Saturday, February 1, 2014

Week Three: Part Two - Funzies

Also January 27th - February 1st, 2014

I bought groceries for the first time being in the city: home food has run out. BUT NOT MY $10 15 LB BAG OF RICE! So I basically just bought extra things for it to make chicken fried rice for the week. And you know, it was pretty good even though it was all the same color!
If you notice also, I have bandages on my fingers in this picture. That is because while I achieved flavor and nutrient success, I also burned myself. Apparently you should not pick up a metal fork that you were unaware was resting over an open flame for a minute or so. If you do, you will become very familiar with a feeling of immediate regret. And pain receptors actively rejecting your poor life choices.

I am also steadily working through my 10 Show Challenge because my dad came to visit me this week, and we saw Cinderella. It is beautiful! A childhood dream! The costumes are gorgeous, the music is great--and to make the stage revival different from the movie, there was actually a lot added to the story. Prince Topher is given more back story, and I nearly DIED when he came in on the last verse of "In My Own Little Corner" sitting on his throne, to sing with Cinderella in her own little chair. Also, check out these trees...none of them are flown in; they're all on tracks that freaking swivel the set around the stage when the actors move--and they're not even on a rotating stage! It's the set that moves. That's genius! And don't even get me started on the costume changes. Not only are they stunning, but all the actors have to do to change is spin around like Hunger Games' Katniss Everdeen in her Cinna dress, and suddenly it becomes a completely new wardrobe! They also added some politics, new music, and changed around some of the characters so that one of the step sisters is actually really nice and Cinderella's friend. I noticed some parallels to the Disney sequels like that--one step sister falling in love with a working man to the disdain of the step mother; also the scene where Cinderella's dress is ripped, there was a scene in this that reminded me of that for the second invitation to the palace--yep there are two! 

The Asian woman from Avenue-Q plays the other step sister and she is hilarious! The Fairy Godmother (aka Crazy Marie) is also someone famous, though I'm mildly embarrassed I have no idea who she is. She's been interviewed several times about the performance, her bio looks impressive, and she's got a very nice, matured voice.

We also had a perfect sight line because in front of us were a bunch of little girls. And you know, there were more disturbances from the adults taking out cell phones (and one woman was illegally recording and taking pictures during the performance. Yikes!) than there were from them. The girls were pretty much silenced with the awe of theatre magic and fairy tale lands of make believe. 



Cinderella was an AMAZING experience, but I'm not done. Please hold on to your jealousy--because I also saw The Glass Menagerie this weekend with Zachary Quinto. That's right: Mr. Spock in a Tennessee Williams play on Broadway. The director chose to make the whole family southern, not just Amanda, although the setting is in St. Louis. Jim O'Conner comes on, though, and breaks the dialect up with an incredibly thick Mid-West accent of his own. His performance of a charmingly awkward high-school hunk is spectacular, and even though every person in the audience knew it was coming, the whole room gasped when Laura's precious glass unicorn fell off the table and broke! Spock is great, too, giving knowing sighs and looks to the audience whenever his mother Amanda goes off into her day dreaming about when she was a spry young girl and had seventeen gentlemen callers! 
It was a matinee, and there were a lot of old people, but I sat in 10th row-center and could see everything! The set is simplistically elegant, but what blew my mind the most was the couch. It's really simple, but when Tom makes his entrance and crosses over to sit down, he pulls Laura through the couch cushions and into the scene like she literally popped out of his imagination back to this moment.

I loved seeing the show, even though I had a lot of trouble getting there. The moment I got a block from Times Square, I got absorbed into the human traffic blob. There was no way to move your arms, and you got very familiar with the personal space of the strangers surrounding you as we scuttled like sheep going about five minutes per block. 

Sportsfans. Are nuts. 

They're all there for the Super Bowl tomorrow! All I wanted was to get to the discount ticket lines! WELL. The good news about it all was that because all these people were there for sports, there actually weren't any lines for the Broadway/Off-Broadway tickets. So I got to grab my ticket and dive back into the fray to walk the two blocks I needed to reach the theatre. It was almost as bad leaving as coming, though, and there were several moments of standstill body-crushing, followed by being bottle-necked before I could turn the corner and actually breathe. 

The crowds weren't nearly that bad when I went to Chinatown for the New Year, either!

Yep. Happy year of the horse! 马念快乐! 

In hindsight it makes sense that the festivities had actually taken place midnight before, but oh well. The ground was still dusted over with rainbow confetti, red lanterns and wrapping paper and boxes of gifts were still everywhere, and people were still gifting loved ones red envelopes of money over dinner. 

Initially I was going to meet some friends down there, but for various reasons they couldn't come so I got to explore some on my own for the next couple of hours. Equipped with bubble tea, I wandered around for sites and food. I toured around Little Italy some, too, but there was no chance I'd not get Chinese food on Chinese New Year. 

I found a take-away place near the Manhattan Bridge, and then walked back to the train station to head to the house.

Back at the house, some housemates piled into my room to watch Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing, followed by a rousing game of "Gloom"!

"Gloom" is way up there with "Cards Against Humanity" in objectives, but with cover art reminiscent of Tim Burton and Lemony Snicket. Basically you're given a creepy family of four, and then there are modifier cards to tell whether these people are happy or not: positive numbers are happy, negative numbers are sad. They translate into self worth. This is also a storytelling game, so when you play a card that says: delighted by ducklings or menaced by mice, you have to say what happened to whichever character that involves these things. The goal is to make your family as miserable as possible before they die. The happy cards you can play on members of someone else's family so they're happier than yours, and they lose the game. 

Sick, sadistic, twisted, fun, and full of drama.

Speaking of drama, I finally went into the Drama Shop this weekend! It's a very lovely shop, and this picture here is a mannequin wearing a dress made out of handwritten script pages full of notes and everything. How cool is that? She's standing over the shelf for books on period costuming. I brought my gift card from my friend when he found out I was going to this program, and I walked out with the piano and vocal score for [title of show]. That is actually the name of the musical. It's about a bunch of people in the middle of writing a show, and from what I've heard it's very funny. I don't traditionally sing or play the piano (actually I'm much worse at the piano than singing even if I can manage to keep rhythm), but I've always wanted to look more into this show. Perhaps there's something in there to use for a voice lesson when I go back to school...

So where does that put me on my 10 Show Challenge exactly? I saw Peter and the Starcatcher, The Disinherited, Cinderella, and The Glass Menagerie. I have tickets to see a comedy show sometime in the near future. So 4-ish-almost-5. Not bad! I also gotta catch Richard III before it's out of town. Next weekend maybe? Tickets for that are about $25, so I may just have to do that.

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