Last night my husband and I went to see West Side Story on Broadway. We navigated Flatbush Avenue, me driving and cursing the dollar vans and him answering questions that I never asked. We ate at Katz’s, our favorite deli with diabetic me only able to eat half a sandwich, no fries and a diet root beer. (Hardly seems worth the money if you don’t walk out vowing to never eat that much again.) We made our way uptown taking 6th Avenue which was probably a mistake but it was an adventure navigating the fifty blocks along-side kamikazee cabbies and bike lane cretins with, I am sure….a death wish. Arriving without killing an environmentalist or being killed by a radical cabbie we found a parking spot with a muni-meter only a block from the theatre. At twenty-five cents for twelve minutes it cost us $9 to park until the show was over and then some….a big difference from the ridiculous parking lot prices. So far our night was a success.
Since we were early we decided to sit in the designated seating Times Square now offers amidst the lights, the tourists, and the lunatics. As we sat killing time, Spiderman came by, so did a half naked guy dressed in camouflage gear and a woman (I think?) singing an accapella version of “We Are The Champions.” I bought a $150 knockoff bag from a street vendor for $35 for which he gladly accepted only $31 which was all the cash my husband and I had on us since we spent $34 at the deli and $9 to park.
The time passed quickly and we headed to the theatre. At my subtle insistance suggestion, my husband got those amplifying headphones for the hearing impaired. They basically were upside down headphones. Instead of going on top of your head, they hang from your ears with the amplification box somewhere around your neck. He looked like he had had a tracheotomy and I half expected his voice to come out of the box distorted and disjointed. I stifled a giggle but never let on that he looked like one of the lunatics we had left outside in Times Square. Our seating thankfully included an aisle as I now had two pocketbooks, a coat and a playbill to stuff into that anorexic seat.
I don’t think there is a person alive that doesn’t know the premise of West Side Story. The Jets, the Sharks, Tony, Maria. But something was amiss. Even with his wife beater t-shirt and tousseled hair, the adorable Tony looked like he would rather have been kissing Marco than Maria and it was hard to conceive that he was ever a gang member. Ever! His Jets looked like a ballet troupe in sneakers (which they probably were) and none except Deisel were believable as anyone who could remotely win a ‘rumble’. The Jets girls looked too skinny and too slutty in their micro mini skirts and tarted up make up. I started rooting for the Sharks. Bernardo had a great purple suit and looked sexy and oddly manly while his Sharks wore roach killer shoes with heels and bright shirts with vests. The women in their colorful ruffled skirts that they twirled as they danced put the Jets girls to shame. And there are just some things that shouldn’t be changed, or updated or re-written. Womb to Tomb, Birth to Earth…is one of them! But they decided that Sperm to Worm was a better choice. Ugh! Too much of a visual there thank you!
The scene with the Shark girls dancing on the roof to ‘I Like To Be In America’ was a show stopper as was the hysterically funny tribute to ‘Officer Krumpke,‘ the only part of then play where the Jets were believable as street kids. Just before intermission the entire cast sang a mosaic of the song ‘Tonight’ with each character singing independently but joining together for the climax….I looked over to find my husband with his tracheotomy headphones….tearing up. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So I laughed.
During intermission I waited on a line that went down three flights of stairs to go to the ladies room. As I get there the lights start blinking and the attendant informs us that we will not be allowed to go to our seats if the play starts before we are seated. I got off the line, trekked back upstairs and to my seat. My husband was already there reading his Playbill which he always keeps and I throw out when he isn’t looking. The second half of the play was far better than the first half and the urge to pee had all but passed. The curtain down, our hands still stinging from applause, we returned the trach-phones and manuevered our way out of the theatre and to the car.
As expected, the car was still there and we even had ten minutes left on the muni-meter. I had considered sitting in the car til the meter ran out, just to spite the city and Bloomberg and the D.O.T. but I really did still have to pee and so the faster I got home the better.
No comments:
Post a Comment