New York, New York

So we decided on pizza for dinner - finding pizza that has somewhere you can sit down is more of a challenge than one would expect lol.  We were successful- more from luck than anything ;). The place we had happened to have 3 picnic tables outside and we got one.  Unrelated - Mexican Fanta is *way* better than Canadian.  For the win.  Both Mexican and Canadian pop are better than US for love of real sugar.  But I was quite pleased to accidentally end up w Mexican Fanta w dinner.

Bonus points for picnic-table ambiance

Standing in line for NY NY now.  Random stranger took a pic of C and I for us.  I’m actually amazed at how often that seems to happen where it’s not a trade.   It’s all fair if they also want a pic but often just “hey would you like?!?!”  And quite honestly, our phones are so old they’re not worth stealing so we can take advantage of the generosity of strangers.

Advantage of ancient technology:
can get lots of low-risk memories for posterity ;)

So our tickets are paper?!?  We bought them from the day-of retailer (legit, not street based) but it’s amazing how quaint and also inconvenient paper tickets are lol. Esp as they still have QR codes on them for scanning.  But yeah - carrying around more paper is both stressful, cause if I lose one, we’re F’d, and it’s environmentally unfriendly.   Amazing how fast times change.  Once upon a time those things were keepsakes!   I know - I still have some ;).  Now, I have blog posts ;)

Tonight's Entertainment

In the theatre now - our seats are amazing.  We’re in the balcony this time but a newer theatre (or feels so anyways) so stadium seating means less challenge of heads in the way.  Orchestra is in the more traditional location for this one lol which means prob no highly entertaining conductor.   We have seats 1 and 3 - which are together?  Lol not sure where the even numbers went but all good.

View from our seats before the show started

Also - the washrooms here are more suitable for the size of crowd.  Lol I haven’t been this aware of toilet facilities since Kerri and I were in Cuba together a lifetime ago.  😂 I think pre-blog days even!   But we had a scale something about 5* has TP, a seat, flushable toilets, and a door that locks.  😂 NYC isn’t quite that bad but looking for available, clean, TP.  Also a surprising number of the auto taps have only hot OR cold water?  At home they’re kinda a net neutral.  Cold I get but the hot ones tend to be too hot for me to wash my hands properly.  So odd.

People watching fun again - the lovely woman behind us who speaks very little English who was posing for almost the same pic C took of me who was *so* excited when I asked her photographer if he’d like one of both of them.  I’m not sure *he* was as thrilled but he played along and made her day.  I couldn’t figure out the non apple phone fast enough so C took pics for them.   Less delightful is the loud, very heavyset, woman sitting on the aisle behind us who complains anytime someone needs to get in our out.  Like I understand it’s a pain but they literally have no choice….  And unless, like us, you took the tickets leftover at the last minute, maybe don’t choose an aisle?  Then there are the older ladies in the side balcony who are waving very excitedly at some random person somewhere else and posing for more pics selfies than I try to convince C to be in 😂.  Absolutely love seeing people really enjoying life.  This one overall has a much younger audience than last night.  Not sure why but all good :).  Harry Potter or Wicked I would’ve understood.  This one?  Not as much.

Balcony this time, but still good seats!

So the show was very well done but a little too real for what I look for in theatre (or movies for that matter).   Excellent sets and some fabulous costumes.  Those who know me will understand my new appreciation of twirly skirts 😂 

The story according to my phone

Our excellent seats were slightly less excellent due to the incredibly loud gentleman behind us.  When the lights came on at intermission we realized he was likely well into the autism scale, and I struggle between feeling empathy for the challenges he and his caregivers face and relief that C had managed to find us other seats farther away from the overly enthusiastic person that were also better?!?!   Lol front row of the balcony and had the opportunity to chat w my new neighbour for a bit.  A local who goes to a lot of Broadway so that was a fun conversation.  He moved here from LA and loves it so was a great chance for me to learn more about what draws people.

Afterwards we weren't quite as wired as after Chicago but the night was so perfect we couldn't just go home in the city that never sleeps.  Instead, we found a night tour - for the next blog post :) 

What are you going to do in NYC? Go see Chicago.

One of my favourite things about our NYC trip was Chicago

lol so the above conversation happened more than once with a very puzzled look each time.  Of course the clarification is "go see the musical Chicago", but that's not nearly as amusing.   I *really* wanted to go to a Broadway show while we were in NYC.  Billy Joel was C's bday gift; broadway was my Xmas one (thanks Mum and Dad!).   I debated for a long time about one I'd seen before (Wicked is a favourite of mine) or seeing something new, and on brand, I went with new.  There was one playing when I started planning all this called Bad Cinderella -- it was Andrew Lloyd Webber (think Phantom of the Opera or Evita) and obviously a fairy-tale retelling, which has always been a thing of mine (at one point I wrote a thesis on variations of Beauty and the Beast lol -- I don't even remember anymore what the point was, but the art of retelling a known story in a new way has always fascinated me).

Anyways - unfortunately (or maybe not), the show closed in June.   My awesome tickets were refunded but now I was Broadway-less :(.  Boooo.   I waited a while partially cause I was very disappointed and partially cause I was super-busy.  But eventually I decided I needed to pick something new.  I seriously considered Wicked again, but both A - I'd still already seen it, and B - I really didn't think C would like it (not that he would've liked BC either, but I had decided something I really wanted for my gift might be worth him sucking up, but if I wasn't passionate about it, I should prob target something we would both enjoy).  So anyways - in the end I decided on Chicago.  I was super excited to go to the theatre, but ambivalent about the actual musical.  I'd never seen it live, only the movie version, and was kinda meh on it.

Well let me tell you -- not meh anymore!   The show was absolutely amazing.  I'm not convinced I can explain in words just how good it was, but I'll try to give some of the highlights:

- all costumes were all black.  There was almost no set decoration (ladders on either side and a door).  No extras.  Which meant everything was reliant on the performer's skill. And they nailed it!

- the orchestra was onstage (arguably they were the set decoration?). One violinist and the piano player were below the conductor; the piano player could still see him, but the violinist definitely could not.  The violinist interacted/reacted/added some colour to the performers' performance, but if the leads hadn't been SUPER strong, the conductor would've stolen the show.   He was a riot and often interacted directly with the woman who was playing Roxy.

No photos during the show obviously,
but before and after were fair game :)

- Roxy definitely felt free to break the fourth wall occasionally and also to interact with the conductor.  Until she engaged the audience, I would've assumed all the conductor portions were scripted, but now - while I still suspect they mostly are, I'm not 100% convinced.   The audience portion in one case involved pausing a highly sexual song to acknowledge a child in the 3rd row who was potentially too young to be listening to this ;-P.  When they figured out he was 12, she deemed it acceptable and moved on lol.   She had also invited him onstage though -- part of me wonders what would've happened if he'd accepted!   Given that anywhere she chose to play were either parts with no song or parts with an easily repeatable phrase, my guess is they give her some leeway to play as long as it doesn't disrupt the rest of the show.  She was also the only one doing it -- the other performers were very much in their story as one would expect.

- the other lead, Val, stayed more on script but was super impressive with it.  And side note: omg am I ever envious of her muscle tone.  Wow - shoulders and arms to dream of - fitness goals.  I know it shouldn't matter, but wow.  More importantly, I loved how the two women played off each other; parallel routines vs partner routines depending on where we were in the story and whether or not they theoretically knew each other.   And facial expressions - our seats were close enough to see clearly and wow, they nailed every nuance of every reaction.   And when it was appropriate, made it seem like they were having a blast out there.   Real or good acting?  If you can't tell, does it matter?

- as you probably ascertained from above, our seats were *amazing*.   Fourth row from the stage, reasonably close to centre.  And luckily nobody super tall in front!  It was an older theatre so no such thing as stadium seating and the seats were definitely packed in, but the view was good, the AC effective, so all good.  

View from our seats before the performance started

It was So. Much. Fun.  So much more than the film version.  Am super energized now :)

After Chicago we hit up an open late restaurant with ridiculously giant sized deserts just cause we could :)

*edited after to add:* so apparently our giant desert place is a pretty standard tourist thing 😂. When we went to NY NY later, there were signs for how to get there from other theatres ;)

Giant and tasty post-show deserts