Born Yesterday

I'm sure everyone is speculating on what we did today.  Well, we had a fabulous, fabulous day.  Any day you go to a Broadway show and out to an avant garde Mexican restaurant, believe me, it's a fabulous day.

This afternoon we went to see "Born Yesterday".  All of us who are of a certain age (that means old enough to remember the 1950's) know that Judy Holiday owns the role of Billie Dawn, the female lead.  After having seen this revival, Judy Holiday USED to own this role.  The title has been passed to a virtual Broadway newcomer called Nina Arianda.  She seized this role and was so sparkling that you never even thought of Judy.  Now that's an acting feat.  It's even bigger when you realize her co-stars playing Harry (the Broderick Crawford role) is Jim Belushi and Paul (the William Holden role) is being played  by the guy who has the recurring role of House's doctor friend on the TV show "House".  She could have been critically compared to Judy and totally upstaged by the two guys with all that experience.  Didn't happen.  This revival belonged to her.  (For those of you who DON'T remember the 50's this is a Pygmalion story - go rent the movie - you'll like it)  

The play was at the Cort Theater (owned by the Schubert group- still a family owned theatrical company).  It was nice, and we had center orchestra seats about a third of the way back - 2 for 1, naturally.  The play was fun, and the sets (which won the Tony) were almost an exact replica of what I remember of the hotel suite from the opening of the movie.  

This is the 7th show/musical we have seen while we have been here.  We were talking about how to rate them.   Do you separate the musicals from the plays?  Do you squish them together and rate them?  What's the criteria?  We quickly figured out that if you change the criteria emphasized, the ranks changed.  We've seen four plays and three musicals.  The musicals are easy.  Drake and I agree:  (1)  Anything Goes, (2) Million Dollar Quartet, (3) Chicago.  We've decided the Cirque de Soleil show is in it's own category and not really rateable. That was more about seeing Radio Music Hall.

The plays are much more interesting.  Drake ranks Arcadia as (1) while I think Jerusalem is (1).  I think I rated it (1) because I was more entertained by Jerusalem, and I suspect Drake liked Arcadia better because it had math in it.  (He'll be mock outraged when he reads this.)  Truthfully, he rated Arcadia as (1) because the discussions about the themes was our most interesting theatrical conversation.  Coming in (3)  would be the play we saw today.  Not because it wasn't as well acted as the others, but because there aren't any real discussions that come out of this play.  However, the Billie character was so charming, so physical, so unexpected that this play takes third place. 

 I would unhesitatingly recommend any of these three plays, although it helps to have a passing knowledge of Bryon, romantic era in England, and current cut throat competition in academia to really enjoy Arcadia.  Someone sitting in front of us told us at intermission they READ the play before attending, and were enjoying it more.  I believe it - Arcadia is very dense with rapid fire dialogue full of ideas.  The play that comes in (4) is The Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.  I think the reason it's fourth is because it was emotionally hard to watch and seemed to leave the audience hanging at the end.  It's without a doubt the most serious play tackling current events.  (In its era Born Yesterday also tackled the current event - role of government - but it seems pretty simplistic now.) 

As you can tell, we left the theater in a good mood after being totally entertained.  As most of you know, my 'job' is to find what we are going to do and where we are going to eat.  Since we've been eating out every day (is this heaven, or what?), this is becoming a serious matter.  I would feel very foolish repeating myself (going to a restaurant twice) in New York City.  I felt the restaurant sites I'd been using were getting stale, plus we are traveling everywhere, and it's been hard to pinpoint neighborhoods specifically to check out the restaurants.  

Sherri (good friend of mine) to the rescue.   She lived up here in her early 20's - her first real job was in New York, and she's visited both with her mom and with her then boyfriend, now husband.  (Now SHE'S got a proposal story that involves Central Park - not the subway.)  She clued me into a website called Serious Eats - it's a blog, it's restaurant reviews, it's foodie picks of specific foods and it has a great neighborhood search as well as landmark site searches for great individually owned restaurants.  Individually owned is the only restaurant worth eating at in my opinion.  

Today via that site we found an avant garde Mexican restaurant.  (Toloarche)  Now Mexican food is to Texans what Italian food is to New Yorkers.  This restaurant had lots of raves at every site.  Menu looked interesting - but not REALLY Mexican - more foodie.  However, it is true that it's hard to find really excellent restaurants in the Theater District/Times Square.  I digress, well, what else is new?  Toloarche was great.  I had lobster tacos with moritas (a type of pepper) sauce, and Drake had skirt steak tacos.  He had a tomato tortilla soup.  There was chips and salsa - excellent, and I had fried Brussel sprouts which sounds awful, but they were so good even Drake liked the bite I gave him.  There were excellent black beans and orange rice.  Drake has churros for dessert and I had a coffee flavored flan.  A real success.  Thanks, Sherri.

Tomorrow, we are headed for the Museum of Natural History.  We both agreed that we need to look at something besides pictures, and Drake is excited to see the space/astronomy part of the museum.  I want to see the dinosaurs.  Serious Eats has already helped me pick a new restaurant for tomorrow.  Some interesting pictures tomorrow.