My son, James, and his wonderful bride, Dorrie, asked me which show on Broadway – not Bayonne’s Broadway – I wanted to see. My reaction was that, well, I needed to escape today’s headlines. So-o, without too much deep thought, I picked The Drowsy Chaperone. It was a good choice. The Drowsy Chaperone is a happy exercise in escapism. It’s a song-and-dance frolic. The most witty character is a rapid, musical maven who introduces the audience to his favorite 1928 musical – and suddenly the world of the old musical comes alive.Once I realized that I was watching a parody of, and a valentine, to musical theatre I leaned back and enjoyed giggling with the rest of the audience. All the stereotypes are there: the Broadway star, her producer, the debonair groom-to-be, the chaperone, the Latin lover, the dizzy chorine, and a pair of pastry chefs who double as gangsters. A 15-piece orchestra sweetens the experience. What is unusual is that The Drowsy Chaperone is a musical comedy that is not based on a play, book or film. The cast is bright, eager and energetic. Let’s face it, this show is not a masterpiece. It’s a comic spoof of musical comedies. Happily, the one hour and 50 minutes with no intermission (hurrah! But be sure to use the facilities before it starts) left me feeling that I had had a good, old time. Thank you, Jim! Thank you, Dorrie! Oh, P.S. The Drowsy Chaperone won 5 Tony awards.
The action takes place in a storybook Connecticut town populated with an eclectic mix of everyday folks and lovable lunatics. The rat-a-tat eccentric talk features mainly women frequently without men. I thought, “Are they compelled to talk as fast as they can to keep their loneliness at bay?” One of the two head characters is Lorelai. As an aside, the last time I heard that name was Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. But back to Lorelai in The Gilmore Girls. The character has been surprising and exciting to watch: her humor, her style, her neuroses. The daughter, Rory, is beautiful and loppy. The series is far from a banal television soap. But wait – its creators have left. Its been a brainy, dexterous show so, with the changes, it will be interesting to see what happens next.
“What’s it all about, Alfie?” That lyric kept running through my mind as I watched Volver, the new film from the idolized Spanish director, Pedro Almodóvar. Is he crazy or am I too dense? I kept thinking that perhaps the emotional story would make more sense to me if I kept focused. My own problem is that I like to rest my eyes once in awhile. That’s not such a good idea, is it, when a film is in Spanish with English subtitles? My daughter, Jolie, would easily understand Volver since she majored in Spanish and is fluent. Oh well!
An interesting aspect of Volver is that it is practically a manless movie – a celebration of Spanish womanhood. There’s females solidarity without a single grain of bitchiness. It stars Penélope Cruz as the striving, earthy, unpretentious mother of a teenage girl. The actress is strikingly beautiful reminding me of a young Sophia Loren. Most male audience members would gladly watch a film of Ms. Cruz washing dishes with its stunning cleavage shot. I lost myself trying to remember who is who in the surreal plot that includes death, cancer, betrayal, parental abandonment and, surprise, a ghost.
The climatic revelations confused me. I couldn’t quite understand which parent did what to which child. Jolie, help!!!
On the wall in my bedroom I have a copy of Mary Cassatt’s Woman Holding a Child in her Arms so it was doubly exciting for me to see the real thing in the current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ve been partial to Cassatt’s art perhaps because her three major subject interests were women out and about and at home in Paris, mothers or nurses caring for children and children seen alone. In some ways she reminds me of my mom. No, my mom was not an artist. Far from it. She was a dentist (in a time when that was rare) but she kept impressing upon me that women should be “someone” and not “something.” In 1894 Mary Cassatt was quoted as saying exactly that. The artist was an expatriate who loved France because “women do not have to fight for recognition here if they do serious work.” She succeeded in Paris between 1860 and 1900 in spite of its intensely competitive, male-dominated art scene.
Currently the landmark exhibition, Americans in Paris: 1860 to 1900 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art features 100 oil paintings of 37 Americans including Mary Cassatt, James McNeil Whistler, John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer. All were drawn irresistibly to Paris since in the late 19th century it was the world’s new art capital. Cassatt was the only American to show with the Impressionists. The Met’s exhibition tells the story of American high art and how it grew, inside and outside the country between the Civil War and World War I. Happily Cassatt is given a room of her own at the museum and she surely deserves it.
The Met is the grande dame of museums. Its collection contains more than 2 million works of art. No wonder I find it overwhelming. There are tons of things to see, the building is vast with wide appeal for everyone. My suggestions: look at a map first, wear comfortable shoes, arrive early and remember there’s always the wonderful cafeteria on the lower level. Oh yes, Americans in Paris: 1860-1900″ continues through January 28. One visit might not be enough, It wasn’t for me.