New York New York 4

November 9, 2014

Cold, sore throat, hardly able to speak to the desk clerk as we were struggling to print my boarding passes.  This must be a good place to work; everybody is humorous and happy.

Meeting for the Foundation in Park Slope. Interesting, but also very, very leisurely. People do like to hear themselves talk. Five hours and more had passed and we were still not quite finished when D and I had to make a run for it back to Manhattan. Interestingly, though there was wrangling about the merits of the other plays, the first prize winner was first on the list of every single one of us. Some mystical apparatus in play there. That part of Brooklyn seems quite liveable. I don’t know why I’m always picking out places in New York to live, as the time for me to do such a thing is long passed. I realize I have as much money as the Foundation, and could be giving out my own prizes. If I thought I was going to die timely, I would. Our Founder was a pornographer, and we find ourselves in the odd position of hoping, someday, to receive some classy pornography we can reward to honor his memory.

It’s Only a Play that evening, a romp with all the biggest stars of Broadway. When I went to the concierge of the Merriott to get tickets, I was told that it was sold out and a random ticket would be upwards of $350. I walked across the street to the box office and got a box seat for $145. In the theater, the people in the box above me had paid over $300, and had stories of people in the orchestra who’d forked over $600 per ticket. That is ludicrous under any circumstance, and especially so since McNally’s play is feeble. It is laugh-filled, on the very low level of expert delivery of theater gossip. The bit of plot it might have had, involving a critic who is also a playwright, is dropped mysteriously.  Everyone in New York is in-the-know concerning theater gossip. Nathan Lane hit every joke out of the park. Rupert Grint, late of the Harry Potter movies, was able and professional. I don’t know what I was expecting. F Murray Abraham was ill last night, and his understudy was punished by the audience by no special applause.  Stockard Channing did the only real acting, and yet the circumstances tempted her into more mudding than might have been necessary. It was one of those evening which LOOKED like it was fun, but was actually rather boring. I shared my box with a grandmother, daughter, and grandson. Grandma was vehemently disappointed, whereas I was only mildly disappointed. They were all the time wanting to share their candy with me.