What we didn’t expect was the emotion. Alice Ripley, who won a Tony for her starring role, turns on the waterworks several times in the show. Our seats were so close that we could see that the tears (and her ankle tattoo) were real. My wife was blubbering along most of the time. At one critical point in the show a prop gets smashed. A piece of it flew into my shoulder and I saved it as a souvenir.
She pretty much got her wish. The play is ninety minutes long without an intermission and the only props are two chairs. The two actors never leave the stage and give a Rashomon-like recounting of a series of increasingly brutal events that make Training Day seem like a episode of Adam-12. The two motor mouths have overlapping monologues as well as a few scenes between them. Only twice in the whole show did the two break character in the least when an unexpected audience laugh at one of the few jokes caught them off-guard.
As we like to do, we hung around outside the stage door in hopes of getting an autograph or a picture. Daniel Craig kind of zipped out of there, but I did manage to catch one brief shot. Hugh Jackman signed a few things and my wife got her Playbill passed up to the front while I managed to capture him about to duck into his SUV.
Bonus Celebrity Stalking: Right round the corner from these two shows, Jude Law is appearing in Hamlet to burnish his Serious Thespian credentials. As any high school English student will attest, that is a very long play and was about the last show to get out that evening. While I was getting some more pictures taken with my new best friend Alice Ripley, my wife positioned herself to see Jude leaving his show and she got this rather serendipitous shot.
My pictures from across the street take a little imagination and the visual clue of the giant poster in the background to make him out.
I always encourage people to see live theater if you can. Next To Normal is proof that you don't need singing mermaids or dancing tigers to do compelling mature-themed musicals with a contemporary sound. And while A Steady Rain is a celebrity-driven sell-out, the story was compelling. And it is conveniently right next to Next To Normal.
2 comments:
what a beautiful photo, thanks! I"d love to post it to my facebook site. facebook.com/drasticalice. - AR
Please feel free to. I'd be honored.
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