Today was a two-show day, and it was on-and-off drizzly all day, so I took it easy in the morning and just took a short walk from the hotel to Union Square, where the Christmas Market is underway. I enjoyed browsing through the kiosks. Then I walked up to Port Authority and met mom, and we saw Dames at Sea. It’s a shame the show didn’t get better reviews and is closing next month; it’s really a lot of fun. No, it’s not brilliant or original or contemporary, but it was never supposed to be. It is a send-up of the big all-singing-all-dancing spectacle musicals of the 1930s, and it succeeded perfectly in evoking that spirit. We smiled through the entire thing.
Cousins
It wasn’t a long show — we were out by 4:00 — and we were having a family get-together at 6:30, so that gave us quite a bit of time to kill. We ended up making our way to Grand Central and just lounged around in the food court. My second cousin Abby (his mother and my mother were first cousins) and his wife Rose have a lovely apartment on Park Avenue. Abby has done some research into our family’s genealogy, and he found the son of another of our second cousins. He lives in the DC area but was in New York for work, so we had a fun visit. I couldn’t stay long, since I had tickets to Hand to God this evening, but they all went to dinner without me.
Hand to God
Hand to God was very funny and extremely irreverent, and the performances (several of which scored Tony-nominations) were excellent, with the exception of Bob Saget. Everyone else in the cast acted circles around him. (His role is also the least interesting of the five characters in the play). I didn’t care much for the ending — it felt like the last fifteen minutes the playwright ran out of steam and wasn’t sure how to finish — but I laughed a lot throughout.
The weather forecast shows improvement for the rest of my visit, so I am looking forward to enjoying more of the city in the next few days. Tomorrow night: Something Rotten.
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