Hey there everyone! We’re back from NYC. Had a great time! Some highlights include:

Seeing our friend Chris Foster in her last week of single-hood, as she prepares for her marriage next week. Chris is a professional costumer/dresser, and right now works on the Broadway musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It was great seeing her again, she’s wonderful.

Seeing our friend Erin Dilly – Erin is an actor who some of you may have heard of, she was nominated for the Tony Award this year for Best Actress in a Musical for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. We saw the show, and hung out with her for a while afterward. She’s such a sweet, down to earth person! And what a singer!

Saw 3 Big Musicals;
Chitty… which was “Spectacle-tacular”! Wow, some wonderful voices, and the car is, as advertised, amazing; Hovers, flies, spins around and comes out over the first few rows of audience, a really cool thing that cost around 3 Million dollars! An adult show that’s also aimed at kids, the show did have a very effective use of perspective, several times we were treated to miniature versions of the full size things onstage, to give us a sense of distance or speed, and it was fun, funny and effective. Nice.

The Producers was a ton of fun. Although there were some groaner moments where it felt pushed, the show is designed to be big and over the top, so they kind of fit in. Roger Barton and Richard Kind were fun, the story is silly and the music fits! Roger Barton, who plays the creepy pharmacist on Desperate Housewives, was a nice surprise as Leo. Dance numbers were fun, silly, including a number done by “senior citizen widows” with their walkers. Fun.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was hilarious. Really fun, John Lithgow and Norbert Leo Butz are spectacular, as is Sherie Rene Scott. The musical is quite a bit more enjoyable than the movie it’s based on, the performances were wonderful, the music was enough for me to want the CD. This was my favorite of the trip. I loved that it also occasionally admitted that it was a show – moments/lines dropped in where the actors would say things like “Oh my God the whole thing turns!” as a turntable would spin the set around…that was very fun.

Other hightlights of the trip:
Seeing the Gay Pride parade, which was a treat. Parades are always fun, and seeing the LGBT community of NYC celebrate was quite entertaining!
Having a small little Bed-n-Breakfast right between the Theatre District and Central Park -easy access to everything we wanted!
Eating a ton of good food. Lord, my diet/running regimen needs to be re-activated.
Going to the Mets game. Even though they lost, it was nice to see Shea!
Walking thru the city in a big rainstorm was a ton of fun. (really!)

Annoyingly, Northwest Airlines called at 8:30 Wednesday night to say our 6am flight home had been CANCELLED because of weather, and they had booked us on a flight on Friday. Well, after several phone calls and adjustments, they put us on a flight out at 4:30 Thursday. We had to go to Newark to fly out, and get a connecting flight in Cleveland (ugh), but staying ’til Friday would’ve been difficult because of kids, schedules, money, etc…

SO-that sums up the trip. There’s more, but it’ll wait. We had fun, and now we’re back. I didn’t get to see any of the Off-Broadway, or Off-Off, or straight shows I wanted to see…next time…

Now, into cleaning up the messes from leaving real life for a week!