New York Part 1

I took a quick trip to New York last week. Late January / early February is a good time to go there, because hotel prices are fairly low. I was able to get a room in midtown for just over $100 a night. The primary purpose of the trip was seeing the Encores production of Once Upon a Mattress, but a little time browsing Time Out turned up three other shows I wanted to see, as well as a museum exhibit. And a quick look through the New York Adventure Club newsletter found a good way to fill in some of the rest of my time.

Anyway, I took the train up early on Tuesday morning. After dropping off my bag at my hotel, I headed down to the Lower East Side.

Judy Chicago Herstory: This exhibit, at The New Museum, was a must-see for me. Or course, I’ve been familiar with The Dinner Party for years, including seeing it both in book form and, in person, at The Brooklyn Museum. I also saw her exhibition Resolutions: A Stitch in Time at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles back in 2001.

I stopped quickly at Yonah Shimmel’s on the way there and had a disappointing kasha knish. They were never as good as my memories of Jerry’s on the boardwalk at Far Rockaway, a few blocks away from where Aunt Bernice and Uncle Ely lived, but they have definitely gotten worse the past couple of times I’ve been there and I think I may just have to give up on them. Oh, well.

Anyway, I was there for the Judy Chicago Herstory exhibit, which proved to be a fairly comprehensive retrospective. It made sense to follow it chronologically, so I started with her early work. The information placards were very informative, discussing things like how she took an auto body class to learn how to paint on pieces from cars. There were various video clips from her days doing performance art, the most amusing of which involved two performers dressed in body suits with large soft sculpture genitals attached arguing about roles in housework, e.g. “I have a cock. Therefore, I don’t wash the dishes. You have a cunt, so you have to wash the dishes.” But there was some less shocking artwork.



One of my favorite exhibits had to do with the Birth Project, which was an early 1980’s collaboration with over 150 needleworkers from around the U.S. Here’s an exquisite tapestry from it called The Creation and an enlarged photo of one part of it.





The picture below is from Resolution: A Stitch in Time, which I’d mentioned having seen at the Skirball. In that project, each of the works offered a contemporary interpretation of a traditional adage or proverb.



If Women Ruled the World was another fascinating piece.



There was plenty of other stuff to see, including an exhibition of works by various women who influenced Judy Chicago. This was called The City of Ladies and the accompanying brochure had biographies of over 80 women, such as Hima af Klint, Simone de Beauvoir, Hildegard von Bingen, Suzanne Duchamp, Georgia O’Keefe, etc.

One of my other favorites was the International Honor Quilt, a series of several small triangular quilts representing women throughput the world who had been unjustly forgotten. There are apparently over 500 quilts in the total collection and the museum exhibited only a small number of them. Here’s an amusing example. Note the blue triangle in the top row, between Mother Teresa and Agatha Christie.



If anyone is going to be in New York, the exhibit runs through March 3rd and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in feminism and art.

Merrily We Roll Along: I took the subway back to Midtown and rested for a little while before getting a slice of $1 pizza before going to see Merrily We Roll Along. For anyone who doesn’t know, this was a 1981 Sondheim flop, based on a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It tells the story of three friends, whose youthful promise takes them in different directions. But it’s told in reverse chronology, so it starts in 1976 after they’ve had their falling out. The real focus is on Frank (Franklin Shepard, who has become a successful Hollywood producer, abandoning both his partner, Charley (with whom he collaborated on musicals) and their friend, Mary, whose career tanked after an early bestseller. As it works its way backwards, we see how Frank’s pursuit of monetary success led to his falling out with Charley, who embarrasses him in a television interview. And Mary’s unrequited interest in him leads her to decline into alcoholism.

The performances were impressive. A lot of people were there to see Daniel Radcliffe as Charley. His singing voice is okay, though not spectacular, but he does have a real gift for physical comedy. And he did very well with “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” which summarizes their separation.

Lindsey Mendez was an appropriately acerbic Mary. But the highlight of the cast was Jonathan Groff who made Frank less unlikeable than many other performers have. I also want to call out Katie Rose Clarke who nailed it as Beth (Frank’s first wife) who gets the best song of the show in “Not a Day Goes By” and Reg Rogers, whose comic timing as Joe was superb.

I have two serious problems with the show. For one thing, the backwards timeline makes it depressing. No matter how much early promise things show, we know that everything will go wrong. That also applies to the cabaret number, “Bobby and Jackie and Jack” about the Kennedy clan. It’s a very funny piece, but (again) we know how things go wrong for them.

My bigger issue is with the women in the show. Gussie (Frank’s second wife) displays every horrible stereotype about actresses. And Mary’s character is never fully developed. Sorry, but Frank just isn’t worth her throwing her life away for.

As a Sondheim completist, it’s worth seeing, especially for the excellent cast. But it will never be a show I love the way I love, say, “Company” or “Assassins” or “Pacific Overtures.” By the way, there is a running bit about songs not being hummable, which was, of course, a frequent criticism of Sondheim’s work. Anything you can sing you can hum, damn it. Just don’t go in expecting a Jerry Herman-esque ear worm.

This is getting long, so I’ll continue it in a separate post.

New York - Part 2

Continuing last week’s New York trip…

Aside from some random walking around, most of Wednesday was spent going to the theatre.

Harmony: I had been a little hesitant to see this musical, because I generally prefer musical comedy to musical tragedy. And, while I don’t hate Barry Manilow (who wrote the music, with book and lyrics by Bruce Sussman, who is his long-time writing partner), he wouldn’t make my top ten list of songwriters. The reviews had been mixed but a couple of friends who had seen it did recommend it. And it was closing just a few days after my trip, so I decided it was worth trying.

The show starred Chip Zien, who does look his age (he’s in his late 70’s) but can still sing. He is looking back on his youth as part of a group called The Comedian Harmonists, who achieved success in Germany in the early 1930’s and toured the world. But three of their members were Jewish and the group had to disband due to the rise of Hitler. This is based on a true story, but several critics complained that it wasn’t very accurate. I don’t actually care about factual accuracy when it comes to musical adaptations. I’m looking for emotional truths and I felt that it worked at that level, for the most part.

The title song was lovely and something of an ear worm, as is “Stars in the Night,” which closes the show. Some of the songs the group sings are very entertaining, e.g. “How Can I Serve You, , Madame.” There are two beautiful love songs - “Every Single Day” and (especially) “Where You Go.” There’s a shocking moment in the first act, following a double wedding. While I understand why it didn’t end the act, it made the emotional arc a bit strange to go on from that to Carnegie Hall.

Neither of the female characters is fully developed. Mary fares better than the rabble-rousing Ruth. The latter was played by the other big star of the show (Julie Benko) who did fine with what she was given, but her character was not fully developed.

Anyway, I thought it was worth seeing, but I wish they’d handed out packets of tissues with the Playbills.

Once Upon a Mattress: This production was part of the Encores series at City Center, which puts on concert versions “forgotten” musicals. I’m not sure Once Upon a Mattress really qualifies, since it’s popular for schools and summer camps and other amateur groups. But it’s a fun show, with a lively score and a humorous book, and they always get great performers. For anyone not familiar with the show, it is loosely based on the fairy tale of “The Princess and the Pea.” I should also note that this was more fully staged than some of the other shows I’ve seen in the series.

The key here is that the show is a real star turn for the actress playing Princess Winifred the Woebegone (“Fred”). That was the role that launched Carol Burnett to stardom, of course. I don’t normally think of Sutton Foster as being that sort of performer, though she’s a solid dancer. So I was impressed by her willingness to go all out on the physical comedy. That was especially true in the scene where she tries to get to sleep on the stack of mattresses.

As for the rest of the cast, Michael Urie had great chemistry with Sutton Foster in his role as Prince Dauntless the Drab. Both J. Harrison Ghee and Harriet Harris were spot on as the Jester and the Queen respectively. Overall, while the show is somewhat dated and very silly, it’s also very entertaining. I am still humming several of the songs a week and a half later.

Fabric Flowers: I mentioned that I’d found something to do via the newsletter of the New York Adventure Club. This is a wonderful organization that has both virtual tours and in-person tours and I have done several of their events in the past. They periodically do a tour of M&S Schmalberg, the last remaining custom fabric flower factory in New York. I love crafts and I love factory tours, so this was right up my alley. Adam, the owner of the company is the 4th generation of the family business. First, we had time to browse the showroom. There are flowers of every description and every color, with some elaborately beaded examples. And, also, lots of butterflies. Here are a couple of the displays:





Adam told us some of the history of the company before explaining the process of making the flowers. Basically, fabric is starched and folded to create layers, then cut. The cut fabric is pressed into molds (which are surprisingly heavy). The pieces are then put together with things like brooch pins, lapel pins, or hair clips.

We went into the factory and watched all the steps of the process. I was amused that a salad spinner is used to get the moisture out after fabric is starched. Here’s Adam cutting out flowers, which will then be put into molds to be shaped.



At the end of the tour, he put out an assortment of small flowers and we each got to choose one to take home. Here's my selection.



That was followed by time to shop. The prices start at about $20. In addition to their etsy shop, they make custom flowers. I didn’t buy anything, but I will almost certainly buy a few things from them in the future, most likely for decorating hats. Anyway, this was an excellent way to spend part of an afternoon.

The Connector: The final show of my theatre binge was this new musical with a music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and book by Jonathan Marc Sherman. It was conceived and directed by Daisy Prince, who is the daughter of the late Hal Prince. The story involves a news magazine, celebrating its 50th anniversary. The Connector has been taken over by a large corporation but it appears that, aside from data analysis, all they’ve done is paint the offices. The editor-in-chief, Conrad O’Brien (ably played by Scott Bakula - yes, the guy from Quantum Leap) hires a kid named Ethan Dobson (played by Ben Levi Ross), who is fresh out of Princeton and who he views as a younger version of himself. In the meantime, Conrad ignores a copy editor, named Robin Martinez (played by Hannah Cruz), who wants to become a feature writer. Ethan’s story about a Scrabble shark in Greenwich Village makes him an instant success, but what is he going to do to follow that? And will anybody ever read Robin’s work?

If you’ve ever seen the play The Lifespan of a Fact there are some natural comparisons, particularly with respect to the question of what is truth and what is sufficient proof. There are two other characters who play major roles in addressing this question - Muriel, a legendary fact checker, and Mona Bland, who writes letters to the magazine correcting minor details, leading her to be regarded as a crank. However, there are also other issues here, especially the sexism that Robin faces, even in 1996. I was surprised that potential racism (given her obviously Latina name) wasn’t suggested. After all, Linda Wolfe had been writing for New York magazine since the 1970’s. (I still remember her piece about the deaths of the twin gynecologists.)

As it stands now, the show is about an hour and 40 minutes long, with no intermission. I’d have liked to see it expanded a bit (with an intermission added) so some of the characters could be fleshed out more. In particular, I’d like to know more about Robin’s past beyond her singing “Everyone in Texas is an asshole” in a song titled “So I Came to New York.” There’s also a hint (in the form of a phone call to his brother) that there’s more to Ethan’s background than his time at Princeton. The bottom line is that this was funny and provocative, with an enjoyable jazzy score, though not entirely satisfying. Note that I saw it in previews, however, I hope that the creative team continues to develop it further. And I also definitely want there to be a recording of the music.

By the way, I read a couple of reviews which compare this to the real-life story of Stephen Glass. There is apparently a movie about him, titled “Shattered Glass,” which I should try to get around to seeing.

A Quick Note About Amtrak: The train I took home on Friday morning was the Carolinian, rather than a Northeast Regional. For future reference, this is a bad idea. For one thing, it was very crowded. But, more importantly, it doesn’t have a quiet car.