An Unexpected Trip to New York (Part II)

Photo by RightMoon Photography (ie Melissa's Left Hand)

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In the previous post about my unexpected election night in New York, I did not explain how it was that I was able to be there. So here is the story. After our week in Miami we were supposed to go to Statesboro, Georgia for one night. Then we were going to continue making the trip up to Waterbury, Connecticut for a five show weekend. Well since the loading in and out of the set was taking so long, it became obvious that we were not going to be able to do a one nighter. So the powers that be postponed Statesboro until the Spring, and flew us up to New York on Tuesday after our Miami week. Then we had 3 free days until Friday when we needed to be in Waterbury. That is how I came to have my unexpected, but greatly appreciated, trip to New York.

I have been to New York many times, for many different reasons, and at most times of year. The big exception to that is Christmas time. I have always wanted to be in New York during the holidays. The Christmas decorations, the cheesy holiday shows, the shopping, walking in the city when it snows. I try my best to experience these every year in Chicago, but never New York until now.

So we were in New York during the first week of November, which is not technically part of the holiday season, but it was close. Some places such as Radio City Music Hall had their decorations up. The Radio City Christmas Spectacular had not started yet, but one of the other big holiday shows had. Starting last year, Cirque du Soleil created an annual winter themed show called Wintuk that plays at the Wamu Theatre in Madison Square Garden. I have seen two other Cirque shows, O and La Nouba, and loved both of them. Wintuk is about a boy who lives in a city with no snow, so he goes on a quest to the land of snow to find some. It sounded like my life story.

So Brian shared his discount code for Wintuk, and we went to see it on Wednesday night. Sadly the show was a bit disappointing. The first half of the show is not so great. I know that they are trying to make the show kid friendly, but skateboarding tricks and jump roping do not really seem like they belong in a Cirque du Soleil show. Bring on the winter contortionists! The second half was much better and the acts were much more spectacular especially the Russian bars act. And speaking of spectacular, the show ends with the most crazy "snow" effect ever. They blow so many little tissue snow flakes on the audience that it really feels like a white out blizzard. I pity the poor front of house staff that then has to sweep up all the paper snow (especially on a day that it rains like the day I was there!)





Of course I did not see only one show. That would just be silly! Because of the terrible economy, several shows have posted their closing notices for January. So I decided to catch the shows that I wanted to see before they close. I ended up seeing Forbidden Broadway and Spring Awakening. Forbidden Broadway was funny as ever, and it is sad to see the show go away. Spring Awakening was an unexpected surprise to me the first time that I saw it. I never imagined that I would enjoy the show as much as I did. They just recently brought on Hunter Parrish to play Melchior, the male lead, and since I saw the two previous Melchiors I thought it would be fun to see Hunter also. He was very good although Jonathon Groff, the original, was still probably my favorite. Incidentally Kyle Riabko by far had the best butt of the three so all three brought something worthwile to the role. I also saw an Off-Broadway show called Illyria because Max from The Wedding Singer was playing reeds for the show.

On Thursday, Melissa was free (due to a beautiful thing called day care!) so Brian and I met up with her for lunch. After all of these years, it still feels like an event when I get to New York and see my college friends, and I hope that it always stays that way! Oh and speaking of events, since there are so many Wedding Singer alums on the Wizard tour, we planned a reunion for Wednesday night with those Wedding Singer folk who are currently in NYC. All things considered, there were quite a few of us there (at least 14), and even without our tight rolled pants and wrist bands we were still able to have a good time!

Needless to say after cramming all of that into just three days, I was ready to get back to touring so that I could relax!