“Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and the luck I’ll never have again

It’s official. I have the theater bug, and I’m not getting better anytime soon. The week I saw “Hamilton”, I saw FOUR SHOWS, three of them in four days. For a variety of reasons the tickets (besides “Hamilton”) were very reasonable, but still. Four shows.

I’ll get around to talking about all of them in due course, but first I have to tell you about a very special outing to see “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”. I’ve been hearing about “Hedwig” since it opened, and while it sounded interesting, it had never made it to the top of my list. But it’s a favorite of my “Cabaret”-loving friend, and when she suggested we try for the lottery together on a Saturday night, I was all in.

Our plan was to try for the lottery for the 7 p.m. show and then come back for the lottery for the 10 p.m. show if we didn’t win – and then, if that failed, we’d just buy discounted tickets for the 10 p.m. show. Secretly, because I am incapable of functioning past midnight, I was hoping we’d get tickets to the 7 p.m.

“Hedwig” marked only the second time I’d entered an in person lottery. (Last night marked the third, when my friend and I unsuccessfully tried to see “Hamilton” again – yes, we’re obsessed.) The first was for “Wicked” at the height of its popularity – no luck. So I wasn’t sure what to expect when I showed up at 4:45 for a 5 p.m. drawing. My friend frantically texted me that she was stuck in traffic a little ways away, so I wrote my name down and crossed my fingers that she’d get there before the 5 p.m. cut off.

She made it. She ran up to the table at 4:59 and put her slip in, then came over to wait with me. The girl minding the lotto shook up the entries, put her hand in, and called the first name.

The second name she called was my friend’s.

The fourth name she called was mine.

I was SHOCKED. But I told them to throw mine back in, which got a little cheer from the crowd, and then waited till my friend collected our tickets. They were for the second row, just off from center, for $37 each. Yes, really.

Photo credit @alixinchausti, awesome theater companion and “Cabaret”/”Hedwig” historian. 🙂

After a quick dinner at Olive Garden (I’m a sucker for those breadsticks), we went to the theater. Like our first trip to “Cabaret”, I’d decided not to look up too much about the show before I arrived. I knew it was about Hedwig, an aging German rocker who has had a botched sex change operation (the “angry inch”). My friend gave me a little more context – it’s played as if it’s a one night only, present day show, at the Belasco Theater where it plays, on the set of a musical that’s just closed. When you arrive, peek around the floor of the theater and look for a spoof playbill from the “musical” – I won’t spoil what it is for you, but it’s pretty great.

One of the best part about seeing “Hedwig” right now (and the reason you should try to see it before April 26) is that John Cameron Mitchell is currently playing the title role. Mitchell, who is 52, is the show’s writer (along with composer Stephen Trask) and was the original Hedwig in the off-Broadway production seventeen years ago, as well as in the film adaptation. It was so neat to see him in this role he created. After the show opened last year with Neil Patrick Harris (who won the Tony), Hedwig was played by Andrew Rannells and Michael C. Hall before Mitchell stepped in. Despite an injury (which Mitchell works into the show in wonderful ways), he is full of energy and is fascinating to watch. Darren Criss is up next in the role, and though I LOVE him in the “A Very Potter Musical” shows on Youtube, it will be a very different show.

The music is stunning, the story is fascinating, and I was privileged to see Tony Award-winner Lena Hall as Yitzhak, Hedwig’s husband, before she left the show, and watched with wonder how she made so much out of tiny reactions and facial expressions. And her songs! Wow. Her replacement, Rebecca Naomi Jones, starts on April 14.

As we sat in the front row and the floor vibrated under our feet, we laughed a lot and cried a little and danced in our seats, along with everyone else in the theater. With Hedwig breaking the fourth wall because under the show’s premise, there ISN’T fourth wall, it was a theater experience unlike any other I’ve had. Did I mention the music is amazing?

If you’re interested, check out the show’s website for more information – I wish you our luck with the lotto!

Have you seen “Hedwig”? What did you think?

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A City Singing at Christmas concert, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, 12/18

First posted on December 13, 2013. Updated with new details.

To continue on the Christmas tradition theme, I have to tell you about a concert that’s happening this Thursday, December 18, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It’s the 35^th annual A City Singing at Christmas concert, and this year it features the St Patrick’s Cathedral  Choir, the Young People’s Chorus of New York, and the choir I sing with, the New York City Master Chorale. This is the second year since I joined the choir that we’ve been invited to sing at this concert, and I am hugely excited.

If you’ve never been to St. Patrick’s—well, I’ll save talking about it for another post. But, you should go, and this concert is a perfect time. Three choirs perform beautiful Christmas-themed sets, with sing-a-long carols interspersed, and it’s free! The most magical part is at the end of the concert, when all three choirs sing “Silent Night” together. The lights are turned off in the cathedral, the audience and the singers are given candles, and then the singers process down and back up the aisles. According to a friend of mine, one year, when as the concert came to its end the back doors were opened, she looked out on the cinematic sight of snow falling gently on the Atlas statue on Fifth Ave.

If you want to attend on Thursday, December 18, make sure to get there early. The concert starts at 7 p.m., but the line will begin a while before that. Two years ago my mom went to 5:30 mass and that helped her to secure a seat. Seating is limited this year due to construction, so it’s especially important to beat the crowd.

Music is, for me, the most important part of the season—or at least right up there with Christmas tree and lights. I’m sure it’s different for anyone—what’s your favorite sign that the holidays have arrived?

Looking for more holiday inspiration? Check out the marathon reading of A Christmas Carol at Housing Works this Saturday, December 20 (and my post about it from last year), or visit Bryant Park and go shopping and ice skating (read about it from last year here!) Or check out the NYC Master Chorale’s other holiday concert this Friday at St. Mary the Virgin, where we’ll be performing Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols”. 

UpOut and Jenny Scheinman at Le Poisson Rouge

I gave in and clicked on a Facebook ad recently. It was totally in service of this blog, and of having fun and offbeat things to do in the city, because it was an ad for a service called UpOut. At its most basic, UpOut seems to be a list of activities in the city, but it also boasts an Insiders Club subscription service. For $20 a month, you receive a list of events in the city and choose one which you’d like to attend with a guest. If you don’t (or can’t) pick one that month, you’ll instead receive a pair of movie tickets in the mail.

I’ve only just signed up, and the first month is free, so I haven’t had to pay yet, but on Monday night I went to my first event. It was a show at Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street featuring a singer/violinist named Jenny Scheinman, with Brian Blade on drums. I got in line about ten minutes before doors opened and discovered that my tickets only entitled me and my friend to standing room, not seats at a table. I was a little annoyed, since that hadn’t been mentioned anywhere, but it meant that there wouldn’t be a minimum purchase requirement, so that was a plus. My friend had to stay later at work, so when I got in I ordered some food and planted myself at the bar with a book.

At first there weren’t many of us in the standing room space, but as it got closer to the show’s starting time the place started to fill up.  The space at Le Poisson Rouge is interesting – lots of tables, a long bar, and an elevated space at the back with more tables. My friend arrived with ten minutes to spare and we chatted until the music started. The best thing about our spots at the bar was that we could lean against it. Unfortunately, though, a couple tall men stood directly in front of us at the beginning of the show, and though one eventually moved elsewhere, I didn’t have a great view of the stage for most of it. It was a little frustrating, but I was tired enough that I’d rather lean than be able to see perfectly. Also, being at the bar had its advantages: We ordered warm chocolate chip cookies with milk for dessert.

The music was really neat – a little bit folk and country, a little bit jazz, a lot a bit weird in its lyrics (“The Littlest Soldier” is a pregnant woman in prison singing about her unborn child). I’d listened to some of it on Spotify the week before, so some of the songs were familiar, but even the ones that weren’t were interesting. I’d definitely recommend checking it out! The show ran a little over an hour and a half, which was about how much I could handle on a Monday night. I was tired afterward, but glad I went!

Considering all the evening cost me was dinner, I was pretty pleased. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s on offer for next month – and if I can’t find anything I want to check out, two movie tickets for $20 sounds like a great deal. I’ll have to see how UpOut works going forward (and figure out how to get fewer emails from them), but for now, I like it enough to suggest you check it out! If you use my link, I get a free month.

Has anyone else tried UpOut, or been to a show at Le Poisson Rouge?

A night at the cabaret

No, not that Cabaret, though I hope to go see it sometime this fall. This was at The Duplex, a cabaret and piano bar in the West Village, and last night I sang on its stage.

Let me back up. I’ve mentioned before that I sing in a choir here in New York called the New York City Master Chorale. As a fundraiser, the choir decided to host a cabaret show, with a lineup of singers from the choir singing solos, and sell tickets to our friends and family. Back in February we had the first round of auditions, and despite the fact that my solo singing has been limited since I left high school eight years ago, I decided to try out. And I got cast!

My fellow singers and I arrived around five o’clock yesterday for a sound check, where we were taught how to raise and lower the mic (two fingers and a light touch were all that was needed), reminded to bow before leaving the stage, and sang enough of our songs to get the right levels on the mic. We then retreated upstairs to a green room, and after dropping off our bags, my friend and I went off to grab a slice of pizza before the show.

When we came back, it was time to put on makeup, switch sandals for heels, and practice our patter. The theme of our cabaret was “What I Do For Love”, specifically our love of music, and I sang a song called “A Trip to the Library” from the musical She Loves Me. It is, as I told the audience last night, a song about stepping outside your comfort zone, even though you’re a little nervous, and having something wonderful and unexpected happen – which is exactly what we performers hope will happen every time we step out on the stage. It was the perfect song for me to share after such a long hiatus as a soloist, especially because it’s just so darn funny.

From the tiny stage of the cabaret, I couldn’t see most of the 70 or so people clustered around tables. I could see the front row, which mostly consisted of members of our choir – helpful, when you’re nervous! – and nothing else, not even my three friends who were in the audience. But if I couldn’t see the audience, I could certainly hear them! Maybe it was the alcohol, or the fact that they were all there to support friends, but our audience was having a fantastic time. They laughed at every single one of the jokes in my song. I walked on the stage nervous. I walked off it wondering why the heck I’d waited so long to put myself out there again.

The Duplex hosts cabaret shows every single night. It has sing-a-longs and karaoke, too, and while last night was my first time there, I’m sure I’ll be back – even before next year’s cabaret! I’ve had the performer experience, but now I need to find out what it’s like to be in the audience. I’m sure it’s just as much fun!

Has anyone else been to the Duplex, or any other cabaret-style venues? What did you see there?

PS Another piece of mine on The Toast! This one’s about an amazing trip I took to Wales to check out some of the sites of The Dark is Rising books.

A lovely night at Cinderella

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted about going to the theater, so let me tell you about the first show I saw in 2014. It’s a little musical called Cinderella, and it’s currently starring Carly Rae Jepsen and Fran Drescher, at the Broadway Theater. An unlikely pairing, maybe, for a Rogers and Hammerstein musical that originally starred Julie Andrews (more on that later), but I can’t comment too much on that because I didn’t see Carly Rae Jepsen. According to the playbill, her understudy, Jessica Hershberg, goes on every Saturday evening and Wednesday matinee, and I saw the show on a Saturday night. Ann Harada, one of the stepsisters, who was the original Christmas Eve from Avenue Q, also wasn’t in it that night; her role was played Laura Irion (who was great!).

I can’t review Carly Rae’s performance, but I can tell you: Jessica Hershberg was fantastic. Her voice is stunning, her dancing is gorgeous, and her earnest Ella is lovely, especially against a backdrop of a new book, with modern updates and humor. Fran Drescher as the stepmother plays it about as you’d expect – her voice carries the weight of the humor and there’s not a lot of nuance to her delivery, but her posturing and pronunciation is over-the-top and made me laugh.

I have to say, I was a little skeptical of the new book. I was in Cinderella in high school, and I’ve watched the Julie Andrews movie more times than I can count. The movie, by the way, is the original production. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote the musical to be live broadcast in 1957, with Julie Andrews as its star, and drew over 107 million viewers. I believe it broke records for the most number of viewers at the time.

So this production, the musical’s first on Broadway, had a lot to live up to. While the new book wasn’t perfect (there’s no punishment, really, for the show’s villains, and we lose some fun moments because in this version the prince’s parents are dead), in general it’s a lot of fun! Cinderella has more agency and is even an activist, talking to the prince on behalf of her social activist friend about how the country needs change. It’s a good change to the plot, but at times it gets a little convoluted.

Some of the added songs (which as far as I can tell are all from other Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, or were cut from other shows of theirs) are not great. “Me, Who am I?” was fun, and “Loneliness of Evening”, from South Pacific, is lovely and engaging. But “He Was Tall”, which was cut from The King and I, is short and really not necessary when we’re about to hear the fabulous “When You’re Driving through Moonlight” and “A Lovely Night”, one of my favorite parts of the whole musical. Do lyrics get better than “And below them is a row of light windows like a lovely diamond necklace in the dark”?

The song “There’s Music in You”, performed beautifully by Victoria Clark, is from a movie in which Rodgers and Hammerstein played themselves, and the lyrics are a little hokey and cliché. “Someone wants you, you know who. Now you’re living, there’s music in you.” Really?! What a waste of the fairy godmother’s gorgeous voice. This would have been a perfect moment to reprise “Impossible”, but instead we’re stuck with a ballad that slows the action.

But at the end of the day, my measure of whether I think a show was good tends to be, am I laughing or crying at the end? Did it affect me strongly enough to provoke one of those reactions in me? I laughed all the way through Cinderella – and watched big-eyed as the fairy godmother transformed from a beggar woman to her dazzling self in front of us, and when Ella had not one but two dazzling onstage costume changes. The set is grand and ambitious, but it works perfectly with the story being told.  I loved when Ella decides to leave behind the slipper and give the prince a chance to find her; when her kind stepsister hugs her and wants to help; when the prince is nervous and talks too much.

If you’re looking for a show to see with your mom, or your little cousins or nieces, or, really, anyone who enjoys Rodgers and Hammerstein music or a good fairy tale, check out Cinderella. Carly Rae and Fran are only in it through April 4, but I’m sure whoever replaces them (I’m crossing my fingers for Jessica Hershberg to step into the role full time!) will keep the same spirit of fun!

Anyone seen any good shows lately?

A City Singing at Christmas concert, St Patrick’s Cathedral, 12/19

To continue on the Christmas tradition theme, I have to tell you about a concert that’s happening next Thursday, December 19, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It’s the 34^th annual A City Singing at Christmas concert, and this year it features the St Patrick’s Cathedral  Choir, the Young People’s Chorus of New York, and the St. Agnes Cathedral Choirs  of the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Last year my choir was featured, so I’ve experienced how lovely this concert is firsthand.

If you’ve never been to St. Patrick’s—well, I’ll save talking about it for another post. But, you should go, and this concert is a perfect time. Three choirs perform beautiful Christmas-themed sets, with sing-a-long carols interspersed, and it’s free! The most magical part is at the end of the concert, when all three choirs sing “Silent Night” together. The lights are turned off in the cathedral, the audience and the singers are given candles, and then the singers process down and back up the aisles. According to a friend of mine, one year, when as the concert came to its end the back doors were opened, she looked out on the cinematic sight of snow falling gently on the Atlas statue on Fifth Ave.

If you want to attend on Thursday, December 19, make sure to get there early. The concert starts at 7 p.m., but the line will begin a while before that. I think last year my mom went to 5:30 mass and that helped her to secure a seat. Seating is limited this year due to construction, so it’s especially important to beat the crowd.

Music is, for me, the most important part of the season—or at least right up there with Christmas tree and lights. I’m sure it’s different for anyone—what’s your favorite sign that the holidays have arrived?

And don’t forget to check out the marathon reading of A Christmas Carol this Saturday at Housing Works bookstore cafe!

The Forty Part Motet at the Cloisters

I’ve already suggested visiting the Cloisters, but now I have to urge you: visit the Cloisters before December 8. If you do, you’ll be able to visit an installation which is one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced.

Janet Cardiff, a multimedia artist who I’m definitely going to look up and learn more about, created a piece called The Forty Part Motet. It’s a recording of Thomas Tallis’s 16^th century motet for forty voices, but it’s not your typical choral recording. It is split into forty separate recordings, representing the forty voices, across forty speakers arranged in a circle inside a 12^th century chapel at the Cloisters.

According to the exhibit notes, this is the first time the piece has been presented anywhere besides a neutral gallery space (which, from a Youtube video I found, seems not to be true), but after hearing it in the chapel I can’t imagine why it was ever presented anywhere else. The motet is made to fill those stone walls, and anything else would just diminish the experience.

I visited the installation with a choir friend, because our choir will be performing the motet in the spring, and we were so enthralled that we listened to the piece straight through twice. I moved around inside the chapel, sometimes standing by one speaker, sometimes another, and sometimes standing in the center and hearing the forty voices in balance. The piece would be stunning however it was presented, but this format, where you could choose to focus in on a particular voice within the wall of sound and follow it through measures, notice when it fell silent, and hear it pick up again, was fascinating. It felt at times like being part of the choir, which is an experience I’m lucky to have regularly but must be novel for non-singers.

As we left, my friend and I discussed how the piece differed from a live performance. A live performance, even if it’s recorded, only happens once. The experience of listening to a recording is not the same as being at a live concert; the sound is flatter, the voices more melded together rather than individual. Cardiff’s motet is different. It’s still a recording—the swell will always happen at exactly the same moment, with the same build; the tired singer will take a catch breath at exactly the same moment.

But the forty voices are kept distinct, and the performance is never the same twice, just like a real concert, because the listener is never exactly the same. Unless one stands in exactly the same place, or plots a path and follows it precisely, the music one hears will be different each time. And even if one were to do that, the people in the room would be different, changing the sound—and the experience—in tiny ways. This is a piece of art wherein the observer charts his or her own path and emerges with a unique experience.

It requires more activity on the part of the listener than a live concert, and while I think that nothing is quite as magical as a live performance, this comes close. I suppose the only thing better would be forty singers standing in that chapel allowing listeners to walk right up to them—and even then, you can’t ask forty singers to sing this motet all day for weeks at a time so listeners can come back and hear it over and over again, which is part of the appeal.

Go to the Cloisters before the exhibit leaves after December 8. If you absolutely can’t make it, read the New York Times piece about it, and look up a recording of the piece. And then after you’ve done that, go, because you’ll want to.

ETA: For another look at the piece, check out this article in Chorus America.