Among the changes this week to the New York Times website, I really like the Today’s Paper feature. You can browse the entire day’s articles in every category on one page – everything from politics to arts to editorials to obituaries.
I also like the Times Topics feature, which collects all articles that mention a particular person, area or subject. For example, you can look up Al Gore or homosexuality or blogs and blogging or Lincoln Center. It’s really cool for research nerds like me.
Sometimes I think I’d really like to have my own radio interview show. I’d like to be someone like Terry Gross.
Other times I think I’d really like to do something with my writing.
Occasionally in the past, I’ve thought about becoming a therapist or counselor of some sort.
If there’s such a thing as a mission in life, I think mine has to do with communication, and increasing the amount of understanding in the world.
We’ve seen three Broadway musicals in the past five nights: Tarzan, The Wedding Singer, and The Drowsy Chaperone. That’s the order in which we saw them, and it’s also the order in which I’d rank them from worst to best. Keep in mind that these shows are all in previews.
I hate to bad-mouth a show, especially when I sorta know someone who’s working on it (though not on the creative side). But Tarzan sucked. Plain and simple. It might even have been worse than last season’s Dracula, which, at the time, was one of the worst musicals I’d ever seen. But at least Dracula was visually interesting. Tarzan has a boring set consisting essentially of green streamers. It has incredibly ugly ape costumes. (How did Shuler Hensley get involved in this?) It has long stretches of dialogue with static staging. It has unmemorable songs. The plot is, literally, pure Disney, but Matt says the movie is much better (I haven’t seen it). To make matters worse, we were sitting near a group of teenagers who’d attempted to dress up. Some of the girls in their strapless dresses looked like they were on their way to the prom.
The Wedding Singer, based on the movie of the same name about a wedding singer in 1980’s New Jersey, is a really cute show with an appealing cast, a funny book and catchy songs. (Its big earworm, “It’s Your Wedding Day”, keeps getting stuck in my head.) It also takes advantage of the ongoing ’80s nostalgia. Given all that, and the built-in New Jersey audience, it should do very well.
I can’t say enough good things about The Drowsy Chaperone. It’s really a tribute to musical theater – a show for people who love musicals – and it’s hysterical but poignant. The premise is that we’re in the apartment of a lonely middle-aged man, known as Man in Chair, who’s going to share with us his cast recording of his favorite old musical from the 1920’s, The Drowsy Chaperone (which isn’t a real show, of course). As he begins to play the album, the old musical comes alive before our eyes. Man in Chair constantly interrupts The Drowsy Chaperone with his own commentary on the actors, the songs, and the recording. But this is more than a one-gimmick show; the 1920s musical itself has terrifically witty songs and visuals, and Sutton Foster has a showstopper of a number. The whole cast is impeccable. This deserves to win lots of Tonys.
Coming up are two plays: Festen and The History Boys. I think I’m going to need some new Playbill binders.