New York: Adventures in the Snow, Day 3

We awoke Sunday morning to a  Holiday Winter Wonderland in New York.  It was both snowy beautiful and functioning-a rare combination for this southern boy!

Nothing stops New York or New Yorkers and 12 inches of snow was, at most, a minor inconvenience.   Road crews had cleared the roads, sidewalks had been scraped, trains were running and all was right with the world.

We walked up to the Riviera, a restaurant that has been in Greenwich Village since the Dutch ruled New York.  Or so it seems.  Still, we love the Riviera–especially for their Sunday Brunch where you can get Eggs Benedict or other choices plus hot tea/coffee AND a Mimosa or Bloody Mary all for $11.95.

We left there and took the train uptown to see midtown after the snow.  We wandered around Rockefeller Center, 5th Avenue and Times Square before heading down to 48th Street and the Walter Kerr Theatre to see “A Little Night Music.”

I loved “A Little Night Music”.  Period.  It was exquisite.  A mature character driven musical, where the songs both moved the story and revealed character.  The score is all in a waltz tempo and that proves waltzes can be ironic, haunting, sharp and many more things than one associates with Strauss.

Some of the criticism of this production was that the set was not elaborate.  That did not bother me.  On stage, I’ve seen falling chandeliers, helicopters  on stage, barricades and jeeps.  Sometimes these sets were very effective.  Sometimes it becomes all about using the set to hide flaws in the production or show.  In this case, I think the set worked perfectly and helped keep the focus on the characters.

I’m not always fond of Sondheim, but I’ve been intrigued by “A Little Night Music” since reading about the original Broadway production 30 some years ago when I was a small child in that horrible little town in Virginia where I grew up.  This show is from the Sondheim period of “Company” and “Follies” and is the period of his work I enjoy– before he became too esoteric and experimental- and some would say pretentious.

Catherine Zeta Jones was wonderful.  You could tell she had been a London stage actress prior to making her name in films.  She was incredibly beautiful, had great stage presence and gave a performance that was earthy, ironic, comic, sad, hopeful and simply wonderful.  Her delivery of “Send in the Clowns” is perfection- sung as a character song, not as a showstopper.

What can you say about Angela Lansbury?  She was delicious as Madame Armfeldt.  I see Tony number six come May.

Alexander Hanson and the rest of the cast was equally superb.  If you are looking for a melodic, mature musical for adults, I can’t recommend this show more highly.

After the show we headed back to the hotel at Washington Square.  It was too bloody cold for anything else.

We thought we would get up on Monday to catch a film, lunch and fly home.  Little did we know…

More to come….