Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Review: "A Little Night Music"
Stephen Soundheim is one of the geniuses of American musical theater, and few of his shows are more sublime or enjoyable than A Little Night Music. Originally produced in 1973, there is now a wonderful revival on Broadway starring Elaine Stritch and Bernadette Peters. It's not the hottest ticket in town at the moment but, in terms of quality, it's probably the best.
Set in Sweden in 1900, A Little Night Music is based on Ingmar Bergman's movie Smiles of a Summer Night where men and women of various ages and class backgrounds swap lovers and hearts set to gorgeous music. A wealthy, widowed lawyer named Fredrik lives with his innocent second wife Anne and his horny son Henrik who is just coming of age. Henrik lusts after his stepmother who fancies him too but is trying to make her new marriage to Fredrik work. In the meantime, Henrik occupies himself with his father's beautiful housemaid Petra who teases and tempts him mercilessly. Meanwhile Fredrik is looking for love elsewhere and reconnects with an old loved named Desiree who is a great and famous actress. Desiree, however, is not without her baggage: besides having an elderly mother who disapproves of her lifestyle, and a daughter she loves that she's trying to raise right, she also has another lover named Count Malcolm -- who also has a jealous wife. This romantic octagon comes to a head during a weekend in the country at Desiree's house where the tangle of love and hearts is straighted out and love conquers all.
This is an amazing show. The sets, costumes, and staging are perfect. The dancing and singing are, as you might imagine, incredible. But what struck me most of all were the performances. They are so strong, so moving, there is such richness and texture to each and every actor that you find yourself rooting for each character -- even when they are rooting against one another. Elaine Stritch plays Desiree's mother and her performance shows a women wise beyond her many years -- a woman whose many lovers and disappointments in life have given her a sad wisdom. Bernadette Peters is amazing as Desiree and her rendition of "Send in the Clowns" (the show's most famous song) is incredible. Indeed, as many have noted, watching this legend of the theater sing this legendary song is the kind of thing you live for when you go to musicals. And I'm just so glad to have seen it.
Yet as good as the two marquee performances are, the show has an amazing supporting cast. As Fredrik, Stephen Buntrock crafts a dimensional, complex man who you can't help rooting for even when he's behaving very badly. His amazing voice and charming performance gives him such charisma that you can understand why Desiree would be tempted to spurn her scary lover and go back to him. Also impressive is Bradley Dean as Count Malcolm, the aforementioned lover who manages to be both terrifying and hilarious at the same time. (He has the best line in the whole show: when he decides to end it with Desiree and go back to his wife, he tells her, "Darling ... I forgive you"). But the real show stealer is Leigh Ann Larkin as Petra, the horny housemaid, who manages to be both erotic, funny, and mysterious all at once. Towards the end of the show, she sings "The Miller's Son" and does it with such emotional power you almost wish the entire show had been about her. This is an actress I think will be on Broadway for years and decade to come.
It's rare that such a great show with such a perfect cast comes to Broadway. If you can go see it and see a piece of musical theater history, do it! You won't be disappointed.
Set in Sweden in 1900, A Little Night Music is based on Ingmar Bergman's movie Smiles of a Summer Night where men and women of various ages and class backgrounds swap lovers and hearts set to gorgeous music. A wealthy, widowed lawyer named Fredrik lives with his innocent second wife Anne and his horny son Henrik who is just coming of age. Henrik lusts after his stepmother who fancies him too but is trying to make her new marriage to Fredrik work. In the meantime, Henrik occupies himself with his father's beautiful housemaid Petra who teases and tempts him mercilessly. Meanwhile Fredrik is looking for love elsewhere and reconnects with an old loved named Desiree who is a great and famous actress. Desiree, however, is not without her baggage: besides having an elderly mother who disapproves of her lifestyle, and a daughter she loves that she's trying to raise right, she also has another lover named Count Malcolm -- who also has a jealous wife. This romantic octagon comes to a head during a weekend in the country at Desiree's house where the tangle of love and hearts is straighted out and love conquers all.
This is an amazing show. The sets, costumes, and staging are perfect. The dancing and singing are, as you might imagine, incredible. But what struck me most of all were the performances. They are so strong, so moving, there is such richness and texture to each and every actor that you find yourself rooting for each character -- even when they are rooting against one another. Elaine Stritch plays Desiree's mother and her performance shows a women wise beyond her many years -- a woman whose many lovers and disappointments in life have given her a sad wisdom. Bernadette Peters is amazing as Desiree and her rendition of "Send in the Clowns" (the show's most famous song) is incredible. Indeed, as many have noted, watching this legend of the theater sing this legendary song is the kind of thing you live for when you go to musicals. And I'm just so glad to have seen it.
Yet as good as the two marquee performances are, the show has an amazing supporting cast. As Fredrik, Stephen Buntrock crafts a dimensional, complex man who you can't help rooting for even when he's behaving very badly. His amazing voice and charming performance gives him such charisma that you can understand why Desiree would be tempted to spurn her scary lover and go back to him. Also impressive is Bradley Dean as Count Malcolm, the aforementioned lover who manages to be both terrifying and hilarious at the same time. (He has the best line in the whole show: when he decides to end it with Desiree and go back to his wife, he tells her, "Darling ... I forgive you"). But the real show stealer is Leigh Ann Larkin as Petra, the horny housemaid, who manages to be both erotic, funny, and mysterious all at once. Towards the end of the show, she sings "The Miller's Son" and does it with such emotional power you almost wish the entire show had been about her. This is an actress I think will be on Broadway for years and decade to come.
It's rare that such a great show with such a perfect cast comes to Broadway. If you can go see it and see a piece of musical theater history, do it! You won't be disappointed.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
The Secret Places of NYC
New York City abounds in ironies: it is geographically huge but its individual neighborhoods really make it a bunch of small towns. There are lots of places to live but it's almost impossible to find one that's available. It is the most populous city in America yet, in many ways, it's the perfect place to go if you're looking to be alone and live anonymously.
NYC is both a place to go and a place to get away to.
There is so much we know about the city, it's history, and what's in it. Yet, at the same time, there's vastly more that we don't know -- and there are lots of places in this city we know nothing about or would never think of going to (because we don't know they exist).
Take our history: a bunch of old New York City history books that were long out of print are now available for sale online. These include books of photographs of NYC from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I love old pictures of NYC. Looking at them, you see a city both distant and familiar, a place you know and a place you don't. It's really amazing to see, for example, what Union Square looked like in 1900 and to see the buildings that survived and those that didn't. Another irony of old NYC: it's a place you know very well and, at the same time, not at all.
Or parks and public spaces: when you're looking to relax in public, we all think we know where to go: Central Park, Riverside Park, Battery Park, Prospect Park, Bryant Park, etc. You can hang out at public spaces at Lincoln Center or South Street Seaport. But there are lots more secret places that are right there out in the open called vest-pocket parks: places like Abingdon Square, Duane Park, and Jackson Square. These are nice little cozy places away from the roar of the crowd where you can go and mentally repair. And just this past week I found a new secret place: even though it's something of a monstrosity, the Trump Soho on Varick and Spring Streets has a nice little plaza behind it with lots of benches and trees. It's just off the corner and you wouldn't know it's there. When I passed by it the other day, at around noon on a weekday, it was nearly empty. It's a perfect place to go if you want to go read a book or listen to your IPod in peace. Also, I'd imagine that amorous young couples might find it a great make out spot. These are the little places that New Yorkers like me like to go and escape from the city -- right in the very heart of it (another irony indeed).
But the secrets of NYC aren't all charming. Did you know that NYC has it's very own paupers grave? A place where unclaimed dead bodies -- abandoned babies, homeless people who have frozen to death, elderly people with no family, poor people, etc. -- go to their final rest? Known innocently enough as a "potters fields", NYC's pauper's graves exist on Hart Island, a mile long place just off the coast of City Island in the Bronx. Hart Island is where Long Island Sound meets the Atlantic Ocean and is about as far from the rest of the city as possible. The bodies are sent there and the graves are dug by prisoners who are ferried in each day from Riker's. There are almost a million dead New Yorkers buried there and some people are now trying to find and locate body's so that they can be given a decent burial.
It's hard to imagine that anyone should ever end up in such a place. One can only feel sad for those people whose lives ended so sadly that that's where they ended up. And fortunately it's a part of our city that most of us don't see or experience, the kind of place we know exists but otherwise stays far from our own consciouses. But it's there, and it represents something sad and distressing, and it's just as much a part of our city as Rockefeller Center or the Brooklyn Museum. It's a secret of NYC that shouldn't be secret at all.
NYC is both a place to go and a place to get away to.
There is so much we know about the city, it's history, and what's in it. Yet, at the same time, there's vastly more that we don't know -- and there are lots of places in this city we know nothing about or would never think of going to (because we don't know they exist).
Take our history: a bunch of old New York City history books that were long out of print are now available for sale online. These include books of photographs of NYC from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I love old pictures of NYC. Looking at them, you see a city both distant and familiar, a place you know and a place you don't. It's really amazing to see, for example, what Union Square looked like in 1900 and to see the buildings that survived and those that didn't. Another irony of old NYC: it's a place you know very well and, at the same time, not at all.
Or parks and public spaces: when you're looking to relax in public, we all think we know where to go: Central Park, Riverside Park, Battery Park, Prospect Park, Bryant Park, etc. You can hang out at public spaces at Lincoln Center or South Street Seaport. But there are lots more secret places that are right there out in the open called vest-pocket parks: places like Abingdon Square, Duane Park, and Jackson Square. These are nice little cozy places away from the roar of the crowd where you can go and mentally repair. And just this past week I found a new secret place: even though it's something of a monstrosity, the Trump Soho on Varick and Spring Streets has a nice little plaza behind it with lots of benches and trees. It's just off the corner and you wouldn't know it's there. When I passed by it the other day, at around noon on a weekday, it was nearly empty. It's a perfect place to go if you want to go read a book or listen to your IPod in peace. Also, I'd imagine that amorous young couples might find it a great make out spot. These are the little places that New Yorkers like me like to go and escape from the city -- right in the very heart of it (another irony indeed).
But the secrets of NYC aren't all charming. Did you know that NYC has it's very own paupers grave? A place where unclaimed dead bodies -- abandoned babies, homeless people who have frozen to death, elderly people with no family, poor people, etc. -- go to their final rest? Known innocently enough as a "potters fields", NYC's pauper's graves exist on Hart Island, a mile long place just off the coast of City Island in the Bronx. Hart Island is where Long Island Sound meets the Atlantic Ocean and is about as far from the rest of the city as possible. The bodies are sent there and the graves are dug by prisoners who are ferried in each day from Riker's. There are almost a million dead New Yorkers buried there and some people are now trying to find and locate body's so that they can be given a decent burial.
It's hard to imagine that anyone should ever end up in such a place. One can only feel sad for those people whose lives ended so sadly that that's where they ended up. And fortunately it's a part of our city that most of us don't see or experience, the kind of place we know exists but otherwise stays far from our own consciouses. But it's there, and it represents something sad and distressing, and it's just as much a part of our city as Rockefeller Center or the Brooklyn Museum. It's a secret of NYC that shouldn't be secret at all.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Oh No! Carl IS one of the perrverts!
"I was in the middle of eating a kosher pastrami sandwich. While I was eating it, they come running and they say, 'Paladino became gay!' I said, 'What?' And then they showed me the statement. I almost choked on the kosher salami."
-- Rabbi Yehuda Levin, quoted by the New York Times, when told New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino (R) apologized for his attack on gays.
In Carl's defense, I don't think he's gay. After all, he has a ten-year old out-of-wedlock love child. This truly is a man who doesn't like making a mockery of marriage.
-- Rabbi Yehuda Levin, quoted by the New York Times, when told New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino (R) apologized for his attack on gays.
In Carl's defense, I don't think he's gay. After all, he has a ten-year old out-of-wedlock love child. This truly is a man who doesn't like making a mockery of marriage.
And Away He Goes
File this under the End of an Era section.
Richard Johnson is a man you have not have heard of, but you should know who he is (or was): for twenty-five years, nearly a quarter of a century, he was the editor of Page Six, the New York Post's signature gossip section. He was basically the King of Gossip in NYC, and the Lord High Executioner of reputations and careers. The daily column that he (and his minions) produced would go after celebrities, politicians, sports stars, the rich and powerful, the ugly and unfortunate -- anyone, basically -- who had messed up in their life or was doing something interesting.
Getting into Page Six was rarely a good thing and, needless to say, Johnson was not popular with the people he covered. But now Johnson is leaving Page Six -- and NYC -- for new exciting opportunities on the West Coast. And even the people he covered are saying they're going to miss him. Surprising, huh?
Then again, maybe not. After all, basically being The Guy in Gossip in NYC for more than two decades is pretty impressive. And, as John Huston once said in the great movie Chinatown, even "ugly buildings and whores become respectable if they last long enough." I guess the same is true gossip columnists.
So farewell Mr. Johnson. Best of luck in LA. And if you want to hear the man's parting thoughts, you can read them right here.
Richard Johnson is a man you have not have heard of, but you should know who he is (or was): for twenty-five years, nearly a quarter of a century, he was the editor of Page Six, the New York Post's signature gossip section. He was basically the King of Gossip in NYC, and the Lord High Executioner of reputations and careers. The daily column that he (and his minions) produced would go after celebrities, politicians, sports stars, the rich and powerful, the ugly and unfortunate -- anyone, basically -- who had messed up in their life or was doing something interesting.
Getting into Page Six was rarely a good thing and, needless to say, Johnson was not popular with the people he covered. But now Johnson is leaving Page Six -- and NYC -- for new exciting opportunities on the West Coast. And even the people he covered are saying they're going to miss him. Surprising, huh?
Then again, maybe not. After all, basically being The Guy in Gossip in NYC for more than two decades is pretty impressive. And, as John Huston once said in the great movie Chinatown, even "ugly buildings and whores become respectable if they last long enough." I guess the same is true gossip columnists.
So farewell Mr. Johnson. Best of luck in LA. And if you want to hear the man's parting thoughts, you can read them right here.
Apologies for the Spotty Blogging
Life's been busy (really busy) and I have lagged in my blogging duties. But have no fear, Mr NYC is here (for the moment). You can breath now.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Power in NYC
Due to life happenings, I haven't been able to blog much lately (in case you hadn't noticed) but I would be remiss if I didn't direct you to New York magazine's Who Runs New York? feature from last week (in case you missed it).
Obviously the most powerful people in NYC are Mayor Bloomberg and other politicians -- along with the powerful financial, real estate, and media interests that support them. But, as this insightful report indicates, it's more complicated than that. The days of the old moneyed Wall Street establishment are over, the days of The New York Times and their erstwhile newspaper competitors controlling the daily new agenda are waning, and there is a new generation of real estate moguls who have a different idea of what should and shouldn't be built in this town.
The power in NYC fragmented like never before. Chaos reigns.
For example, take the media. Those who own big the media in this town are no longer the most powerful people (think Sulzberger, Zuckerman and Murdoch). Instead, you have folks like Nick Denton, an irascible Brit, who founded the snarky Gawker site. Ten years ago this guy didn't even live here -- and now he's as important a media figure in this city as Jimmy Breslin ever was.
Or politics. Mayor Bloomberg still may run NYC with as close to absolute power as any mayor in history but his days in office are waning. Soon he'll be just a billionaire instead of the mayor/billionaire. So who will take his place? That will depend, largely, on the new political kingmakers in this town. We're a long way from the days of Tammany Hall bosses like Carmine De Sapio and from labor union leaders like Mike Quill and Albert Shanker. But if you want to find their successors, look no further than Dan Kantor of the Working Families Party, the third-party organization that has succeeded in getting lots of up-and-coming politicians like John Liu and Bill DeBlasio elected. The effectiveness of the WFP turn out operations on election day are becoming famous. In 2009, while Bloomberg spent $100 million on his third term, the WFP was able to get out enough voters to reduce Bloomberg's margin of victory to an embarrassing four points. Kantor may be the most powerful person in NYC you haven't heard of -- but you will.
And then there's the likes of Lauren Santo Domingo who may be in the running for become the city's new Social doyenne, the new Mrs. Astor.
As you can see, in this era of the niche, power in New York is getting more diffuse even as wealth is getting more concentrated. It's an interesting, almost absurd paradigm -- one that is powered as much by new technology as anything.
Even this blog could be considered, in it's small, small way, a part of the new power game in NYC. For example, here am I, a regular guy, a simple blogger, who has been able to publish interviews with the likes of Kurt Anderson and Michael Musto, who has been asked by various business to advertise and plug their products, who has been invited to parties and events because of this blog, and who has gotten more than one person (including a prominent newspaper editor) extremely angry by some of the stuff I published on here. None of this would have happened if not for this blog and the small, tiny bit of power it has in the huge NYC media universe. (By the way, with one exception, I've turned all the invites and requests to plug stuff down. I ain't that kinda guy.)
So who runs New York? Who has the power? We do, my friends, you and me.
Obviously the most powerful people in NYC are Mayor Bloomberg and other politicians -- along with the powerful financial, real estate, and media interests that support them. But, as this insightful report indicates, it's more complicated than that. The days of the old moneyed Wall Street establishment are over, the days of The New York Times and their erstwhile newspaper competitors controlling the daily new agenda are waning, and there is a new generation of real estate moguls who have a different idea of what should and shouldn't be built in this town.
The power in NYC fragmented like never before. Chaos reigns.
For example, take the media. Those who own big the media in this town are no longer the most powerful people (think Sulzberger, Zuckerman and Murdoch). Instead, you have folks like Nick Denton, an irascible Brit, who founded the snarky Gawker site. Ten years ago this guy didn't even live here -- and now he's as important a media figure in this city as Jimmy Breslin ever was.
Or politics. Mayor Bloomberg still may run NYC with as close to absolute power as any mayor in history but his days in office are waning. Soon he'll be just a billionaire instead of the mayor/billionaire. So who will take his place? That will depend, largely, on the new political kingmakers in this town. We're a long way from the days of Tammany Hall bosses like Carmine De Sapio and from labor union leaders like Mike Quill and Albert Shanker. But if you want to find their successors, look no further than Dan Kantor of the Working Families Party, the third-party organization that has succeeded in getting lots of up-and-coming politicians like John Liu and Bill DeBlasio elected. The effectiveness of the WFP turn out operations on election day are becoming famous. In 2009, while Bloomberg spent $100 million on his third term, the WFP was able to get out enough voters to reduce Bloomberg's margin of victory to an embarrassing four points. Kantor may be the most powerful person in NYC you haven't heard of -- but you will.
And then there's the likes of Lauren Santo Domingo who may be in the running for become the city's new Social doyenne, the new Mrs. Astor.
As you can see, in this era of the niche, power in New York is getting more diffuse even as wealth is getting more concentrated. It's an interesting, almost absurd paradigm -- one that is powered as much by new technology as anything.
Even this blog could be considered, in it's small, small way, a part of the new power game in NYC. For example, here am I, a regular guy, a simple blogger, who has been able to publish interviews with the likes of Kurt Anderson and Michael Musto, who has been asked by various business to advertise and plug their products, who has been invited to parties and events because of this blog, and who has gotten more than one person (including a prominent newspaper editor) extremely angry by some of the stuff I published on here. None of this would have happened if not for this blog and the small, tiny bit of power it has in the huge NYC media universe. (By the way, with one exception, I've turned all the invites and requests to plug stuff down. I ain't that kinda guy.)
So who runs New York? Who has the power? We do, my friends, you and me.
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