The Rest of the New York Trip
Mar. 23rd, 2023 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreMoving on to Sunday …
Museum of Broadway: The Museum of Broadway opened up in mid-November and, to the complete lack of surprise of anyone who knows me, this was a must-do for me. It’s rather pricy, but so is Broadway theatre nowadays. I bought a ticket for as early in the day as I could on the grounds that figured it could be somewhere I would want to spend a lot of time at. Which did, indeed, prove to be a good idea.
The first part discusses the different Broadway theaters and their owners, which wasn’t super exciting for me. After a short film, there’s a room where there’s a map of every current Broadway theatre and a wall (maybe it was a separate room; my memory is fuzzy) with the Playbills for all the current shows. Then, they let you out into the Broadway timeline part of the museum, which was more interesting. This has panels with information about various shows (both plays and musicals) and performers for time periods ranging from a few years to over a decade. The information is dense and I admit I didn’t read every single word of it, but it was fairly interesting. There was a particular emphasis on black and female performers. Here’s a brief example, which I took a picture of because the Hilton sisters were also the subject of a much later Broadway show (Side Show). Note the unrelated quote below the picture of them, as well as other unrelated pictures at the side.
A lot of the exhibits involve costumes. Here are some from the Ziegfeld Follies, which were apparently found in trunks when Disney was renovating the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street.
There are rooms with tributes to various shows, playing music and, in some cases, recorded clips. Some of the shows highlighted include Show Boat, Oklahoma, West Side Story, Cabaret, Company, Wicked, The Lion King, etc. I particularly liked the excerpts from a documentary about Fiddler on the Roof. One minor complaint is that there’s a lot of “bleed” from one room to another, so you keep hearing a song from one show, while looking at info about another.
There are, of course, more costumes, such as these from Hair.
And, later on, these from Hamilton.
I was excited to see everyone’s favorite foul-mouthed puppets from Avenue Q.
While it’s a show I don’t like, Phantom of the Opera has had a long run. This curtain has a bead for every performance, And, if you look at it from the correct position (marked on the floor), the phantom’s mask appears.
This is a small sampling of what’s there. There is bound to be something for pretty much any theatre fan. There is a lot more emphasis on musicals than on plays for the most part, though there was a pretty good section on Neil Simon. My favorite exhibit (which doesn’t make a particularly compelling photo) was of an anagram puzzle by Stephen Sondheim. I also loved the interviews with various composers, lyricists, choreographers, costume designers, stage managers, etc. There’s even a room with Al Hirshfeld cartoons and computers where you can get a drawing of yourself in his style. (They didn’t have an option that really worked for my hair, however.) Overall, I spent over three hours there.
TL:DR - expensive but worth it for theatre lovers.
Kimberly Akimbo: Sunday afternoon’s entertainment was seeing Kimberly Akimbo. This new musical got great reviews. The story sounds like a terrible premise for a musical. Kimberly is a teenager with a disease that makes her age about 4 times faster than normal. So, while she is just turning 16, she looks like she’s in her 60’s. Her father is an alcoholic, her mother is a pregnant narcissist, and her aunt is a career criminal. They’ve moved to New Jersey because of something terrible that happened in Lodi. So where’s the comedy?
Well, this was quirky and very funny. The other teenagers are the four members of a show choir who will do anything to get the money for costumes so they can beat West Orange in a competition. Kimberly’s best friend is a boy, Seth, who is unashamedly nerdy - speaking Elvish, making anagrams of people’s names, and playing the tuba. Their relationship felt realistic for teenage romance - sweet and surprisingly innocent. Aunt Debra is a horrible person (we do find out what happened in Lodi), who sets the kids up in a check washing scheme,
The music (composed by Jeanine Tesori) was tuneful. And, really, you can’t go wrong with jokes about New Jersey. I think the song “Good Kid” (sung by Seth as he is contemplating whether or not to get involved in the crime) will become a go-to for boys of a certain age to sing. Justin Cooley,who played Seth, was making his Broadway debut and I think he has a long career in front of him. I heard good things about Victoria Clark as Kimberly, but we had the understudy (Colleen Fitzpatrick) who did fine. I also want to call out Bonnie Milligan as Debra, who made an unlikeable character fun. In case you can’t tell, I absolutely loved this show. I recommend it to people who were awkward teenagers, dealing with imperfect adults. Which is, frankly, pretty much everyone. Go see it if you can.
Museum of Broadway: The Museum of Broadway opened up in mid-November and, to the complete lack of surprise of anyone who knows me, this was a must-do for me. It’s rather pricy, but so is Broadway theatre nowadays. I bought a ticket for as early in the day as I could on the grounds that figured it could be somewhere I would want to spend a lot of time at. Which did, indeed, prove to be a good idea.
The first part discusses the different Broadway theaters and their owners, which wasn’t super exciting for me. After a short film, there’s a room where there’s a map of every current Broadway theatre and a wall (maybe it was a separate room; my memory is fuzzy) with the Playbills for all the current shows. Then, they let you out into the Broadway timeline part of the museum, which was more interesting. This has panels with information about various shows (both plays and musicals) and performers for time periods ranging from a few years to over a decade. The information is dense and I admit I didn’t read every single word of it, but it was fairly interesting. There was a particular emphasis on black and female performers. Here’s a brief example, which I took a picture of because the Hilton sisters were also the subject of a much later Broadway show (Side Show). Note the unrelated quote below the picture of them, as well as other unrelated pictures at the side.
A lot of the exhibits involve costumes. Here are some from the Ziegfeld Follies, which were apparently found in trunks when Disney was renovating the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street.
There are rooms with tributes to various shows, playing music and, in some cases, recorded clips. Some of the shows highlighted include Show Boat, Oklahoma, West Side Story, Cabaret, Company, Wicked, The Lion King, etc. I particularly liked the excerpts from a documentary about Fiddler on the Roof. One minor complaint is that there’s a lot of “bleed” from one room to another, so you keep hearing a song from one show, while looking at info about another.
There are, of course, more costumes, such as these from Hair.
And, later on, these from Hamilton.
I was excited to see everyone’s favorite foul-mouthed puppets from Avenue Q.
While it’s a show I don’t like, Phantom of the Opera has had a long run. This curtain has a bead for every performance, And, if you look at it from the correct position (marked on the floor), the phantom’s mask appears.
This is a small sampling of what’s there. There is bound to be something for pretty much any theatre fan. There is a lot more emphasis on musicals than on plays for the most part, though there was a pretty good section on Neil Simon. My favorite exhibit (which doesn’t make a particularly compelling photo) was of an anagram puzzle by Stephen Sondheim. I also loved the interviews with various composers, lyricists, choreographers, costume designers, stage managers, etc. There’s even a room with Al Hirshfeld cartoons and computers where you can get a drawing of yourself in his style. (They didn’t have an option that really worked for my hair, however.) Overall, I spent over three hours there.
TL:DR - expensive but worth it for theatre lovers.
Kimberly Akimbo: Sunday afternoon’s entertainment was seeing Kimberly Akimbo. This new musical got great reviews. The story sounds like a terrible premise for a musical. Kimberly is a teenager with a disease that makes her age about 4 times faster than normal. So, while she is just turning 16, she looks like she’s in her 60’s. Her father is an alcoholic, her mother is a pregnant narcissist, and her aunt is a career criminal. They’ve moved to New Jersey because of something terrible that happened in Lodi. So where’s the comedy?
Well, this was quirky and very funny. The other teenagers are the four members of a show choir who will do anything to get the money for costumes so they can beat West Orange in a competition. Kimberly’s best friend is a boy, Seth, who is unashamedly nerdy - speaking Elvish, making anagrams of people’s names, and playing the tuba. Their relationship felt realistic for teenage romance - sweet and surprisingly innocent. Aunt Debra is a horrible person (we do find out what happened in Lodi), who sets the kids up in a check washing scheme,
The music (composed by Jeanine Tesori) was tuneful. And, really, you can’t go wrong with jokes about New Jersey. I think the song “Good Kid” (sung by Seth as he is contemplating whether or not to get involved in the crime) will become a go-to for boys of a certain age to sing. Justin Cooley,who played Seth, was making his Broadway debut and I think he has a long career in front of him. I heard good things about Victoria Clark as Kimberly, but we had the understudy (Colleen Fitzpatrick) who did fine. I also want to call out Bonnie Milligan as Debra, who made an unlikeable character fun. In case you can’t tell, I absolutely loved this show. I recommend it to people who were awkward teenagers, dealing with imperfect adults. Which is, frankly, pretty much everyone. Go see it if you can.
