Happy Thanksgiving!

"Annabelle, the dying leaves are dancing off of the trees. They got an easy way. Let's you and me go dancing, too, wreck our dancing shoes. Hey, hey, hey." ~the felice brothers

This is just a quick theater post. Today I saw Golden Boy, a play by Clifford Odets about a violinist who decides to become a professional boxer. It was wonderful. It's three hours long, but it doesn't drag. It really is a stellar production; Bartlett Sher, Lincoln Center's go-to director, is doing a fabulous job. The cast is superb; I'm really impressed with the strong group of actors they put together. I'm not usually a big Tony Shalhoub fan (he's best known for Monk), but I enjoyed him in this. He nails every last detail of the character, from the Italian accent to the walk. Danny Burstein is as solid as ever, Seth Numrich throws himself into the role of Joe, and Yvonne Strahovski is lovely in her Broadway debut. She nails the Newark accent (you'd never guess she's Australian), and she delivers some hilarious lines.
Yvonne was incredibly nice after the performance; no one else was waiting at the stage door, so I was able to chat with her a bit, and she was very friendly.

(Photo evidence below to demonstrate that I'm working my way through meeting the cast of Chuck. I'm bummed that I took a photo with Mark Christopher Lawrence a couple years ago, aka Big Mike, but I don't have the photo; someone else does. Anyway, I'm so, so glad I met Yvonne today!)

I recently saw the Broadway show The Performers, and I'm so sad that it closed today. I loved it, and I'm disappointed that a hilarious show with such a big heart couldn't hold on longer. And what an amazing cast! Ari Graynor (love her), Cheyenne Jackson, Alicia Silverstone, Henry Winkler (the Fonz!)....
I also saw Scandalous on Broadway, and the least I say about that, the better. How can a show like that stay open and a show like The Performers have such a short run?

Don't mess with Matt Damon.

I love Matt Damon. So, so much. "Holy dictionary, Mattman" is right. (I love Anderson Cooper, too.) This video is awesome. I've seen the interview already, but I love the addition of Anderson Cooper's comments and a snippet of the awesome Sarah Silverman video.

More soon. (ETA: Sorry if you read this and didn't see a video; I didn't realize it disappeared. It should be back!)

"One day more! Another day, another destiny. This never-ending road to Calvary; these men who seem to know my crime will surely come a second time. One day more!" ~les mis (kretzmer, boublil, & natel)

I'm crazy about Les Mis. I read the novel in eighth grade (not exactly typical eighth grade reading material) and fell in love with it. I think the musical is absolutely lovely; I love the score, I love the story, I love everything about it. I can't wait for Christmas Day largely because that's when the new movie version of the musical opens. Anne Hathaway plays Fantine, and her opening monologue of SNL last night was awesome. Check it out.


I also have a Les Mis rant to share with you, because my blog seems as good a place as any to let it out. I'm a literature dork and a theater dork and I care about stuff like this. You get it, right? If not, feel free to stop reading. It's a rant about Eponine, whom I think is misinterpreted way too often. So here goes.

Many people see Eponine as a heroine and feel sorry her because of the whole unrequited love thing, which they think is the most important thing about her. This bothers me. So here are some of my thoughts on the character.
1. To really understand Eponine (and I'm not sure that I do, or that anyone but Mr. Hugo does), you need to read Victor Hugo's novel. The musical version cuts out most of the details about Eponine because it's just too hard to fit them all in. She's a complicated character, and her most defining characteristics are not easy to portray or to reconcile with each other. For example, she's incredibly bitter and filled with anger (and this isn't sufficiently shown in the musical), but deep down, she's also very vulnerable.
2. Eponine is not beautiful. She is a "pale, puny, meagre creature," with a hoarse voice like "a drunken galley slave’s "due to it being "roughened by brandy and by liquors." She is missing teeth. She's dirty. Seriously, she's not supposed to be attractive.
3. Eponine is not a saint. She torments her adopted sister, Cosette, until Cosette is rescued by Valjean. Eponine is part of her father's street gang, which robs people and also plots murder against Valjean. She's not exactly a nice person.
4. It would have been completely unrealistic if Marius had ended up with Eponine. He fell in love with Cosette before he met her, and he shows absolutely no sign that he has feelings for Eponine. No sign whatsoever.
5. Eponine is a complex character, moreso than most of the other females in Hugo's novel. She is a product of her environment, immersed in poverty, squalor, immorality, violence, and corruption. Yet she struggles to rise above these circumstances. I think that's why she worships Marius; he represents a way out of that corrupted life. It's her struggle that makes her interesting, because it would be so easy for her to simply give in to her circumstances. She doesn't necessarily go about it the right way because she doesn't know how to escape the life into which she was born, but she fights. She tries. She's drowning, but she doesn't just let herself sink, even though she doesn't know which direction is up.
6. It may not seem like she's successful in her struggles, but Eponine achieves redemption in her death. She sacrifices herself for Marius, and in doing so she finally rises above the degradation and immorality of her life.

 I love the character, and I think she deserves to be viewed as the complex girl that she is rather than simply a poor victim of unrequited love (which is how a lot of people seem to view her).
/End rant.

One more thing to leave you with. Anne Hathaway was also part of a Homeland sketch on SNL. If you don't watch Homeland it'll probably go over your head (and if you don't watch Homeland you need to start watching), but if you do, this is awesome, mostly because of Bill Hader as Saul (Mandy Patinkin holla).

"Some nights, I stay up cashing in my bad luck. Some nights, I call it a draw. Some nights, I wish that my lips could build a castle. Some nights, I wish they'd just fall off." ~fun.
 

Today, to celebrate the return of their power, the Public Theater (which is downtown) gave out free tickets to their shows. Nic went this morning to line up for tickets, and we went to the matinee of Giant. It's Michael John LaChiusa's newest musical. I think he's one of the best American composers writing shows today, so I was thrilled to see Giant. The show has a fabulous cast; it features Brian d'Arcy James (he's one of my favorites; I love him), Kate Baldwin, and Bobby Steggert, among others. The show tells the story of a family in Texas (1925-1952). It's a story about a marriage and a family, and a story about Texas, and it addresses the issues of racism and drilling for oil. I loved the score; it's more accessible than most of LaChiusa's work and incorporates different styles of music. I'd love to see it transfer to Broadway.

I went to a Jimmy Fallon taping on Thursday, and Louis C.K. was the main guest. He's hilarious. Here's the show:
And here I am:

Watch SNL tonight. Louis C.K. is hosting and Fun. is the musical guest, so it should be an awesome show.
Louis C.K. wrote this email before the show, and he describes the strange feeling that I believe all New Yorkers must be feeling. Yeah, you want to laugh and enjoy yourself and have fun, and then you get a glimpse of the destruction that's affected the city that you call home and that you love so dearly, and it's like being punched in the gut. But we've got to move on, right?

"I love the rain the most when it stops." ~joe purdy



I've been meaning to do a massive theater post for awhile, and a show that I saw yesterday has finally inspired me to actually do it.

Because I didn't have school yesterday and was sick of staying inside, I decided to walk down to Times Square and see a Broadway show. I chose The Heiress (and got a great seat because the theater was nearly empty), and it was a fabulous choice. Oh my goodness, I loved it so, so much. First of all, Jessica Chastain is amazing. She's been in a ton of great movies lately (she was nominated for an Oscar for The Help, she was in Tree of Life, Give Me Shelter, The Debt, and next she'll be in Kathryn Bigelow's highly anticipated movie Zero Dark Thirty). She deserves all the hype she's gotten over the past year. I went to see her in a TimesTalk recently and was very impressed with her, and what she said made me eager to see The Heiress. She's right;  Catherine is one of the best female roles ever written. I love her character arc. In the TimesTalk someone asked Ms. Chastain about Catherine's choice at the end of the play, and I think she gave the perfect answer in defending Catherine's decision. Her performance beautifully demonstrates Catherine's growth. The whole cast is superb; David Strathairn and Judith Ivey are particularly good, as is Dan Stevens (Matthew Crawley from Downton Abbey).

I've seen a lot of Broadway and off-Broadway shows recently because my friend and I signed up for a ticketing service for which we pay an annual fee and get to see shows they offer for a small processing fee per show. It's allowed me to see some great theater. Some shows I've seen recently are The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Don't Go Gentle, Falling, Modern Terrorism (or They Who Want to Kill Us and How We Learn to Love Them), The Exonerated, Through the Yellow Hour, and Bring It On. I now realize I don't have time to write about them all, but I did enjoy all of them.

Today I went to a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. If you watch it, look for me in the front row. It's a good one to watch. Louis C.K. is the main guest, and I think he might be the funniest man alive. I absolutely adore him. It was also cool to see David Chang. It was hard to watch his cooking demo and smell the food but not get to eat it, but Chef Chang was kind enough to bring cookies from Momofuku Milk Bar for the audience! (I'm obsessed with Momofuku Milk Bar; their candy bar pie is my favorite, but I'm also a sucker for the compost cookies and the cereal milk).