Birthday Celebration in New York

On Thursday we travelled to New York for the day to celebrate Terri’s birthday. We wanted to see the 9/11 memorial, spend some time with Billy, visit a film or TV set, and see a show on Broadway.

The South pool.

The memorial was worth the visit. As I’ve written before, the events of 9/11/01 had a tremendous and lasting effect on my life. I feel a very personal connection to that site and the people who died that day. It was quite a moment to see the memorial. The pools are a nice tribute and the story of the survivor tree is really something.

Becky and I at the survivor tree.

Becky and Terri in front of the South pool with the survivor tree in the background.

We didn’t have tickets for a show, so we wanted to see about getting tickets at the tckts booth. Since our 9/11 memorial slot was late, we knew we would be late getting in line. We arrived at about 2:40 and I would say there were at least 200 people in front of us in the musical line. We had a list of musicals we wanted to see in no particular order except we knew that Terri’s preference was to see Porgy and Bess. About two minutes before the booth opened, the line started to move. Almost immediately, one of the security staff noticed Becky walking on her crutches, and came to tell us that we didn’t have to wait in line. We weren’t sure whether he was just one of those pitchmen posted around the area to try and talk you out of line and down the street for off broadway plays. Without discussing it, Becky and I both saw his security jacket, compared them to others in the area, and also assumed the nice people in line in front of us would let us back in if we made a mistake. So, we followed him. He took us to another security person, who transferred us to another, who took us to near the front of the line where there were only two people in front of us ( the line is split into seven different lines at this point, so theoretically there might still be 14 people in front of us – but that’s still better than 200 ).

Just got our tickets.

We got tickets in the fourth row for the show at 40% off and we were out of line, sitting at a table in Times Square only nine minutes after the booth opened. It was awesome.

Dr. Who in New York

Then we met up with Billy, ate a horrible lunch at the Roxy Deli (worse than we expected, which is saying a lot because I didn’t expect much from this kind of tourist trap), then went to see the set of Dr. Who. Terri is a huge fan, so to have a show from Britain shooting in NYC on her birthday was quite a nice surprise. We hoped to see the Tardis more than anything, but it wasn’t to be. It was a blast to be a part with all the hard core fans hanging out. One of the best parts of the day, for sure.

Terri and Becky in the theatre.

The show was fantastic too. Porgy and Bess is “musicalized” version of The Gershwins’ original opera. There has been some discussion of the addition of dialogue and songs, changes to the score, changes to Porgy’s character, and replacement of some recitative being replaced with dialogue, but the show was approved by the Gershwin estate and it was fantastic, if you ask me. It did feel like it had been stripped from a longer story, but it worked, nonetheless. I thought all of the musical performances were stellar, the dancing was fun, and the acting was superb. I can see now why Audra McDonald is nominated for a Tony in every one of her performances. Her voice is fantastic, and her acting in this show was as good as any acting I’ve ever seen. We understood the dangers she faced because of the way she acted, and we didn’t need to be told what was going on all the time.

Norm Lewis’ performance as Porgy was also amazing. His voice is perfect and I would not have been surprised to learn that he was really crippled (you know, if I didn’t know that a man his age would most certainly have at least had the appearance of the leg “fixed”).

I was also very impressed with several other characters, most notably Carla (Nikki Renee Daniels) and Jake (Joshua Henry). They opened the show with Summertime and continued to sing and dance beautifully through the whole show. David Alan Grier was excellent as Sportin’ Life, and Philip Boykin turned in a fantastic first Broadway appearance as Crown, a character we all hated so much we booed him during the curtain call – to which he curtsied.

In addition to seeing a great show, we also had the treat to see one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. After the show ended with a standing ovation for two curtain calls, Ms. McDonald wanted to say a few words. Most of the audience sat down, while a few left because they assumed they knew what was coming. She told us about a fund raising effort underway for Aids research and told us how we could give that night or later online. Then she mentioned a man in the audience who had contributed online ( “like we could do too” she added ) “such an incredible amount” that she wanted to know if he would come up on stage and say a few words.

He and another man both made their way onstage as Ms. McDonald explained that his organization also donated to many other causes, etc. When they both arrived center stage, she asked him a question about the donation. He completely ignored her (as I’m sure was planned), took the hand of the other man, and started telling him how much he loved him. He stopped briefly to ask the other guy if he was alright – He responded by shaking his head no – and then continued by pulling a ring from his pocket and dropping to one knew to ask him to marry him.

The place erupted in applause.

The other guy said Yes.