The ACL revival

I know this isn't about Baltimore, but I was in NYC this weekend. We didn't plan in advance to go and see a show... the strike just ended a week or two ago, so it wasn't like we could've made reservations ahead of time. At any rate, as soon as we got off the bus around 11 am in front of the Winter Garden Theatre (Mamma Mia), we headed over to the TKTS booth to see what was going on. The bus driver told us that because of the strike, he had heard that they weren't offering tickets 50% off, and we'd be lucky to get 10 or 20% discounts. Much to our surprise, however, we found a list 3 screens long of tickets to matinees all 50% off. Stephen said I could pick whatever I wanted to see. I started to make my list(for which I'm sure I'll be judged): Spring Awakening, Avenue Q, A Chorus Line... and then I saw it at the very end of the last screen... XANADU! I started jumping up and down and screaming like that announcer dude on The Price is Right had just called my name and said "COME ON DOOOOOOWN!" Stephen even agreed that the tongue-in-cheek roller disco romp was a good choice since it was something like 70 minutes with no intermission, so we could get in and out and still cram lots of stuff in our short day in the city.

We stood in the long but quickly-moving line and got to the window within 45 minutes. When we got there, we were informed (by the super rude woman behind the window) that there were three tickets to Xanadu, but we couldn't sit together. We went to the second choice of A Chorus Line and got mezzanine seats for $45 + tax. Despite the fact that I'm a singer before anything else and the original Bway cast recording is horrendous because they're all dancers before anything else, I've been obsessed with ACL for awhile, so I was super stoked.

We ate at Playwright's Tavern and got out just in time to run the few blocks back to the theatre to get seated. In keeping tradition with his totally charmed life, 6'5" Stephen complained to an usher that he couldn't sit in the [way-more-cramped-than-the-Hippodrome] seats and asked if he could move to an unoccupied end seat in an adjacent row. She told him no, but then let him sit in an unoccupied box by himself so he could lounge to his heart's content (can you imagine... paying $45 for a $200+ seat?!). The show was everything I expected and more. There were three understudies on. I can't remember which ones were. Everyone was amazing, though. And the singing was so TOTALLY on point. And I got to see Deidre Goodwin ("And then he ran into my knife: he ran into my knife TEN times" from the film adaptation of Chicago) as Sheila, on whom I have a small woman-to-woman crush.

Overall, the Broadway experience this go-around was quite enjoyable. If only the Chinatown experience that night had the same outcome....