New York 3

May 15, 2008

Overcast dawn. People talk about how big everything is in New York, but it would also be possible to talk about how small the actual living space is. I watch workers hauling immense loads into tiny fright elevators, people turning on dimes in their own apartments. The Comfort Inn where I’m staying is a narrow slab twenty stories high with room for only four rooms on each floor.

Tremendous walking yesterday. I hiked up to West 64th and Lincoln Center in order to find Owen’s mother at her photo cart, but she was not there. NYU’s commencement ceremony filled the courtyard with purple. I lounged at Columbus Circle, thinking how wonderful it was to be in New York City lounging in the sun on Columbus Circle waiting to see your own play in the evening. Bought a cat painting from a cart vendor. I do like the look of New Yorkers, the language of their bodies, the private selves revealed on the streets because of the lack of private space elsewhere, for the reason already mentioned. I went to MOMA, where a few of the works were impressive and most weren’t. Much hanging of mirrors and ejecting of mist in ways that made interesting patterns in harsh, focused light. One corridor with hard yellow light shows you what you would look like if you were in black and white. I like going to MOMA because I’ve a membership card and they whisk me past the door and the impressive lines. Wrote a poem in the café while eating, essentially, a dish of leaves. Watched workers with their shirts off cavorting–it was lunchtime after all–on the elaborate roofs of 53rd Street.

I’ve almost stopped looking for Susan. There was never a good chance that I’d run into her on the street, but I still looked. Now she’d be an old lady and I would look right past her, maybe.

Dozed some, had very odd tuna at a restaurant down the street, showered and went to the theater. Bruce looked right past me in the elevator. I was out of context. Everyone–especially Sidney–kept warning me that it was a preview, essentially a dress rehearsal, as they’d never done a run-through with tech. All that considered, it was very well indeed. The decision to use British accents dismayed me a little, partially because I didn’t think Brian’s thick Cockney was finding its way into the ear. But, he was getting laughs, and all the accents settled into refined East Coast American before the night was over. The set is gorgeous, elaborate where it needs to be, cold and austere where it needs to be. It’s a little massive, and the men-in-black can be seen grunting and straining onstage trying to move it, but that may be part of its charm. The sound effects were too loud and the actors too soft, but I trust they heard that themselves. The lines that were dropped might have added ten minutes to the play, but that is, God willing, something only a playwright would hear. So, bla bla bla from a guy who never imagined as a kid that his work would be produced in New York City. Well, he did actually, but–. Cell phones went off twice during the first act. The second time the offending party decided to pretend it wasn’t his, and the ring cycle went to its bitter and dialog-annihilating end. Perhaps others were not as infuriated by it as I, though Bruce was spinning in the next seat, glaring into the room as though to set the offender afire with his X-ray eyes. Some of the performance, dress rehearsal or not, was stellar. Megan was absolutely on, all fire and hidden evil, with that supple and expressive voice of hers. JoAnne as the bishop had grown the most since last year. She was every bit as perverse as the role demands, and her interpretation added a Tudor bottom that was exactly what was needed. Patrick was perfect. Chad was clearly in a rehearsal trying new things, and that was well. All was well, and the show could go as it was, though I expect opening night will be that many times more remarkable.

Praise was high and universal– at least universal among those who spoke to me at all, though one man couldn’t find his way around the fact that a Medieval king should be using cell phones and computers. "It’s set in modern London," says I. "But, this sort of thing could never happen nowadays," says he. I allowed as how it could not. One man who had seen a couple of the Edward II’s which seemed to be in fashion this season said, "You’re way better than that Marlowe. I mean, what’s with him? And he’s supposed to be a big deal, isn’t he?" I said, "Yes he is."

I was sad that no one invited me with them to party after the performance. Perhaps I should have invited myself, or perhaps everyone went home to lick such wounds as they might have imagined they had. I was in the mood to be garrulous and bubbly, but that will have to keep till opening night, tonight. I needed beer. I almost never need beer. I wandered downtown and hit a couple of mustang bars–Mustang Harry, Mustang Sally–and an Irish bar I forget the name of, where I met Roberto, a Brazilian sent here by his father to learn English. Whoever was teaching him should give the money back. But it was all right; he expressed himself well enough to carry on a discourse about the relative merits of Brittney Spears and Whitney Houston. He thought he was in an Italian bar, a mistake which seemed to center on his inability to tell orange (in the many Irish flags hanging from the wall) and red (in the Italian flag) unless it was pointed out to him. The shamrocks and the pots of gold on the mirrors meant nothing to him. He assumed I was Irish–how else would I know all that?–and I let him. I showed him the program for Edward, and what he seized on was that it was a gay event, and instantly he invited me to his place, and I might have gone, except that it was on Long Island, which he pronounced with the hard "g" of Long Islanders. There was a guess-the-age contest in the bar, led by the gorgeous bartended, and my age was guessed at 37. The light was very flattering. Nevertheless, I walked back up 7th Avenue valuing that as the triumph of the night.

But tonight belongs to Edward. People assume it is going to Broadway and ask me when it will open there. I assume no such thing, and cringe, lest the jealous gods be listening. I have some of the best actors in New York. The idea that Edward might take them somewhere they want to go is sweet to me.