Tag Archives: theater

Ramin Karimloo, No Hurricanes, and This Time I Remembered My Pants!

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Last week, I took a long weekend in New York for a little solo vacation. Aside from forgetting my phone charger and having to buy another one, it was a very successful trip. No hurricanes and I didn’t forget my pants! I also went to Ellen’s Stardust Diner, where the waitstaff sings to you while you eat, went to Coney Island on Saturday and rode the Cyclone, had some awesome pizza and garlic knots, and went to Central Park, where I went to the zoo and found the sea lions. (Ten years ago, on my pre-GPS first trip to NYC, Christiana Krump and I wandered around the park forever trying to find the zoo, specifically the sea lions, and never did. Mission finally accomplished!)

But none of that is the reason why I went there.

If you know me or have been reading this blog for awhile, you know of my love for and obsession with Les Miserables (and if you’re new, here’s my 3,500-word explanation of why I love it so much), so of course I had to go see it when I heard it was going back on Broadway. And I got even more excited when I heard how amazing Ramin Karimloo, who plays Jean Valjean, is. Listen to him here, singing “Bring Him Home” on Katie Couric’s show.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeWIV1cFohs]

So on Friday (the 20th), I took the bus down and went to see the show. And Oh. My. God.

I’ve seen Les Mis in Boston a few times, but this was the first time I’d seen it on Broadway. I can say definitively that this was the best production I’ve ever seen, and unquestionably the best portrayal of Valjean. Ramin’s rendition of “Bring Him Home” brought me to tears—and that’s not even my favorite song from Les Mis! I thought that performance on Katie was good, but multiply that times a zillion awesomes and that’s how he sounded in person. I’ve never heard an audience applaud that long after a song not at the end of an act. And of course I was crying again a bit later during the finale. The cast was just wonderful—Caissie Levy, who played Fantine, was particularly impressive. Immediately, I went into my “Les Mis high,” a phenomenon affecting…well, just me, that will put me into an incredibly good mood for about a week after seeing Les Mis onstage. I talked about this a bit in this post, but while I don’t really like concerts and have never gotten the high from live music that so many people seem to, I do get that from musical theater, and that high is much stronger from Les Mis than from any other show.

I wanted to meet the cast at the stage door afterwards, but I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t until Sunday that I read online that at this theater, the entrance is on 45th street but the stage door is on 46thstreet. So on Sunday, I grabbed my program and went back to the stage door after the matinee show. I met most of the cast and got their autographs and it was AWESOME! I also got a teeny glimpse of Idina Menzel, aka the wickedly talented Adele Dazeem, since the If/Then stage door was right next door.

Then came the moment  I’d been waiting for—Ramin came out and signed my autograph and I told him how incredible he was. Then I asked if I could take a picture with him and he took this one of us.

HOT VALJEAN HAS TOUCHED MY PHONE, YOU GUYS.

The whole trip was fun, but man…this musical.

Sometimes it’s nice to have things to obsess over. It makes me feel alive to have so much passion about something, and my love for this show is now over ten years old. I love it even more now than I did back then, and I hope that never changes.

Things I Loved This Year

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I’ll do another post about the events of last year, and I’m going to do some more substantial posts later on books, movies, and TV, at least, but I wanted to do this post on some of the things that I enjoyed the most this year. Without further ado:

Books

October was my book month. Two books I’d been anticipating for a long time were published that month—Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Halfbook and The Disaster Artist, a book about the making of The Room by Greg Sestero, who played Mark. I also attended the Boston Book Festival, where I had conversations with J. Courtney Sullivan, Tom Perrotta, and Hallie Ephron. I read many other wonderful books throughout the year, and I’ll blog about them more in a future entry, but some highlights include John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Judy Blundell’s What I Saw and How I Lied, J. Courtney Sullivan’s The Engagements, Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette, and Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.

Movies

The best movie I saw for the first time this year actually came out twenty years ago—Schindler’s List. I don’t know how I made it to this year without ever having seen this movie. And…wow. I have such a hard time talking about this movie because I’m not sure I can in a way that does it justice. It completely deserves the reputation it has—I will say that. And the very end has me in tears every time. (I’ve seen it quite a few times since I first saw it in August, most recently last night at Erin’s. Yep, our super-fun movie night was with a three-hour movie about the Holocaust.) It also motivated me to learn more about the real story behind it, so I’ve now read several books about Oscar Schindler and the Jews on the list- so many that I could tell where writers got their sources from. And there’s so much more I want to say about this movie that I’m not sure how to say, but just know that it profoundly affected me.

Future entry coming about the movies that actually came out in 2013.

TV

The two TV shows I caught up with this year that I loved the most could not be more opposite. Parks and Recreation is this happy, upbeat show about nice people doing good things. Breaking Bad is a dark, tense show about an increasingly evil guy doing increasingly terrible things. They’re at opposite ends of this TV mood scale, but I loved them both so much- Parks and Rec because it’s funny and sweet and I enjoy all the characters, Breaking Bad because it’s incredibly well-written and acted and basically a masterpiece. (Yes, I’ve seen this clip.)

I also started watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report regularly for the first time. The week of the marathon bombing, I desperately needed something to make me laugh. Previously, I’d only watched these shows sporadically, but after that week I put them both on my DVR. They keep me sane.

Music

I didn’t listen to much new music this year. I did listen to a LOT of U2. I’ve always liked them, but over the summer I started listening to them kind of obsessively and discovered some songs I hadn’t heard before or re-discovered songs I hadn’t listened to enough. As for new music, I enjoyed Sara Bareilles’s The Blessed Unrest, especially her song “I Choose You.”

Theater

Aside from the very welcome news that Les Miserables is coming back to Broadway next year, there was a lot of good theater in my life this year. I traveled to New York to see Lucky Guy on Broadway, which was wonderful and moving and…there’s so much I could say about it and maybe I will in a future post. I saw Wicked for the second time. I saw a local production of Les Mis. I also saw a great play in the fall called The Power of Duff.

Technology

Two devices have massively improved my life this year. I bought a Roku, allowing me to stream Netflix and Hulu on my TV, and it’s been fantastic. (Future post about everything I’ve been watching via Roku.) I also finally caved and got my first smartphone, which was a good decision. I’d always been afraid I’d end up spending too much time online if I had the Internet on my phone, but that hasn’t really happened. Plus, now I know when the bus is coming.

Celebrities

My two biggest celebrity crushes this year are both guys on AMC shows- Jon Hamm and Aaron Paul. It’s kind of interesting- with guys in real life, I’ve never been attracted to good-looking jerks, and I realized this year that even with celebrities, there’s a personality element present with everyone I like. Jon Hamm, I am convinced, is a perfect human being. I could look at him all day, and I think it’s a travesty that he doesn’t have an Emmy yet. But even if, for some strange reason, you’re not into his looks or his acting, you have to love him after this. And this. And this.

Aaron Paul (who does have two well-deserved Emmys), is possibly the most adorable person on the planet. I love him on Breaking Bad, where he played one of my favorite TV characters of all time, but he seems like such a sweet person, too. Read this. And this. And watch this clip of him on The Price Is Right before he was famous, because it’s hilarious. And look at his Twitter and his Instagram, from which I have learned that he really loves his wife and he really loves pizza.

Food
When Pigs Fly bread is the best kind of bread, and it’s awesome when you toast it and spread avocado on it.

Remember that if you take nothing else away from this post.

Happy New Year, all!

Song of the Moment: “Who Am I?”

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(Yeah, yeah, Les Mis again. For those of you reading this on Google Reader, pop over to my blog—I’ve actually started an “obsessing over Les Mis” tag.)

I think most popular musicals have one underrated song—the one that, when you first hear it, makes you wonder why you haven’t heard it before. For Wicked, it’s “The Wizard and I.” For Rent, it’s “Santa Fe.” And for Les Mis, it’s “Who Am I?”

This song comes at a point in the musical where Jean Valjean has learned that another man has been arrested and brought to court for his own crimes. In the song, he ponders what to do—should he say nothing, condemning an innocent man but also ensuring that the lives of the workers in the factory he oversees are not upset and that he will be able to care for Fantine’s daughter when she dies? Or should he go to court to set the man free, remembering the lesson he was taught years ago that set him on the path to reforming his life?

I love this song because it succinctly captures a moral dilemma without sacrificing the complexity of it. Valjean struggles with his identity—is he the mayor and factory owner responsible for the employment of many workers, or is he still the convict with the prison number 24601? Is he someone who can abandon those who depend on him? Is he someone who can let an innocent man suffer for his own crimes? Is he still the man he became after making the promise to the bishop years ago? Is he someone who can face the consequences of whatever decision he makes?

I wish I could find a good YouTube clip of the staging of this song. It starts out with Jean Valjean singing alone on a dark stage, and as it crecendos into the line, “Who am I? I’m Jean Valjean!” the courtroom where the innocent man is on trial appears behind him. When he gets to the last line, “Who am I? 2-4-6-0-1!”* he reveals his prison tattoo. But the brilliant Colm Wilkinson’s version here, at the 10th anniversary concert, is excellent.

IS IT CHRISTMAS DAY YET? AAAAAHHHH!!!!!

*Incidentally, these were the first words I ever wrote on this blog.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPIos2mXbUE]

And Now For Something Completely Different

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I love to sing. Love. To. Sing. It makes me happy like nothing else does. It relieves stress like nothing else does. Case in point: we had a shortened chorus rehearsal on Election Night, and the one-hour break in which I sang Vivaldi’s Gloria rather than watch election coverage was much needed and much welcome.

I love singing in the chorus that I’ve been with since 2008. I love singing karaoke with my friends. When I had a car, I loved singing along with the radio. Now, when I’m home alone, I love singing at the top of my lungs. When my roommate was away for the weekend, I spent the whole weekend singing “All That Jazz,” and “Defying Gravity” and the entirety of Les Mis for Juno’s entertainment.

Yes, this is how cool I am. I SING SHOW TUNES TO A DOG.* Although, I don’t think Juno minds- she’d probably sing herself if she could. My roommate and I are pretty sure that if Juno, who has very high self-esteem, could talk, she’d be singing a song that goes something like, “I’m the cutest! I’m the cutest! I’m the cutest!” (It’s not a very complicated song because she’s not a very complicated dog.)

In this period of gratitude, I felt like I should write about this because it really is something that has consistently brought me great joy. I’m not so sure if this will bring anyone else joy, but if you’ve ever wondered what my singing voice sounds like outside of KROD, here’s me singing “Back to Before” from Ragtime, a lovely song that I included on my “Sad Broadway” playlist. I am definitely not Marin Mazzie or Christiane Noll, and it’s a crappy recording that I did on my computer, but if you want to hear me, listen away. (And if you want to hear me and are reading this in Google Reader, open up my actual blog to hear it.)

*I also sing “The Juno Song,” which is to the tune of “Voicemail #5” from Rent and goes something like, “Juno/You are a puppy/Juno, I love you/You are so cute.” Oh, God, I’m going to regret revealing exactly how weird I am, am I not?

Playlist of the Moment: Sad Broadway

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Only three months and about five days until Les Mis! Have you gotten the picture yet about how excited I am for this movie?

 

Les Mis is a wonderful musical—but not, by any means, a comedy. Except for “Master of the House,” most of its songs are incredibly sad. But I was just thinking about it and realized that a lot of my favorite show tunes are the sad ones. So I decided to make a playlist of the best sad songs from musical theater, bookended with two of my favorite songs from Les Mis. Because sometimes, you just need a bit of “Wasn’t it good? Wasn’t he fine? Isn’t it madness he can’t be mine?” or “There’s a girl I know. He loves her so. I’m not that girl.” Enjoy!

Sad Broadway

1.       “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables

2.       “I Know Him So Well” from Chess

3.       “You Must Love Me” from Evita

4.       “The Last Night of the World” from Miss Saigon

5.       “Aldonza” from Man of La Mancha

6.       “Somewhere” from West Side Story

7.       “How Could I Ever Know” from The Secret Garden

8.       “I’m Not That Girl” from Wicked

9.       “Where Is Love” from Oliver!

10.   “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” from My Fair Lady

11.   “Without You” from Rent

12.   “It Might As Well Be Spring” from State Fair

13.   “Hopelessly Devoted to You” from Grease

14.   “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” from The Phantom of the Opera

15.   “Memory” from Cats

16.   “I Still Believe” from Miss Saigon

17.   “Send In the Clowns” from A Little Night Music

18.   “As Long As He Needs Me” from Oliver!

19.   “Back to Before” from Ragtime

20.   “On My Own” from Les Miserables

I Went to the Statue of Liberty in Pajamas

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So, remember my trip to New York last August that got aborted by Hurricane Irene? Over Memorial Day, I decided to attempt the trip again. And this time, things went much more smoothly! No hurricanes or tropical storms, although there was a bit of rain that prevented me from doing a couple of things I’d wanted to do (didn’t get to go to Coney Island). But for the most part, it was a great trip. Here are some of the highlights from it:

  • I got tickets for Mary Poppins at the Times Square ticket booth and ended up with second-row seats for 40% off! The show was great, too. Mary Poppins was like the movie of my childhood, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it—years later, my mom told me that she was so happy my sister and I liked it because it’s long for a kids’ movie, and whenever she and my dad wanted a break, they’d put on Mary Poppins. The plot was a lot different from the movie, and only about half the songs came from the movie, but it was pretty awesome. The “Step in Time” scene, which is my favorite in the movie, was awesome on stage, too—Bert even dances on the ceiling at one point!

  • I wandered around Fort Greene in Brooklyn and found the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument, which had made an appearance on Ghostwriter, as well as the street corner where the bodega used to be!

 

 

  • I went to Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

 

  • I bought some pink and purple M&Ms at M&M World and looked around the Disney Store and FAO Schwarz (because, at heart, I’m five years old).

 

  • I had some great pizza, bagels, garlic knots, and desserts.

 

  • I went to the Museum of Natural History, where I went to the planetarium and saw the dinosaurs (I know there are plenty of other things in the museum, but again, I’m five).

 
  • I hung out in Central Park for awhile, reading a book on the grass.

All in all, a very fun trip! But of course, I wouldn’t be me if there wasn’t an awkward moment in there.

On the second day of the trip, I had tickets to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and the boat left at 9:00AM. When I’d left the day before, I’d been wearing a nice dress I’d gotten for my cousin’s wedding last year—I know you don’t have to get dressed up for the theater, but I like to. I’d planned on wearing jeans when going to the Statue.

Except—oops. I’d forgotten to pack the jeans, and I hadn’t brought any other pants. I looked frantically through my bag, but no sign of them. Crap, I thought. It’s only eight in the morning and I have to be on the boat at nine—where can I get something to wear at this time of day? I don’t want to wear this dress and get it dirty!

I looked online to try to figure out if there were any clothing stores in the immediate area that were open, but no luck. So, wearing the shirt I’d planned on wearing that day, pajama pants, and sandals, I headed down to the lobby of Hotel 17. I explained the situation to the guy at the front desk and asked if there were any clothing stores near the hotel that were already open. He didn’t know of any. “Why don’t you just wear what you’re wearing?” he asked.

I glanced down at my navy-blue pants with lighter blue fish printed on them. “They’re pajama pants.”

He shook his head. “Yeah, sorry,” he said. “That’s never happened to me!”

Well, of course it hasn’t. YOU’RE A GUY. Most of you people wear pants every day!

I checked a couple of Duane Reades on the off chance that they sold shorts or something, but no luck. I didn’t want to miss the boat, so…I got on the subway and left.

And that is how I ended up at the Statue of Liberty in my pajamas.

Wicked Awesome

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I don’t go to many concerts. Haven’t paid for a concert ticket since 2006, in fact. I love music, but I tend not to get too obsessed with particular artists, so there aren’t that many concerts I would pay money for. Some, I think, are worth it; most aren’t. You often have to stand, if it’s at someplace like the Paradise, and have to suffer through one or two crappy opening acts. You fret over whether you should sing or dance along with the music, especially if you don’t know all the words by heart, and you glance around to see what other people are doing. You often can’t see very well, your ears are ringing when the concert is over, and half the time, you end up thinking that the artist sounds better on the CD. Or at least I do. It’s not the case for a lot of people, I know. Some people get an incredible natural high off of live music. They’re excited months in advance for a concert by an artist they love. They go to random concerts by artists they’re not familiar with just for the thrill of live music. They post on Facebook about how a certain (indie rock, of course) band opened their hearts and filled them, in those exact words. And while I kind of roll my eyes at that, I’m jealous of those people, too. I love listening to music, but I don’t get the huge spiritual boost from live music that some people seem to. I can’t accurately claim, either, that any music has ever changed my life or had a huge impact on me. It just doesn’t have the same effect on me.

It’s the same with religion. I’ve talked about my religious beliefs a bit here. While I do find religion comforting and benevolent, I’ve never had the kind of mind-blowing religious experience that some people talk about. I’ve read people’s writings about how religion—everything from Christianity to Buddhism to Islam to Orthodox Judaism to the Baha’i faith—changed their lives, gave them unspeakable joy, gave them whole new ways of looking at things. When people credit their faith for getting them through a tragedy or difficult life circumstance, or for giving them the strength to overcome addiction or some kind of self-destructive behavior, I marvel at the thought that religion could have that much power. While I respect religious beliefs and have my own, I’m not affected by religion to that degree.

Then there’s yoga, which I’ve gotten more into in the last year. I enjoy it, it’s shown me a better way to breathe, and I do feel a bit more relaxed after shavasana, at least more so than I would after any other form of exercise. (Some people say running gives them a great natural high, but although I run a lot myself, I can say with complete certainty that I have never felt that at all.) But my feelings on yoga are pretty similar to Sarah Bunting’s, who says “the taking of yoga so very, very seriously mystifies me.” When people say that yoga is life-changing, I have a hard time figuring out why. It’s not that relaxing. I was even at a party once where a girl said, completely seriously, “The world would be a better place if everyone did yoga.” That’s not just eye-rolling but seriously obnoxious—it’s like saying “The world would be a better place if everyone found Jesus.”

All of this does have a point, which I’m getting to. Last week, I went with a group of friends to see Wicked at the Opera House. I hadn’t seen a musical live in a long time, and I had almost forgotten what good musical theater does to me. I’ve seen Les Miserables twice, and both times, it put me in a good mood for the next week. But although I knew a couple of songs from Wicked and had read the (very different) Gregory Maguire book that it’s based on, I’d never seen Wicked before.

And holy shit. I started tearing up at least three times during the play. The storyline, which was a lot different from the book, was touching and surprising and occasionally funny. I’ve wanted to burst out singing all the songs since I saw them. I don’t often feel like music is “speaking” to me (and it would probably make me roll my eyes again if I heard someone said that), but there are a couple of songs in Wicked that I feel like I could sing about my own life. And this scene here? GOOSEBUMPS. Even more amazing in person.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAuWRE7FMf8]

I’m not a cynical person. I’m generally pretty positive and there’s a lot that I love. So I’m glad to know that even if I remain indifferent to live music, religion, yoga, etc., there is still something out there that I can find sublime, something can move me beyond the usual limits of my emotions.