Tuesday, February 06, 2007
NY, NY
Apparently I caught on the pas two months of no NY visits in the past few days. On Thursday I went to see a musical, The Colour Purple, which was pretty good. It had amazing set changes. I usually notice them all the time because I pay attention to the tech stuff but this time there were moments when I was so taken in by the show and the changes were done so smoothly that I sometimes went "when on earth did the set change??" It means a lot about how skilfully it was done. I was far at the back, even though orchestra level, so I couldn't see very very well but the make up looked really good. That's the one thing I'm usually really critical about because if even I (no training) can make someone look older relatively credibly through stage make-up, then professionals should do a way better job. The people in the show age by about 50 years or so and it was totally believable. They even changed the body structure of a young guy to make him look older, in a quite credible way. The hair and costume styles evolved beautifully as well. It really wasn't a sore to the eye :p And the show was pretty nice for the ear as well, some of these voices were amazing. As for the acting, the lead was excellent. The only issue for me was that it was a bit too close to how Woopy Goldberg managed it in the movie but the actress in the musical still managed to look 14 in the beginning and 60 or so in the end thanks to body shifts and character evolution in a convincing and quite impressive way I must say. So yeay :) It was a very nice evening and it reconciled me with musicals - before that I hadn't really loved what I'd seen on Broadway.
On Saturday I got to go to the NY library of Performing Arts to watch the original performance of subUrbia on tape. It's great, you book an appointment, choose your play, tell them why you want to see it and there you go, you sit there and watch it. For free :) It's a wonderful research tool. I must say I was quite disappointed with the performance though. I'd seen the revival in the fall, which was excellent and mind blowing, and this version was far less subtle in the way it was directed and acted so it was less appealing and moving than the revival. But hey, at least I know the full value of how great the revival was and how lucky I was to have seen it :D
That day I also briefly checked out an exhibition at the Met and then got to meet up with Tally, whom I see way too rarely even though she lives in the city. We had hot chocolate and chocolate fudge cake in a tea shop :D Yeay for chocolate!
Sunday was the usual bi-monthly excursion to go and see a show with one of my classes. We went to Repertorio, a theatre which only does shows in Spanish. There was the possibility to listen to people saying the text in English as the action went on but I didn't want to be distracted from what was going on on stage so I didn't take it. I had to struggle a lot to understand and only managed to get the gist of the plot (of Anna in the Tropics, that was the play). However, it helped me focus on staging and acting and I wasn't too impressed by that actually... It was still an interesting performance and the atmosphere of the show was warm and intimate :) After the show, the director came to talk to us and I totally agreed with every thing he said, which included that everybody in the US should speak at least 5 languages :D
So living near NY is pretty nice and affords you with wonderful opportunities I should try and exploit more! Maybe if I worked harder and in a more focused manner on my research I'd be able to go more... hummm...
# posted by V @ 12:48 AM 
