Concrete Jungle Where Dreams are Made Of: Our NYC Adventure, Part 2

3. La Cage

Earlier on in the year Nyu and I had watched the Tonys and were impressed by the La Cage musical number (and I was happy to see Kelsey Grammer! I adore Kelsey.) And then Douglas Hodge won a Tony for his performance, and the show as a whole won for best revival. I looked up the production in preparing for our trip and found out that both Grammer and Hodge were still in the show, albeit not for much longer, so the timing would be opportune to see them. We got our chance Saturday; we had waited earlier that afternoon to try to get into a matinee for AiA, with no luck, so once we knew we weren't getting in we walked over to the TKTS booth in Times Square and snatched up two tickets to see LA Cage instead. AND IT WAS WORTH EVERY PENNY.

There was a drag queen working the line to get in, making comments at patrons and posing for photos, and then she wandered around the main level of the theatre, winding up at the front of the stage, making wisecracks and warming up the crowd. I didn't envy her the job, because I'd be petrified at having to riff with customers like that, but she was glorious. She asked if there were any lesbians in the audience, and Nyu raised her hand (we were in front row of balcony, yay), and I cannot remember what she retorted to my sissy but it was great.

How to describe the show? A perfect little production, the quintessential example of the best that Broadway has to offer. From the scenery to the costumes to the acting, everything worked in tandem to bring about a beautiful evening of theatre. (The only costume Nyu truly hated was the bell bottom outfit for the son; everything else worked for her. And oh my, Douglas' drag costumes were GLORIOUS.)

As for the two leads? Kelsey was superb. And Douglas singing “I Am What I Am” at the end of Act 1 was so devastatingly heartbreaking. I got shivers listening to him, and wanted to weep for his poor character, who feels at that moment rejected by the two people he most loves in all the world. The man deserves every accolade that has been thrown at him, and I'm so glad he won a Tony fo this part. THAT, my friends, is how you do Broadway.

4. Angels in America

A short paragraph or two would not do this justice; I am going to draw up a longer, much more detailed synopsis of my experience of the play is very short order. But in the mean time, think of this as a placeholder, an acknowledgement of its magnificence which will be rightfully honored in short order.

5. Next to Normal

Like La Cage we had seen a number from this show during the Tonys. A joke about the Tonys is that the only real function left to them at this point is to perform as a super long ad for potential Broadway patrons; a long billboard letting visitors know what is worth spending their money on when they make their way out to the City. That may or may not be true, but the broadcast certainly piqued our interest for this show. We got our tickets for an evening performance at, once again, the TKTS booth; this time at the South Pier location in the morning, where we had a lovely brunch outside after buying our tickets (it was unseasonably warm in the City during our stay, hooray, so we made the most of it when we could.)

I think if I had to rank the three shows we saw on our trip, Next to Normal would be last, with Angels and La Cage duking it out to the bloody end for the top spot. That is not to say the musical is atrocious; far from it. It has some flaws of course, but nothing too fatal. Its design is loud and very modern, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't; Nyu noted that the lighting designer was the same one that did American Idiot; so basically, lots of bombarding the audience with strobe lights, hah. The songs help tell the story but are not extremely memorable, whereas I can still hum the La Cage songs at will (and often do.) The musical as a whole is not able, as LA Cage does, to have its comic highs mingle seamlessly with its tragic, melancholic lows. Nor is its story, like Angels, able to achieve a universality in its prose that is overarching and epic. (I relate to the musical's subject matter all too well—the trials and tribulations of coping with a loved one with a mental illness—but I never felt like the family's story was MY story, never felt that tug of immersion and nostalgia in what I was witnessing, which I think is essential to any musical.) Angels like Next to Normal has a harsh, gripping, open-ended story, yet I think Angels is much more masterfully told.

Yet, out of all three productions, Next to Normal is the only one that made me cry, actual honest to goodness tears that I had to wipe away.

Why? Well, this IS me, so you have to take into account the fact that if I see a musical with a girl who feels utterly alone, and she finally finds someone who does not care how freakish she (or in this case, her fam) might be, and still loves her, and they sing about it, I am going to cry. It is pretty much a guarantee. Was that way with Light in the Piazza, is that way with this musical.

In short, it is a good musical, worthy of its accolades, and if it did not have to compete with two amazing productions it would be higher up on the list. It is a powerful musical dealign with a powerful topic; it is also, like Angels, something that because of that power, the heaviness and intensity of its subject matter, I can probably only see once, maybe twice, in my life. But seeing it that once or twice is essential.

6. Cloisters

Some of the greatest museums and art collections in America (and perhaps the world) are the product of people who are massively wealthy, crazy/eccentric, and/or obsessive. The story of the Cloisters is that it is a hodgepodge of bits and pieces of old European monastic architecture and art that this rich guy collected and after his death the city mashed them together into one giant building. This Frankenstein-like structure sits in Harlem, right next to the Hudson, surrounded by park land and, as Austen would say, “a prettyish kind of a little wilderness”; in short, is the perfect setting for a museum dedicated to medieval art. Nyu had never been, and it had been a long while for me, so we decided to go; a wise choice indeed.

On our travels to the museum we got out of the subway stop and walked to the entrance—not of the building, but of the long park that precedes it. There are many paths in the park you can take to get to the Cloisters itself, all of them leading you along trails in which time itself seems to slow, leeching away the stress and the sounds of the city as you meander along. So once you finally see a break in the massive trees, and the building that is the Cloisters appears, you do almost feel as though you will hear Franciscan monks bursting into Gregorian chants at any moment.

The works inside are beautiful, carved or painted or woven long ago by amazing artisans, most of their names lost to the annals of time. There are many fantastic, fanciful depictions of beasts that are exquisite, not the least of which is the lovely unicorn tapestries. The grounds have low walls that, once you are outside, let you see your surroundings, including a lovely view of the Hudson, with the George Washington Bridge standing watch in the distance. The gardens are astounding, just drop dead gorgeous; if we'd had the time I would have studied every plant and taken a ton more pictures than I already did of the many gardens' designs and layouts.