William Shatner’s last performance of his one man show, Shatner’s World, a road trip was required.

For once, my mom jumped on the NYC day trip bandwagon, allowing the rest of us to sleep on the way.

(We’re crazy fun to be around, obviously.)

(I’m sure her recent decision to never again take a day trip to New York was completely unrelated.)

(Also, how adorable does Lindsey look sleeping?)

(And how unfair is it that you can never say that without sounding creepy?)

(One of the many tragedies of modern life.)

(Along with the lack of soup restaurants on every corner.)

(All a gal wants is some soup, capitalism, why are you falling down on the job?)

Thanks to a terribly early starting time and a shocking lack of traffic, we arrived early enough to leisurely park and eat lunch and stand outside the theatre, taking photo after photo.

(Why, yes, that was quite inconvenient to all the people walking by, how sweet of you to think of them.)

Shatner’s World was sometimes funny and sometimes strange and sometimes a wee bit racist, but it was always Shatner-y.

And, really, that’s why everyone was there.

Well, that, and for the end, when William Shatner started singing.

‘Cause if you haven’t heard that in person, you haven’t truly lived.

In case you were wondering

Yes

I am wearing different socks in the first photo

But they’re rather similar

For me

Quite impressive,

Megan

~~~~~

Equally Awkward Reads

* My Passing Strange Catastrophe

* Norman Conquests

* Daniel Radcliffe Naked and Other Musicals

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And Then William Shatner Started Singing (A NYC Road Trip Story)

Tagged as: I *am* pretentious enough to spell it theatre

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Flying Men Make Me Happy

August 2, 2011

Have you missed my excited face? 'Cause it's missed you.

Peter Pan.

Captain America.

Gonzo.

Who doesn’t love a man who can fly?

(Or a man who can survive being shot out of a cannon. Equally hot.)

Answer: aboriginal tribes who’ve yet to be introduced to man-powered flight.

But that’s neither here nor there.

On my last NYC theatre adventure I had so many shows I wanted to see I could barely cram them all in.

Yet, there was one I wanted to see that I hadn’t even mentioned to my mom or Lindsey.

Despite the negative reviews, despite the tales of cast injuries, despite the fact that it’s a musical about a radioactive spider bite, despite the fact that it’s named Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark which is a title that makes absolutely no sense, I just had to see the new* Taymor/U2 musical.

Thankfully, my crazed whims were indulged so one steamy night last month I entered the truly gigantic Foxwoods Theatre to see if it was finally the show that would kill an audience member.

(Spoiler: Nope.)

If you’d like reasons to think this show is dreadful, I have tons available:

There’s a mythological story about the introduction of spiders accompanied by a Greek chorus. No, that has nothing to do with the plot, but will give you squeegy feelings about women with mechanical spider legs.
I can’t tell you a single line from a single song. Considering it was written by Bono and The Edge, I can only assume they lost some sort of bet and were forced to pay up by penning the most innocuously boring music ever scribed.
If possible, the dialogue is actually worse than the music or lyrics. It’s as if they decided to have them speak using only the words written in comic books. And probably only the comic books containing Betty and Veronica.
As the actors and stuntmen soar over your head, flying to the balcony and around in circles, landing on each other’s backs and deftly moving around the steel wires, it will be difficult to forget the multiple men who’ve been seriously injured doing those exact same things. Thus, these scenes will be half incredibly impressive and half overwhelmingly anxiety driven.

But this post isn’t about hating Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark – there are enough of those posts already out there.

No, this post is about how much I freaking adored Spiderman.

I adore the cast and their voices but most of all I adore the visuals. Taymor (the director) has made everything big and shiny and perfectly tuned to the show.

Every detail of the costumes, with pen strokes added that mimic drawing, perfectly match every piece of the set, from the silver scientist uniforms and machines to the cutout typewriters used by the secretaries at the newspaper office.

When you compare what works against what doesn’t, Spiderman seems to fail.

Yet that doesn’t take into account the sheer fun of this production. You might not leave the theatre having learned something about life or having experienced a transcendental moment but you will leave happy. And what’s a better use of an evening than that?

If I were a superhero I’d be represented by a groundhog

Naturally,

Megan

*Does it count as new if it’s been around for a year but they kept pushing back opening night, hoping the show would get better and thus garner less negative reviews? I’m feeling generous today, so yes.

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Flying Men Make Me Happy

Tagged as: Excited face joins the party, I *am* pretentious enough to spell it theatre

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I’ve Seen Daniel Radcliffe Naked (And Other Musicals)

July 14, 2011

Have I ever told you I’ve been four feet away from a naked ~~Harry Potter~~ Daniel Radcliffe?

(Don’t worry, this isn’t going to get awkward.)

(At least not more than usual.)

Last spring, Daniel made his Broadway debut starring in Equus.

(Naked viewing is enough of a connection for first name usage, don’t you think?)

He went mad and blinded a whole bunch of horses and then took off his clothes.

(In the play, that is.)

Some other stuff happened, but what I mainly remember is the nudity and blind horses.

(He was fantastic, the play was weird and based on what I can only assume is outdated psychology.)

So when I heard that Dan (we’re just getting closer by the minute!) was returning to the Great White Way, this time in a musical, I felt it was my responsibility to see him.

After all, we have the bond of his nakedness.

And such bonds just cannot be broken.

If you’re not familiar with the story line of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying it’s the story of a window washer who uses a self-help book to try climb the corporate ladder. John Larroquette plays the president of the company, and does it well enough you don’t spend the entire show going “look, it’s Dan Fielding!”

Lots of other actors play lots of other roles, all of them quite well. There is music and dancing and lots of 1960s clothing and sexism.

It’s like Mad Men, but a musical in which you don’t actually feel for any of the characters so you can just sit back and enjoy the show.

And it is quite enjoyable.

There’s a narrator

Who reads the book aloud to the audience while D-Dog (what can I say, we’re best buds) reads it on stage

That narration is read by Anderson Cooper,

Megan

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I’ve Seen Daniel Radcliffe Naked (And Other Musicals)

Tagged as: I *am* pretentious enough to spell it theatre