Summer Friday Fun!

The return of Summer Fridays is so joyful!  Knowing that every week there's an opportunity to get out and about in this amazing city makes me so happy.  For the first Summer Friday of 2017, I wandered around town quite a bit.

I had to go to Lincoln Center to exchange an upcoming ballet ticket, so I slowly wandered uptown to take care of that.  After I finished at the Met box office, I remembered that a beautiful gal pal had talked about an excellent exhibit at the Performing Arts Library, so I decided to check it out.  "Curtain Up: Celebrating the Last 40 Years of Theatre in New York and London" is quite a treat.  When I walked into the library, the gallery looked dark, and I was afraid it was closed, but I went around to the other entrance and saw a guard inside. Inside I went.  I had the place all to myself for quite a while, which was lovely.

"Curtain Up" is a terrific exhibit, filled with costumes, set models, renderings, and video recordings.  It was thrilling to be able to see original costumes from The Audience, Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, Mary Poppins, The Producers (the Roger deBris 'Chrysler Bldg' costume), and Phantom of the Opera.  I was especially excited to see masks and costumes from The Lion King up close, and got rather giddy at seeing a costume Rudolf Nureyev once wore in a London production of Romeo and Juliet.  Costumes are always fun.  Oh, and it was amazing to see a letter from Hal Prince to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice with notes about their new musical, Evita!  So fun!  As were the budget numbers; my, how theater budgets have ballooned over the years.

The costume renderings and set models were also fascinating, but I was maybe most excited to be able to watch videos from productions I didn't see.  I adored seeing the first scene from Amadeus, with the genius that is Ian McKellen; a scene from the original production of Children of a Lesser God was quite moving; it was also fun to see An Inspector Calls and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, along with a scene from the original NY production of Arcadia (I was stunned to see Paul Giamatti play a role - remind me to tell you my Paul Giamatti story someday).  I also loved seeing (again) the closing number of In the Heights. What a wonderful memory.

But I think my favorite part of the exhibit was the room dedicated to A Chorus Line. There were top hats there, from the final scene, along with scrawled lyric notes on a program, yellow pads with other scribblings, placards detailing all of the awards and honors the show has won over the years, and the piece that made my eyes well up - a video recording, spliced from the original production at the Public, and the most recent Broadway revival, of the casts doing "One," and taking their bows.  The video was in the corner of the room, and on the other side was a large mirror, so it seemed as if the whole room was filled with dancers.  It was simply glorious. I highly recommend checking out "Curtain Up" at the NYPL. I may go back - there were videos I missed because I was so hungry for lunch.

I ran over to Le Pain Quotidien for the perfect Summer Friday lunch (at least in my opinion):  avocado toast and lemonade iced tea.  It was so good, so refreshing, and the restaurant was pretty empty, so it was nice and quiet.  They have free WiFi there, which was also quite nice.  After lunch, I wandered along Central Park South, then decided I needed gelato.  I mean, hello. Summer Friday, gelato, yes. So I stopped at Grom, just off Columbus Circle, and had delicious gelato.  I may have to do that every Friday.

After gelato, I hopped on a downtown bus, because I was meeting a friend to see Gina Gionfriddo's new show at the Vineyard, Can You Forgive Her?.  This was my first play by Gionfriddo - I have some friends who don't enjoy her work, but I wanted to see this one because (a) she's a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, (b) I've wanted to see one of her plays for a long time, and (c) Frank Wood is in this one.  I do so love Frank Wood.  

Can You Forgive Her? takes place on Halloween night, in a rather shabby house, filled with boxes.  We first meet a young woman, Tanya, who has just been proposed to by her boyfriend of six months, Graham.  Tanya is unsure she wants to marry Graham, because he's become inert since the death of his mother - the boxes in the house belonged to his mother and he believes his mother wanted him to go through them all.  But he can't bring himself to start.  He's just floating along, and Tanya does not want to become attached to a floater.  She's read a self-help book and wants to make something of herself - she's a young, single mother, and doesn't want her daughter to struggle.  She has very touching speech about the type of preschool she can afford vs the fancy school she wishes her daughter could attend.  It's very timely, realistic and true.

photo credit: Carol Rosegg

As the show progresses, we meet three other characters: Miranda, a drunk young woman whose life was threatened at the bar where Tanya works, so Graham brought her home for her protection, and David, Miranda's sugar daddy (the third is a bit of a surprise, so I'll leave that for you to find out). How the four characters intertwine, influence each other, learn from each other, destroy each other, or remain completely unchanged, are all part of the enjoyment of Can You Forgive Her?.  I found the dialogue very funny in places (the word 'livelihood' becomes a riot by the end), very poignant in others. If there wasn't as much plot as I might've liked, that's ok.  I found these four quirky, needy people very interesting, their situations compelling and they were well-worth spending time with.  The acting is terrific, most especially by my favorite, Frank Wood, and Amber Tamblyn as the troubled Miranda.

I gather from the articles I've read about Gionfriddo that she is particularly interested in writing about women - women and class struggles, women taking responsibility for their lives, women with money issues, and other topics generally labeled 'feminist.'  I found it very interesting when looking at the reviews after I saw the show that most of the reviews written by men were negative, and most of the reviews written by women were positive. Not across the board, but enough to make me think 'hmmm.'  Can you only enjoy this play if you're a woman?  I don't think so, but it is my wheelhouse.  It also emphasizes the need for a more diverse group of writers of arts criticism.  At least it does to me.  But I had a good time at Can You Forgive Her? and look forward to seeing more of Gionfriddo's work in the future. And I look forward to a thrilling summer of Fridays...