Medical Nonsense in the time of COVID

NOTE: I started this post nearly a month ago, before the protests over the senseless deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and countless other people of color. I am still trying to figure out what I can say, or what I should even say, in the wake of the horror that my fellow Americans are currently experiencing. Other than just repeating Black Lives Matter as loudly and as often as I can.  Even though it seems ridiculous, I'm going to finish this post and share.  It will then be out of my brain and into the air.  I hope it won't seem too insensitive...

I hope you are all safe and well during this nonsensical time.  Sorry to be so off the grid; it's taken me a while to get the energy to do a post - like everyone else, being sequestered for so long has drained me of most of my energy.  But I recently had a medical experience I would rather have missed, thank you very much, that I wanted to report.  This is likely going to be a long post.  There will likely also be some TMI that you may not want to read...

A few weeks ago, I dreamed I was really dizzy.  When I woke up, I was really dizzy.  Not run-of-the-mill dizzy, but the earth was violently spinning and it was making me throw up dizzy.  I staggered to my bathroom, where I thought I was in the midst of food poisoning (I had cooked chicken in my new crock pot the night before).  Clutching a bucket, I sat there for a long time.  Not only was I clutching a bucket, but I was also clutching the door, so I wouldn't fall off the toilet.  That's how hard the world was spinning for me.  After a few hours of this, I realized I needed to call my doctor to get some help.  After a bout of sick, I crawled into the living room to get my phone (I generally don't take it into the bathroom, have you ever read about the germs?!), then crawled back to the bathroom.  It was too early for my doctor's office to be open, so I got sent to an on-call doctor.  She called me back, listened to me describe my symptoms, then be sick again, and she said it sounded like vertigo.  She suggested I find a place to be safe; since it probably wasn't food poisoning, she suggested I take my bucket to bed or sofa, then call my GP.  I waited to be sick again, then went to the couch.

I tried to find a position where nothing would move.  I kept my eyes closed.  The room kept spinning violently.  When I asked the Alexa in my apartment about vertigo, she described the Hitchcock film in detail.  While interesting (and certainly Hitcockian), it was not useful.  I then asked for details on disease vertigo.  I didn't really learn anything new, so I called and left a message for my GP.   After a few hours (?!), she video called me.  I couldn't keep my eyes open, so I just held the phone up and told her my symptoms.  She requested I do a few things, to rule out a stroke, I guess, then she said she would call in some prescriptions to my pharmacy.  I told her I didn't see how I could go to my front door, let alone go to the pharmacy, wait outside, then go in with the other ten people allowed inside at one time.  While we were chatting, I had to put the phone down to be sick again.  When it was done, I noticed my head felt a little clearer, so my doctor suggested I use the time to get dressed, unlock my door, and call 911.  She said if I went to the ER, they could give me medication via IV and it would work faster.  I took her advice.

It took a while for me to careen through my apartment to get dressed and get ready for the ambulance.  They finally arrived and seemed nice (throughout most of this adventure, I had to have my eyes closed, to try to keep from throwing up from the spinning).  They put me on a little chair and thankfully safety-belted me in to get me downstairs.  That was extremely disorienting, though I did make sure to ask one of them to lock my apartment door before leaving.  I heard the lock work, so that was a bit of a relief (who wants to worry about their apartment when headed to the ER??).  We got into the ambulance and they safety-belted me again for the short trip to the ER at the nearby Mt. Sinai.

Obviously, going to a hospital in the middle of a pandemic was not at the top of my to-do list.  I have to commend everyone at Mt. Sinai for taking extreme precautions at every step.  Before I could get into the ER, they took me out of the ambulance and had me in a waiting area, where my temperature was taken and my insurance information was taken.  Once that was done, I was wheeled to a bed in the ER.  A pleasant nurse tried to help me get into a hospital gown; I had another episode of being sick to my stomach, so I was fortunate enough to keep my yoga pants for most of my stay in the ER.  It definitely made it easier to thrash around, knowing I was nearly fully-clothed.  Another nurse got an IV into me and I was immediately given an anti-nausea drug and then someone came to give me anti-vert tablets, which helps vertigo.  They didn't really help with the spinning (though the nausea drug helped), so a nice young doctor (at least he sounded nice, I still was having issues with keeping my eyes open) told me he wanted me to have a CT scan to make sure I wasn't having brain issues.  It took a bit for my insurance to approve the scan - once they did, I was wheeled to the line outside the CT room.  When it was finally my turn, the technician was very nice to let me carry my barf bag as a security blanket, since I could keep it outside the testing area of my head and neck.  He promised the scan would last about three minutes, so I counted to 180 in my head and was pleasantly surprised that he was right.  He said he has told people to count before, but he didn't know anyone who actually had.  

I was rolled back to my ER bed and lay there, listening to what was going on around me.  Alarms kept going off, because there was a patient who kept trying to roam the ER and punched people who wouldn't let him.  They had to sedate him, then we could hear him snoring LOUDLY.  Sitting in an ER is an interesting character study, I must say.  Should I ever decide to write more than a monologue, there were lots of people to base interesting characteristics on.  I was taken to get another CT scan, this time with contrast.  The tech remembered me and got me in and out without much fuss.  Both scans turned out to be clear, but the dizziness hadn't stopped, so one of the nice young doctors told me I was going to be admitted.  They were assuming I had a certain type of vertigo, but wanted to do an MRI to be sure there wasn't a tumor or something in my head or ears.  Before I could be admitted, or taken to a room, I had to have a COVID test.  My, people aren't exaggerating when they relay how uncomfortable the test is.  Yikes.  

They told me my COVID results had to come in before I could be taken to a room, so I resigned myself to spending the night in the ER.  One of my very nice nurses brought me a pillow so I could stay sitting up, but relax my neck a bit.  Another pleasant-sounded masked doctor came to tell me they wanted me to have an MRI, to get more detailed pictures of my head and ears.  He also did a test with me where he had me turn my head and drop quickly back onto the bed and back up again.  That was not a fun test.  I also had a walk with a nurse to make sure I wasn't steady enough to be sent home yet.  Thankfully, I wasn't (I was so not ready to leave).  After that, I had a fitful sleep/doze through the night.

My insurance didn't approve my MRI until the next morning.  When I got wheeled to the MRI room, I was still wearing a hospital gown and my yoga pants.  One of the nice techs told me that some people have complained that their yoga pants melted inside the MRI machine.  Wait, what??  The younger tech even told me which brand was most likely to melt.  Well, they didn't have to tell me twice.  Those yoga pants came right off.  An MRI is much longer than a CT scan.  I've had them before on my breasts and my pelvic area, but never on my head.  It is loud, disorienting, and extremely unpleasant in the extreme, especially when you're dizzy.  It lasted about 20 minutes in the machine, but I was having some bad side effects when it was over.  They took me back to my ER bed and I felt very agitated and dizzy.  During this time I had a video chat with a neurologist.  My eyes were going crazy and it was hard to do the exercises she was giving me - she said normally, eyes vibrate up and down during vertigo, but mine were going round and round.  I actually couldn't finish the video visit because my eyes were bothering me, so they gave me a little something to calm me down and I dozed a little more.  Later in the afternoon, they told me they wanted me to have another MRI, this time with contrast.  I started crying and said I didn't think I could handle another one.  Not much after that, I was told I tested negative for COVID and was whisked to a room.

I was in a room with three ladies, none of whom spoke English, and since there were no visitors allowed, I worried they didn't understand what was happening.  The hospital uses a translation service where they get a translator on the phone who then is the go-between between the doctors/nurses/patients.  They didn't seem to work very well with these poor ladies.  I just felt really badly for them.  No one really talked to me the rest of the day, except for the very kind nurses taking my vitals every few hours.  I didn't see a doctor at all that second day (at least I don't remember seeing one). 

A physical therapist came in to test me and saw that my balance was still bad. She said I did have to have another MRI, which upset me because of how unwell it made me feel the night before.  A drug technician came in to talk to me and decided to give me a little valium to take the edge off.  I also decided that I would sing to myself this time instead of count and maybe I would be more distracted.  The very kind MRI tech was there again and was very nice again.  And I have to say that a head MRI under the influence of valium and singing the first part of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in my head did help a lot.  I was much less disturbed by the second MRI, thankfully.

Geez, this post is much too long.  I'm going to try to condense and finish up, hopefully I won't leave out any fun or important detail.  I finally talked to a doctor that night who said the CT scans and the MRIs showed no abnormalities in my head, brain, blood vessels, or ears, so that's good, I guess.  They didn't really help figure out what's wrong, because the dizziness is still there.  There was no inciting incident, so they're also unsure what exactly caused it.  I'm grateful that they didn't release me from the hospital until my sister and mother arrived to pick me up - I was worried about being in my apartment alone.  I ended up being in the hospital for four long days.  It was interesting to me that I saw more doctors in the ER than I did in my room, my interactions there were mainly with the excellent nurses.  I wish I could've seen an ENT before I left, since so many doctors said the problem was probably inside my ears.  Hmmm.

I did snap at one nurse, though (and I shouldn't have) the second time a meal tray contained the one food to which I'm allergic (I was even wearing an allergy bracelet, for pete's sake).  I apologized to her later and she laughed, thank heavens.  Other nurses teased me because I had my own Purell to use.  I tried to make myself useful by helping fill in some of the language gaps for the night doctor who did rounds (after hearing the translations all day, I got pretty informed on what was going on with each of my roommates).  She was a little snarky about it, though, so I stopped trying to help.  One of the physical therapists that I saw ensured that I took a walker with me, just in case.  I ended up using it for about ten days after I got to my parents' house.  The drive there was not easy, but not too bad, either.  Thankfully, in the little cleanliness pack they gave me was an eye mask, so I wore that all the way back and reclined in the back seat.  I think it helped.

I'm glad to be with my family now - I'm sure I could manage on my own, but it's nice to have some help.  I'm working every day, but I have to take more breaks along the way.  I'm still dizzy; I described it to the neurologist like if my dizziness is on a scale from 0-10, with 10 being having to call 911 to go to the hospital, I probably exist at a 2 all the time, occasionally up to a 4.  I want to be at 0 again.  I tried some sinus stuff that my GP recommended to hopefully clean out my ears, but they didn't work.  I had another video chat with the neurologist and she gave me an exercise to do three times a day for a week and we'll chat again next week.  I will say that after doing it once today, I almost fell down in the bathroom, so I'll have to be careful, I guess.  It's really stressful to always be worried that the extreme vertigo will come back.  And it's depressing to think the small amount of dizziness is my new normal.  Oh, I'm also terrified of the bills I'll be receiving.  I'll just have to keep taking deep breaths and keep my fingers crossed that it eventually goes away and things return to normal. In every sense.

It's Not Exactly 100 Years of Solitude, but...

...I wonder how many more of the books I read in college freshman honors English I can reference right about now.  I must say I can't figure out a way to use Gravity's Rainbow. I should see if I can find the syllabus in my trunk of random historical papers.  I sure hope that professor is safe and well during these crazy times.  I hope all of you reading are safe and well, too.

photo credit: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

These really are certainly crazy times, right?  It seems as if we're living a weird sci-fi dystopian film.  Every day lasts forever, but the weeks go awfully quickly.  Working from home always had a romantic sound to it - entering week five has definitely ended the romance.  It's hard to concentrate, it's hard to schedule myself, it's hard to stay motivated.  There's always fear and dread around the corner; the longer this goes on, the more paranoid I feel.  When it first started, I did have a pretty good schedule: I meditated before lunch, walked some laps at a local playground after lunch, fell asleep pretty early and slept pretty well.  I haven't meditated for a while, they closed my playground, and sleeping is coming less easily.  I'm grateful to have a job and food (and toilet paper), and I'm generally fine with my own company, but the allure of Zoom meetings has definitely lessened.  In real life, I rarely watch tv at night during the week - my life is so noisy, I like the quiet when I'm at home.  But during this isolation, I pretty much have my tv on all day, so I can have voices and companionship in my apartment.

As usual, though, I'm turning to theater to get me through.  The last thing I did before heading home for the duration was see a special filmed performance of a show I had tickets for after the closure (the theater practiced social distancing, thankfully).  I'm hoping to start a book club, only with plays, at work, so I'm reading (or trying to read; remember, it's hard to concentrate) lots of plays.  I've bought tickets to some of the streaming events and I've enjoyed them, though it's not the same as being in the room with everyone, of course.  I've especially enjoyed the live play readings the Actors Fund has been presenting on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

I guess I don't really have all that much to report - I just kind of wanted to check in.  My life feels as if I'm floating on a raft with no known destination.  I don't know where I'll end up and what I'll find when I get there.  It's tremendously disconcerting, but I know I'm still pretty fortunate.  So I'll make it through, I'm sure.  Everything will be different - how will I respond?  I have no idea.  But finally:  randomly, I just noticed that today is the ninth anniversary of the blog!  Happy blogiversary to me!  I know ordinarily I do a big number-centric post, but since I'm not in my office at the moment, it's hard to get all that data.  I'll just say that I can't believe it's been nine years.  Once all this quarantine craziness is over, maybe I'll do a stats-y post.  And a nine-years-out sort of post - when I had my replacement surgery, I was told the implants have a shelf life of ten to twenty years.  What if the magic number is ten?  Could I make myself go through another surgery for new implants?  I'm not sure.  So...I guess the uncertainly can represent more than this current pandemic.  I think I need to watch another episode of Little House on the Prairie (which is way more problematic than I remember) to clear my brain...

It's Not Exactly Love in the Time of Cholera, but...

UPDATE:  I was in the middle of writing this when our offices decided to close for the time being, now that most theaters are closed for a month.  I was supposed to see four new plays in NY and five in KY this month; I'm sad I probably won't get to see any of them (we don't have official word from KY yet).  This is definitely the right move, but I really feel for our industry.  So many theater people live day-to-day (I almost do; not quite, but almost) and so many shows either won't open or won't succeed because of outside forces.  I saw a friend's amazing play the other night that has to close early - it's heartbreaking.  There are many things to rail about (especially how that horrible orange person has been mishandling this national crisis), but I guess I'll just stay quiet for now and finish the below post.  After a week or so of no-new-theater, I may change my mind and start posting rants.  I guess we'll just have to see.  Stay safe and healthy, my friends; I hope to be back soon.



...I did travel to Minneapolis for work during the early stages of the US dealings with COVID-19.  It was a little surreal - the plane smelled like Purell (probably because I was wiping everything around me), it wasn't that full, and everything seemed to happen the way it was supposed to happen.  Maybe it was because Minnesota hadn't announced any cases until we had arrived, I don't know.  But it was a pretty uneventful travel scenario, thankfully.  Just way more Purell.

I went to Minneapolis mainly to attend a new musical written by dear friends and I was fortunate enough to be able to build a work event around the trip.  We did a class for area writers that went extremely well and I hosted a talkback conversation after the performance, which also went extremely well.  It was a grand weekend, filled with wonderful work friends, delightful theater, and terrific cocktails.  Oh, and I tried Ethiopian food for the first time - whee!

My work chum and I arrived in town last Friday night, checked into a very nice hotel, then walked about a half a block to Town Hall Brewery, which is a very nice pub/local spot with a pretty big menu and an even bigger list of alcoholic beverages.  Beer is their claim to fame, but since I haven't acquired the taste for beer yet, I went with their Towncar, which was bourbon, lemon juice, and something else I can't quite put my finger on.  It was super-delicious.  As was the Friday night special, fish and chips.  The fish was beautifully battered and fried and the chips were crispy and yummy.  It was a delicious meal to start our weekend.

Saturday was our class, which, as I said, went extremely well.  After the class was over, we walked to the corner and ate lunch at Black Dog Cafe, a very cute pub-type spot that had live music.  They had very tasty iced tea and a delicious (enormous) turkey club sandwich.  It was a very nice break and a very nice, relaxing meal.  After lunch, I took an Uber over to the Guthrie Theater, just so I could walk around and see what it looked like (I didn't have time to see a show there).  It certainly is something to see!  I was grateful that you can walk around in the building without having a ticket to see one of the shows, though there was an older volunteer at the information desk who kept asking if he could help me.  But the beautiful building, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, is wonderfully striking.  The Endless Bridge was open because it was a gloriously sunny day, so that was cool to take in.  The views are stunning and there's something to look at all around the building.  Even the gift shop is gorgeous!  Of course, I did treat myself to a couple of souvenirs - I love them already.  I'll put some photos below.

After walking back to the hotel and having a little liedown, my work chum and I went out to the Gremlin Theatre to see the Frank Theatre's production of Danai Gurira's The Convert.  This play was originally produced in 2012, though it was a new title to me.  When looking through the listings of all the offerings in Minneapolis, I immediately chose The Convert, because I loved Eclipsed and Familiar, and because I want to remind Danai Gurira to write more plays, please.  Never one to shy away from big bold subjects, this play takes on British colonialism in southern Africa, notably the use of Christianity as a tool of religious, cultural, and social disruption.  It's quite evenly balanced in its excoriation of the patriarchal traditions of the past and the horrors that could be conjured by supposed progress through religion.  I was moved and shaken several times throughout the evening.

photo credit: Tony Nelson

The acting in this production of The Convert is first-rate, though at times I did feel as if the dialect work got in the way of character development.  But that's a quibble.  Also, during some of the beautifully-written long scenes, there was very little, or very static movement, so I did feel that on occasion the direction could've been more incisive.  I realize it was a very small theater space, but the stage could've been used a little more creatively here and there.  In my opinion.  But this story is a strong and necessary one, about ancestry and belonging and appropriation and brutality.  I enjoyed seeing The Convert and hope to read it soon, so I can revel in the gorgeous language, specific characters, and exquisite construction by Danai Gurira.  I look forward to seeing more of her plays soon, please.

photo credit: Rama (on Wikipedia) - not my plate but similar

After the play, my work chum and I went back to Town Hall Brewery for another delicious cocktail and, since it was so late, I just had the pizza rolls appetizer.  WHICH WERE DELICIOUS.  Geno's pizza rolls will never do after the ones I had in Minneapolis.  Sunday, my work chum and I met with my amazing writer chums at Dilla's, an Ethiopian restaurant near our hotel.  I've never had Ethiopian food before, so I was looking forward to giving it a try.  The restaurant seems to be a popular local spot, it was full of young people enjoying a sunny Sunday afternoon.  They were offering a vegetarian buffet, so we all got that.  I placed some injera on my plate (the spongy Ethiopian bread made with sourdough and teff flour), then put a spoonful of each dish on my plate.  Except the beets.  I didn't need to experience the beets.  But the lentils, split peas, and other delicious things I had on my plate were delightful.  Everything was deeply spiced, but not muddy-tasting, and rich yet light.  I really loved our meal, though I didn't eat a lot because of my 'don't eat a lot before a show' edict.  My work chum and I have decided to try an Ethiopian restaurant around the office so that we can get more of a sense of the cuisine.

photo credit: from Mixed Blood website

After lunch, we walked over to Mixed Blood Theatre to catch the matinee performance of Interstate, basically the entire reason for the trip.  Interstate is a beautiful musical about so much, I can hardly talk about it.  It's about love, intersectionality, acceptance, community, the power of art, and so much more.  I love the show (and its creators) so much it's probably pointless to go on; please, if you're in the Minneapolis area, go see Interstate.  This cast is off-the-charts brilliant!  I had seen bits and pieces of the show in earlier stages, but seeing an entire production was a glorious experience.  As was leading a talkback discussion afterwards; the audience loved the show and hearing young people ask questions and comment on how they loved seeing people like themselves reflected on stage felt so extraordinary.  Interstate has joy and pain, laughter and tears, and incredible words and music.  But mainly joy, which I need so much right now.  I hope I can see it somewhere else again soon.

The rest of the trip was pretty quiet; Sunday night was spent in my hotel room with room service and script-reading, and the flight back on Monday was uneventful.  On the plane, I watched the documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? and it was a powerful experience.  We may never see that type of selfless influence and humanity again and I was lost in thought afterwards, wondering how I could try to effect that same sort of change.  I couldn't come up with anything, but I'm glad Fred Rogers did.  What a humanitarian; I'm so glad I finally got the chance to catch the film.  It was a grand trip, filled with lots of Purell and beautiful life-affirming theater.  I'm so glad I could go.

OH, I should also mention that when I got back, I was fortunate enough to attend Women's Day on Broadway.  It was a moving and empowering day, which ended with a closing keynote from Hillary Rodham Clinton.  I may have cried when I saw her.  There were so many takeaways from the amazing day, but I think my favorite may be a quote from one of the panelists.  She said (something like), "If they think you're too much, clearly they're too little."  Whee!  As someone who has been told my entire life that I'm too much or too loud or too...something, this was a powerful phrase to hear.  I'm going to repeat it to myself frequently, as should you.

souvenir

pizza rolls

post-Interstate talkback with authors

Review - Grand Horizons

I am so tired and running in place trying to catch up that I almost let this season's only new play on Broadway written by a woman get by me.  Thankfully, I found the energy to see the next-to-last performance of Grand Horizons.  I got a discounted ticket at almost the last minute and happily I was seated in the orchestra.  However, it is FREEZING in the back of the orchestra at the Helen Hayes Theatre (which I had forgotten).  But I just wrapped my scarf around my neck and settled in.  For the most part, I enjoyed myself, though I admit to feeling that I wished for something more (and that is entirely on me and no one else)...


I saw one of the playwright's previous Off-Broadway efforts, Small Mouth Sounds, a few years ago and simply loved it.  I thought it was bold and audacious, so I was expecting something that bold and audacious in Grand Horizons.  What I got instead was a pretty old-fashioned boulevard comedy, played at high energy and high speed for big laughs.  That's ok, but it wasn't what I expected (which, again, is totally on me) and so I was vaguely dissatisfied.  The play WAS funny and terrifically acted, I just didn't see the compelling reason for putting this play on Broadway.  Though, I guess if making it a Broadway play meant we got to see Jane Alexander and James Cromwell, then maybe it was probably worth it.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Alexander and Cromwell play Nancy and Bill, a long-married couple living in an upper middle class retirement community; at the start, we see a silent ritual we know is played out every night, where she is preparing dinner and he is helping get the table ready.  They finally sit down, after the perfectly choreographed ritual, and then Nancy, very politely, states that she wants a divorce.  After a pause, Bill says, "All right."  It's all very polite and sedate and the audience cracks up at the juxtaposition.  End of first scene.

The rest of the play is Bill and Nancy justifying their reasons for divorce to their adult sons, one of whom is married and expecting the first grandchild, the other of whom is a high school theater teacher.  Neither son can comprehend why their parents would want to split up at this stage of their lives and they're having high comic difficulty processing the news.  They also have high comic difficulty when their parents start to talk about their sexual needs.  I have to admit I vacillated over wondering if it was cliche writing to have Jane Alexander talk so graphically about sex, knowing it would make the audience laugh to see such a patrician older woman talk about naughty things.  Would it have been just as funny with a different actress?  I don't know.  There was quite a bit of that kind of vacillating happening in my mind throughout the play.  And I think there were maybe two scenes that I didn't really need, though having Priscilla Lopez on stage is always a treat (her character reminded me a bit of Anita Gillette's character in the film Moonstruck, which isn't necessarily a bad thing).

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

So, I guess now would be the place where I say that my parents' names are Nancy and Bill, so that freaked me out/cracked me up just a little, to be honest.  I'd like to think that were my parents to announce they were getting a divorce, I wouldn't lose my shit like the two kids in the play did.  I say kids - both of these gents are in their mid- to late-30s, I think.  Maybe the playwright is making a comment on how men never grow up...hmmmm, I just thought of that.  But after a while, I didn't think the guys were funny, I just thought they were annoying, immature, selfish jerks.  So there's that.

There was one plot point that made everyone in the audience laugh, except me, and it really only needed one little tweak to make it work for me, too.  Michael Urie played the high school theater teacher son and part of his shtick is that he doesn't want to disappoint any of his students, so there are 200 kids in the school production of The Crucible that he is currently directing.  I was having dinner with a playwright friend last week and she mentioned this plot point had made her see red as well, so a tip of the hat to her for giving me advance warning.  No, actually, it is not sweet to want to cast 200 kids in The Crucible, it's technically not even legal.  Arthur Miller didn't write that.  If only one other character had said, "wait, that's not legal, is it?", or "you can't do that, can you?", then I could've laughed along.  If one audience member decides to now do that because it sounded so funny, then we might have a problem.  And when I say 'we,' I mean 'me.'  Which I totally know is a complete silly overreaction.  Oh, and I had a little bit of a squeamish thought that the non-wacky people in the play who kept telling the family that they were wacky were the actors of color.  I appreciate that the cast was diverse, but the weirdo white family learning something from the characters who happened to be played by actors of color stood out for me, in a vaguely negative way.  Perhaps I'm just overthinking things (yet again).

I did laugh throughout Grand Horizons and I did appreciate the actors very much, so seeing the production was mainly an enjoyable experience.  I know the fact that my expectations were for something rather different is completely my fault, though I can't help but wonder if I either missed something or if this play exists merely to be funny.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  I can see this play having a huge life in the regions and in community theaters around the country, which is great.  But when every now and then something else, something deeper, was hinted at, like the inevitable process of women becoming invisible as they age (and the daughter-in-law's realization of it), or adult children realizing they're missing something in their life because of what they saw growing up, I felt a little twinge of sadness that I wasn't really seeing a deeper exploration of that kind of narrative thread.  Which, again, I know makes it my play and my problem and not the playwright's.

Seat neighbor story that shows what a dope I am:  I frequently confuse actors Darren Criss and Michael Urie.  Please don't ask me why.  So the fact that Darren Criss was in the audience of the show that Michael Urie was in sort made my head spin.  My head also spun a bit at the sound design of the show - at one point, characters make reference to the loud tv playing in the neighbor's apartment, but a lot of the time I couldn't tell if the sound was coming from the stage or my seat neighbors' cell phones.  I guess it didn't really matter either way, but it was a little disorienting.  All in all, I'm grateful to have seen Jane Alexander on stage again, she has long been a favorite of mine (I thought she was amazing in Albee's The Lady from Dubuque) and I always enjoy James Cromwell.  I guess I just need to recalibrate my brain and relearn to watch what I'm watching and not make things try to fit in the box I've created for them.  Clearly, it's a long process for me...

Immersing Myself

Hello, friends!  I've been lax in my theater-going lately, work has been very busy.  Well, that's not exactly true.  I went to a very early preview of a new play and a concert of a musical I've already posted about, so I didn't think a new report was necessary about either of them.  I have some shows coming up and a trip to Minneapolis that includes two productions that I'm very excited about, so keep your eyes open for more posts in the next few weeks.  Fingers crossed, of course.

I did want to do a little post about Jerry Herman - he passed away while I was home for the holidays, so I didn't do a post at the time.  After seeing Mack and Mabel last week, I've rather been on a Jerry Herman playlist listening binge.  Which has put a smile on my face.  His musicals' subject matters were disparate, though most dealt with plucky individualists overcoming obstacles to succeed.  But all of them feature toe-tapping music that just puts a big old smile on my face and I notice that "...somehow the ceiling seems a little higher...", to loosely quote one of his songs.  

When I'm in a bad mood, I either put on Barber's "Adagio for Strings" (if I want to weep), or Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill" (if I want to dive into feeling pissed off), or Herman's La Cage aux Folles (if I want to start smiling).  But, really, all of his musicals make me smile, then cry, then smile some more.  It's sort of a visceral response.  If you want to read an interesting interview about Jerry Herman's process, you should check out this piece from the archives of The Dramatist magazine (I mean, you really should subscribe; there are amazing articles like this every month!): In Conversation with Jerry Herman.  I love when writers interview other writers - they just know how to guide the conversation to get the most interesting, revealing answers.

I'll just link to some of my past thoughts on musicals by Jerry Herman (some of those links are above, if you're interested).  I mentioned in my review of the recent Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly that it was one of the first musicals I can remember seeing.  One of the first professional productions I ever saw was Mame at a local dinner theater.  I remember adoring it and over the years, I've listened to the cast album probably thousands of times.  Ever since my nephew was born, I've had even more affection for it, especially the song "If He Walked Into My Life," which makes me cry every time I try to sing along.  I'm a basket case, I admit it.  And, hello, who doesn't have "We Need a Little Christmas" on their holiday playlist?!  "Bosom Buddies" is also a classic in musical theater songwriting - have you ever seen the clip of Betty White and Carol Channing sing it on an episode of Love Boat?  Get to YouTube and check it out.  But I digress.  Anyway, Mame is another show that I'd love to see in revival, though I admit a bit of it is problematic in this day and age.  Maybe it's best for an Encores! retelling...

I admit I don't know Dear World as well as I should - when the York did a brief run of it, I jumped at the chance to see it.  I also admit that I seriously considered buying a ticket to London when Betty Buckley was performing it there.  Cooler heads (and empty wallets) prevailed there.  Again, I hope to see it have another life sometime soon.  I know that Jerry Herman was hopeful that this show would get another look, so maybe there's an intrepid producer out there who wants to commemorate the loss of a man who loved the theater and what he did.  I know he brought a lot of joy to my life and I'm grateful.  He'll be missed.

Review - Mack and Mabel

photo credit: Douglas Gorenstein

I'm trying to remember the first time I heard the Mack and Mabel cast album - was it in high school?  At my college boyfriend's apartment?  I'm not sure, but I know I've been listening to that glorious Jerry Herman score for over 30 years.  I never thought I'd see a production, so I was excited to see a couple of numbers excerpted last year in an Encores! revue called Hey, Look Me Over.  Douglas Sills, as expected, was perfection as Mack and I hoped hoped hoped that a more-full production would be announced after the acclaim for the excerpts.  So I was thrilled when City Center announced it would be doing Mack and Mabel in the current Encores! season.  It's bittersweet to finally get to see it so soon after dear Jerry Herman passed away - I was fortunate to meet him a number of years ago and I wonder what he would've thought of this production.  I'm going to imagine that he loved it.  Please excuse my name-dropping-via-photo at left...

photo credit: Joan Marcus

And so, after over 30 years, I finally got to see Mack and Mabel.  And...I loved it!  Truly!  Though I can also see why it's a problematic show to produce.  But I'm ever so grateful to have seen it and I had a wonderful time.  As Mack Sennett, Douglas Sills is the quintessential leading man - he has elan in spades and a voice that thrills.  He's larger than life, yet oh so human.  I think he's an absolute STAR and I wish people would write shows just for him.  I guess I should also mention here that I've been a huge fan of his for over 30 years - I saw him in the national tour of Into the Woods when I was in grad school and have been enraptured ever since.  Moving on (he WAS great, though).

Alexandra Socha was a terrific Mabel - spunky, lovestruck, ambitious yet complacent, and easily influenced.  She also has an amazing voice and put over the big solos for Mabel beautifully, especially "Wherever He Ain't," which was a real highlight of the evening.  She also handled the comedy and pathos well.

The entire score was terrifically delivered - those bouncy Jerry Herman tunes were sparkling and those delightful lyrics were clear and crisp (I had some issues understanding Sills at the top of the show, then his mic was fixed and all was well the rest of the night).  The ensemble was diverse and wonderfully multitalented.  Everyone was in great voice and in sync with the stylistic choices of the music and story.  I will say that I thought the director/choreographer missed the mark a few times; I think this kind of pastiche show needs to be really crisply directed and there was a little looseness here and there, especially in the spatial relationships, that I noticed.  Of course, with such a short run, they also have a limited rehearsal period, so maybe a full production would snap together more strongly.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

As I said, I can see why the show is tough - it's got two vaguely morally ambiguous lead characters, who need to walk a tightrope between their unpleasant qualities and their star qualities.  They're people who can't be together yet can't be apart and that's tough to dramatize.  Plus, the second act can be a real downer, as Mabel slides into disrepute and Mack is unable to reach her.  After listening to "Tap Your Troubles Away" for so long, I had no idea it was juxtaposing a real life tragedy at the same time, so the diverting of focus was complicated (I love tap dancing and wanted to revel in it, but couldn't because of the other necessary storytelling).  The show has an unhappy ending and even though "I Promised You a Happy Ending" is a gorgeous song, the musical just kind of...ends.  Though, in the right hands (like Sills and Socha), hearing terrific singers/actors take on these roles and sing these iconic numbers is a real thrill, so...

Oh, I do have another quibble: in the original production, what we think of now as the Overture was actually the Entr'acte (before the second act).  So this production kept that convention; after intermission, we were treated to the spectacular Encores! orchestra playing that fantastic bit of music.  However, at the end, banners of dear Jerry Herman flew down for people to applaud.  Except, from my seat in the balcony, I couldn't see them.  I only knew they were Jerry Herman from reading the reviews this morning.  I never approve of something happening on stage that everyone in the audience can't see, so that irked me to no end.

Seat neighbor-wise, it was a pretty respectful bunch.  I was in the balcony, so I was surrounded by other diehard fans who were excited to see the show (I was also thrilled to run into so many handsome friends before and after the show!).  Although, there was one yutz.  Actually, three.  The first yutz came in late, after the overture was over, during the first scene.  He walked into the middle of the front row in the balcony, sloooooooowly, then he slooooooooowly took off his coat by leaning forward first to the left, then to the right.  THEN he stood up to arrange his coat on the back of his seat.  This had to have lasted two or three minutes (which can seem like forever when you can't see Douglas Sills!), then finally the woman sitting behind him leaned forward and said SIT DOWN.  She was my hero.  The other two yutzes kept putting their coats on the railing in front of them, which meant their coats were hitting the backs of the people in the row in front of them.  They just couldn't understand why someone wouldn't want another person's down jacket getting in their way of sitting back in their seat.  I tell you, people are NUTS.  

All in all, I had a fantastic time seeing a show I've long wanted to see and hearing that beautiful score played by amazing musicians.  Jerry Herman's scores make me love life a little more, even when the ending isn't happy.  Last night also made me greedy to see Mack and Mabel again and try to figure out how I could fix it (as if I could).  It's also made me greedy to want to see Douglas Sills in all the shows.  Please and thank you.

Preview Thoughts on Cambodian Rock Band

I am a big fan of playwright Lauren Yee (I know her a bit and like her a lot) and I have been looking forward to seeing her play Cambodian Rock Band for seemingly forever.  It has played in regional theaters around the country, to much acclaim, and it has finally landed in New York, at my favorite spot, Signature Theatre.  Of course, all signs pointing to my having a grand theatrical experience, and I did.  OH, I DID.  So as to not bury the lede, I say to you: GET YOUR TICKETS NOW.  This is a play you do not want to miss - its storytelling is unique and the story itself is heartbreaking and hopeful.  That kind of play doesn't come along every day.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Since the play is still in previews, I'll only offer a few thoughts (other than GET YOUR TICKETS NOW).  Cambodian Rock Band takes place in 2008, but flashes back to 1975/1978, during the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime.  We meet a woman working on the war crimes trials and her efforts to bring perpetrators to justice, and we meet her father, who was in Cambodia during the war and is desperately trying to bring his daughter home, for reasons of his own.  The story is about fathers and daughters, about the hard choices we are sometimes forced to make, and about the power and redemptive quality of music (and art/artists).  The story is also told through music, mainly the songs of the band Dengue Fever, an L.A.-based band of Cambodian-American musicians doing covers of Cambodian music in a blend of sixties Cambodian pop and psychedelic rock.  The rock concert atmosphere is an exciting way to both celebrate the power of music and a tragic way of reminding us that so many artists were lost during the genocide in Cambodia.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Throughout Cambodian Rock Band, Lauren Yee blends the funny, sad, powerful, moving, and horrifying into a thrilling theatrical experience that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout.  This cast is simply incredible - they not only handle the complex emotions of the scenework, but they also play the fictional band Cyclos; the band figures in the story itself and they also present the Dengue Fever/Khmer music to fantastic effect.  Everyone is wonderful, most especially Francis Jue, long one of my favorite actors, who plays our narrator, of sorts, and he has a moment where he becomes part of the story and you just...gasp.  He's fabulous, as always.  As is Joe Ngo, who helped craft the play a bit and shared with Lauren some stories from his life as the child of Cambodian work camp survivors - he has such range and empathy.  Oh, well, the whole cast is great.  I don't want to say much more, since part of the joy of Cambodian Rock Band is the element of surprise; you think you're in for one kind of performance and then it becomes something totally different.  I laughed a lot, I cried A LOT and I got up to dance during the curtain call.  It was truly thrilling; I simply adored it and can't wait to go back with a co-worker later in the run.  If you want to read more about the play and background, there's a terrific piece online about Lauren, written by the wonderful Diep Tran (you can read that piece on Broadway.Com).  I highly recommend you check out that article and Cambodian Rock Band.  Tickets are going fast and it's a show you should not miss. 

Seat neighbor-wise: ugh.  The people behind me were simply hateful.  Please, please don't let me become like them when I become an old NY theatergoer.  They criticized the storytelling, they criticized the acting, they criticized the AUTHENTICITY, which just made my blood boil.  All because, I think, they took a bus tour once through Cambodia, which made them experts.  Not because they were actually Cambodian, mind you.  It was just the supercilious, condescending, crazy-privilege nonsense that I despise.  I almost yelled at them about the five-block rule, but instead I just slouched in my seat and covered my ears.  They never did get the hint.  There was one leader, who made most of the heinous remarks, and there was one follower, who kept saying "Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah" like the seagulls in Finding Nemo (in case you were wondering about the photo at left).  Unfun people.  And the ladies beside me, god love them, were also annoying as all get out.  One of them kept asking everyone in the row if the show had an intermission, even though the ushers told us and it was in the program.  I guess she just couldn't be bothered.  The other had a bad hip, which I understand can be extremely unpleasant, but you should buy yourself an aisle seat if you think you're going to have a problem sitting through a show (I was on the aisle, because I bought it for myself to stretch my bad foot).  At an important point during the first act, she got up to leave because she needed to stand up, so I missed some dialogue, which annoyed me, but I figured it wasn't her fault.  At the end of intermission, her friend apologized and said it might happen again in the second act, at which time I was assured it wouldn't and that the bad hip lady would stand the entire second act.  Well, yeah, until she decided it was time to go home, so she came over, leaned over me, to talk to her friend and say goodnight it was time to leave!  During a CRUCIAL moment in the show!  I was so mad!  There was a talkback after the performance (and it was fantastic - Francis Jue was also incredibly amazing just talking about the play as himself), and I was thisclose to asking them to please just run through their lines from that scene!  Oh my god, ordinarily, the audience at the Signature is well-behaved, but these people were off the charts.  Good thing I found the show to be completely amazing, or they might've absolutely ruined my evening.  Thankfully, once again, great theater saved me from making a bad situation worse.  Though, if I run into them again, I might not be so forgiving...