Sometime in March we learned that Stacey Kent, to us one
of the premier Great American Songbook and Jazz singers, was going to appear at
Birdland this June. Kent now performs
mostly in Europe. We saw her ages ago
when she made a rare appearance at the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach. There we witnessed her genius, her unique
phrasing, putting her on the same pedestal that we would place Sinatra,
although Kent is considered a jazz performer.
They both know how to sell a song.
Her New York City booking was the motivation for us to
say to heck with the risks of traveling nowadays, go to NYC and kick off a
heady cultural visit joining our son, Jonathan, and his wife, Tracie, for that
first night at Birdland. We would also
see their new Upper West Side apartment for the first time, and then squeeze in
as much theatre and museums as we could.
We booked our go to place, a hotel where we’ve stayed before with its location
between Broadway and 7th on West 54th street ideal for making
our destinations walkable, weather and our golden-ager bodies permitting.
So, in March we booked everything, using Delta miles that
have been stagnating since the pandemic.
We were set but knowing the trip might still present hurdles.
As our departure date approached, our anxiety rose. Delta had been routinely cancelling our
flight. We tried to book alternative
flights on Jet Blue, an airline we once loved.
Everything is now an extra charge and we no longer feel that cozy
relationship. Their web site is designed
to make you panic: “Only 3 seats left at
this price; you must book now!!!” So
rather than alternative bookings, we decided to stick with our Delta
reservations and hope for the best.
We’re glad we did as they finally got the necessary
equipment and crew back online for our flight, and that went off without a
hitch, our neighbor Joe even volunteering to be our Uber to the airport, a
generous gesture knowing the anxiety we had been experiencing with this flight
and travel in general.
So off we went, to be met by our “kids” at LGA, the new Terminal
C a few football fields long. Getting
into their car, we learned that the Stacey Kent concert had been cancelled. COVID.
Between that awful word, supply chain issues, inflation, and political
chaos, it does feel like Agamemnon.
Visiting our kids’ apartment, overlooking the Hudson,
with a lovely rooftop dining and sitting area, was a highpoint. If they only had a 2nd
bedroom! But they moved, as we did,
during the pandemic and it was catch as catch can. We’ll be staying there later in the summer
when they are away, so it all works out and we are grateful.
We were able to share a couple of lunches on their
rooftop, sandwiches from a very West Side take out restaurant, Sherry Herring,
specializing in serving fish on baguettes.
And from there, I walked almost five miles throughout my Upper West Side
past (Ann decided to head back to the hotel), visiting my old brownstone apartment
at 66 West 85th street, the corners of 85th and Columbus now
populated by three different restaurants, including one where we had brunch a
few days later called “Good Enough to Eat”-- typical West Side in name and food
faire.
My enthusiasm for my walk was not only heightened by observing
the effects of the passing of 50 plus years since I’ve lived there, but also
included intense people watching, walking their dogs on Central Park West, the
doormen chatting about the Yanks and the Mets, and the multitude of construction
workers, seemingly endless construction, mostly refacing brownstones and
apartments.
Only on the West Side would
one come across a café which tolerates humans unaccompanied by dogs, but they
can’t use the main entrance. Given the
way I feel about politics now, I root for the dogs.
I walked back past where we were married, the Ethical
Culture Society, on the very same day Sondheim’s Company opened (a future blog entry will be devoted to him and that
coincidence), and then finally past Ann’s old apartment, the one bedroom at 33
West 63rd Street which now stands dwarfed by huge high rises. Ann remembers Lincoln Center being built when
she first moved into that rent-controlled apartment (two windows on right side,
second floor). And then back to our hotel on 54th Street to get
ready for the balance of the week, museums and theatre and a cabaret
performance.
It was becoming an intense week. I loathe traveling anymore especially in this
rage ridden society onto which you can pile the incredible expense even to get
a small bag of tissues. NYC was
reminding me again of the 70s, garbage all over the place (walking along one
street I thought I spied a squirrel walking beside me but it was a big rat), some
homeless living on cardboards with their shopping carts. But we soldiered on.
Matisse’s The Red
Studio exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art was a must see. The New Yorker
praised the exhibit as follows: “The exhibition surrounds a rendering of the
French artist’s atelier, with most of the eleven earlier works of his
(paintings, sculptures, a ceramic plate) that in freehand copy, pepper the
canvas’s uniform ground of potent Venetian red.”
I also strongly responded to one of his rare depictions
of the male figure, Young Sailor, a
teenage fisherman in a coastal town where Matisse frequently stayed.
And as this photograph of him illustrates, he liked dogs
too, just like New Yorkers!
We visited other parts of MOMA, always calming, inspiring
moments in our lives. I love just relaxing
in their courtyard and enjoying the juxtaposition of it as an oasis in this
great city.
Next, we went to the American Museum of Natural History,
where a week would hardly plumb the depths of its collections. I remember going through it as a child and
some of the original dioramas seem to be unchanged.
But that was not our reason for visiting. We were there for the impressive gem exhibit:
“The Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals tell the
fascinating story of how the vast diversity of mineral species arose on our
planet, how scientists classify and study them, and how we use them for
personal adornment, tools, and technology. The galleries feature more than
5,000 specimens from 98 countries. “
The following day began our theatre excursions, seeing POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are
Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, then A Strange Loop, and finally, Tracy Letts’ The Minutes.
When we originally booked these shows, we thought POTUS’ hilarity would put us in a good
mood, but it was like an extended Saturday Night Live skit with stars, the
audience roaring when they first appear on stage. Everything was over the top, the incidental
music so loud Ann had to turn her hearing aids way down while I suffered. Even the lighting and the revolving stage
overwhelmed the senses, and the air conditioning must have been set at 55
degrees. The humor consisted of 5th
grade potty talk which was not funny to us.
No sense in saying more as the play’s subtitle describes it all, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women
Trying to Keep Him Alive. A dumbass
President; we wondered who that might be.
Next on the docket was another one we booked long before
the Tonys. We had seen Hamilton on Broadway when it first
opened, and we had hoped that similarly A
Strange Loop would push the Broadway boundary further. We wanted to be part of it. It did, but not in the sense that Hamilton succeeded in marking a real
evolution in American theatre. We also had
second thoughts about A Strange Loop
after seeing their musical number at the 75th Tony Awards on TV
(winning not only the Best Musical at the Tonys but the Pulitzer Prize for
Drama before going to Broadway as well). Why allow that one selection to dampen our
enthusiasm?
When we arrived at the theater we learned that the lead,
Usher, was to be played by an understudy, Kyle Ramar Freeman. This did not turn out to be a deterrent, but
a bonus. I think an understudy has to
take advantage of those moments and he did.
He gave a memorable performance.
Unfortunately, A
Strange Loop --to me at least -- is not in the class of most former Tony
winners. I get it though, the struggle
of the artist to emerge in a society which throws so many slings and arrows at
him, from his home life to his shame about his sexual orientation, his weight, his
being black. It never failed to be
interesting and it was one of those performances where the mostly gay audience was
giving back as much energy as it got. There
is one somewhat explicit sex scene, but, hey, we’re New Yorkers at heart and it
was not disturbing. And no pun intended,
it is the climax of the show and Usher comes to the realization that he must
live his life, not the one that he has been imagining to please others.
There were no real dance numbers, although Usher’s neuroses
and self-doubt characters moved and sang with gusto and they were well
choreographed; while the music was good, it was not memorable. Nonetheless, the 100 intermission-less minutes
flew by. We’re glad we saw it as we’ve
seen the arc of Broadway from the days of Rodgers and Hammerstein, to the
emergence of Hair, to Sondheim, onto Hamilton, and now the next iteration in musical
theatre history.
We came out that theatre on 45th between
Broadway and 6th Avenue in a light rain. Forget an Uber or a cab and although the most
direct route to walk back to our hotel was via Broadway, we opted for 6th
Avenue as the throngs of people on Broadway or 7th Avenue were
staggering. Figured if there was any
chance of making it uptown via cab, it would be 6th Avenue as well,
although that pipedream dissolved with the increasing drizzle. Wise that we
packed a couple of light umbrellas.
The best of our Broadway selections was the next night,
Tracy Letts’ The Minutes, right next
door to where we were going the following night, Feinstein’s. I’m anxious to read this play as there is so
much meaningful content. The town of
“Big Cherry” in The Minutes is a metaphor
for our sick society and political system, a comedy which becomes darker and darker,
satisfying every misanthropic fiber of my being, knowing where this once great
nation is going, now being led by the Trump-anointed SCOTUS. (No direct mention
of any of this in the play.)
The Minutes
moves from a town hall meeting to the enactment of a myth the “leaders” of the
town hold dear in their hearts. Towards
the denouement the play ascends to the participation in a ritual, one our
violent society holds sacred. It is
performed to indoctrinate one individual into the belief system of the group. Big Cherry could be anywhere USA, but I would
like to think it is in New Jersey, such as Excelsior in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. One can draw comparisons. Both plays have archetypal characters where
the sweep of history is played out.
Ironically, while we saw this play, SCOTUS was about to
announce rolling back Roe vs. Wade and also finding a long-standing NY State
law against carrying hidden weapons invalid, denying our “precious” 2nd
Amendment “rights.” Can you imagine the
inevitable open carrying of weapons in a city of 18 million? Looser gun laws beget more gun sales which
beget looser gun laws, a strange loop indeed.
And gay rights will be the next to fall as SCOTUS seems to be implying
that State laws take precedence over the Constitution.
The Minutes can
be viewed through this lens. Five of the
eleven characters were played by understudies, Tracy Letts and Blair Brown not
making appearances, perhaps some felled by COVID. Still, that did not spoil the performance. I started to sob at the end for what we’ve
become. This play, although it did not
win the Pulitzer or the Tony for Drama, will endure. It is Letts’ profound cautionary tale about
our times and encroaching fascism.
Pretending that all is OK with the world was the only way
we could totally enjoy our final night, a special appearance by Brian Stokes
Mitchell at Feinstein’s/54 Below. This
was dinner and a two-hour performance by one of the great baritones of Broadway
theatre, one who can not only sing, but entertain the audience, who introduced
the music as only one so intimate with the selections can do.
The show was an eclectic Broadway selection of iconic
songs, including some Sondheim. But as
he originated the role of Coalhouse Walker Jr., in the musical Ragtime, for which he received a 1998
Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical, he sang the inspired “Wheels
of a Dream” to rousing effect. The
highlight of the evening was his powerful rendition of “The Impossible Dream” from
Man of La Mancha. He had played Don Quixote in a Broadway
revival. During the early months of the pandemic, he sang this from the window of his apartment overlooking Broadway to
honor the first responders, the health workers. Each day a crowd would gather below to urge
him on, so many people in fact that he was finally asked to cease his
performances for safety reasons.
He asked whether there were any first responders or
health workers in our audience, and I pointed towards our daughter in law,
Tracie, who is a Doctor, who drove to her hospital every day when most of us
were ensconced in our homes, and let’s face it, no one fully understood the
risks. N95 masks and hospital gear was
their only protection, and we were so happy that Mitchell acknowledged her
presence and frequently looked at her while he sung this exceedingly moving
song.
So on Saturday morning our “kids” picked us up early at
the hotel and we were off to LGA for the return home. The new Terminal C is all smart phone
territory. Forget about eating unless
you can download the menu and pay using your virtual wallet. Although we’re fairly Internet savvy, it took
the small village of the two tables on either side of us with people who could
have been our grandchildren to help us out.
Turns out both were on their way to Asheville, one for a wedding and one
to see her brother, both first-timers in Asheville so we were able to fill them
in on the “must” things to do there. I
would like to believe there is a fundamental goodness which will finally
prevail. This little incident at the
airport reinforced that hope, but the rest of the news is dreadful.
We did it all in NYC in six days, other than catching a
Yankees game. Maybe next time!
