I woke up around 6am on Saturday and Ash was up not too long after me. We took Zeus out to do his thing quickly and then came back up. “Letting the dog out” when you’re on the 32nd floor and it’s 30 degrees outside is a thing in and of itself.

We drank coffee at the apartment while I got the blog up and went out about 9am.

I find it nearly impossible to cross Times Square without taking a photo. We met up with my niece, Michelle, at the theater for Kimberly Akimbo to see if we could score rush tickets. We didn’t get in line soon enough: by the time we got there, there were only 3 tickets left and we needed 6. The question we all asked ourselves later but it didn’t really dawn on us at the time was why Ash and I didn’t just take 2 of them. It’s a mystery.

We walked over to Music Man – it was in the direction we needed to go anyway – just to see if there was an off chance we could score something there since it’s now a year in production. Nope. The line out there was ridiculous. We parted with Michelle knowing we’d see them for dinner and made our way back. They are staying at a hotel on 52nd St (to our 58th) so we are not that far apart.

We dropped Zeus off at the apartment and went around the corner to Sarabeth’s on 59th St AKA Central Park South.

While it is difficult to see in this photo, it’s snowing a little bit. Friday was warm – 53 when we landed and stayed there all day. Saturday it never got above 35 I don’t think, and there was a little snow throughout the day but nothing that stuck.

We didn’t have to wait too long at Sarabeth’s without a reservation and got a nice table.

I got scrambled eggs, bacon, chicken sausage, French toast; Ash had an omelet with salad, and we shared the peppered potatoes in the middle. It was good but not great in my opinion (especially for what we paid for it).

We went back to the apartment and I napped while Ash took Zeus out and picked up some dog food at the pet store over on 57th, other side of 7th Ave. Then we showered and made our way out to our matinee.

We won lottery tickets to Take Me Out. If you’re not familiar with the lottery in this context, some shows offer the option to win a chance to buy tickets at significantly reduced prices. It’s part of a movement that started with Rent in the mid-90s to allow access to people who might not otherwise get to go. Rush tickets essentially operate on the same concept. One of the differences between the two is that rush tickets are often really good, lottery tickets are typically great. As shown above: first row for $52. And we didn’t know that until we got to the box office, and we got our tickets. This photo was taken when we got home!

I hadn’t heard of Take Me Out until Ash entered us in the lottery for it, but the premise seemed interesting enough: drama erupts on a baseball team after the star player comes out as gay. It’s playing at the Schoenfeld on 45th St between 7th and 8th Aves.

And stars a couple of people you might recognize. The red head is Jesse Tyler Ferguson from Modern Family. He won a Tony for this role in 2022. To his left in the poster is Jesse Williams, who you might recognize from Grey’s Anatomy, but I had never heard of him. He was nominated for this role, too, as was Michael Oberholtzer, not shown in the poster. All 3 of those nominations were well deserved based on the performance we saw this afternoon. The show was also nominated for Best Revival and won that.

There’s a little bit of notoriety to the show because of the male nudity. Half or more of the play takes place in a locker room so the nudity is natural and, in some cases, significant to the storyline, but it’s not often you see 9 completely naked guys taking showers on stage. We of course wondered where the water went and determined this show wouldn’t travel well because of the engineering involved! Photos and videos of this show have also been leaked (you can Google “Jesse Williams nude leak” if you like) and they go to great lengths to minimize that: you have to lock your phone in a pouch that they have to unlock when you exit. And a little paper in the program again reminding you it’s prohibited, and letting you know there are audience-facing monitors to catch you, and to tell on your neighbors if you see them doing it!

All that aside, it’s been a long time since I was this mesmerized by a show and its performances. The drama is high with a couple of unexpected twists and was enthralling throughout. If you’re in the neighborhood and it’s still showing, we highly recommend.

After the show we made our way over to Becco on 46th St between 8th and 9th Aves where we met up with Michelle and her family. This is my 4th time as Becco and I was excited to share it with them. They were coming from their first seeing of Wicked and I was excited to hear what they thought about it. I waited a discrete few minutes before I asked and Michelle responded with something like “it was so overwhelming, I’m still processing all the emotions that came up” and I was like “that makes me so happy!” We all got so caught up in the food and conversation I forgot to take photos of them!

My default here is their all-you-can-eat 3 pastas special, which Michelle and the girls got. I went for their short ribs, a favorite of mine which you don’t often see on menus, so I typically get it when available. And very glad I got this; it was terrific.

Ash had the lemon chicken which he thought was just OK, but he was sharing some of it with Anaka and she liked it!

We parted after dinner and we made our way to our 2nd show of the day, after running back to the apartment to let Zeus out.

Leopoldstadt is playing at the Longacre on 48th St between 7th and 8th Aves. Ash really wanted to see this; since we’d failed to get anything on rush or lottery, we got these through TodayTix so discounted but not as much as I would have liked. At any rate, it’s a good story – 2 hours, no intermission – following a Jewish family from 1899 to 1955, all set in the same living room in Vienna. The playwright is Tom Stoppard. While not exactly autobiographical, Stoppard lost all 4 of his grandparents in the holocaust so the story is deeply personal to him. In the 5th and final act there are only 3 people – down from about 25 – with one of them going through the family tree stating how each one died, most of them as Auschwitz. The ending made it worth it as it was deeply moving, but it was slow and hard to follow at parts with so many characters and I didn’t think the performances were that great. Ash liked it more than I did.

We made it back to the apartment after 10:30pm. Poor Zeus was left locked in the bathroom for a good portion of the day and made it through like a champ with no accidents. Ash took him down one last time while I got the photos ready for this entry and had a little leftover cheesecake from the night before.

We don’t have any tickets yet for today so we will see what we end up with. Sundays there are typically just one show – a 3pm matinee – and we have plans to meet up with Michelle’s family again for dinner. I’ll try to remember to take more photos this time!

 

 

 

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