The first Thanksgiving after I was married, I cooked dinner for my brother-in-law and my new husband. I was so excited and determined to put on a great feast. Everything that could possibly have gone wrong with that meal—did. The rolls never rose. The piecrust literally dripped off of the pan and onto the bottom of the oven. Having carefully secured cherished family recipes, I proceeded to make them as written even though they’d been intended for crowds of 10 to 12 people. There were just three of us, and as you can imagine a mountain of food—most of it with something desperately wrong.
And then as if it couldn’t possibly get worse, we poured the wine into our new crystal goblets and toasted our “feast”. My brother-in-law lifted the glass to his lips and promptly dripped wine on his shirt. We all laughed and then he did it again. This time much worse. And it was then that we realized that it wasn’t my brother-in-law, it was the glass—the beautiful Waterford glass. The glass had been cut through in several places, making it probably one of the world’s most expensive dribble glasses.
That was over twenty years ago, and I have since learned to make Thanksgiving dinner in proper proportion. Everything usually comes out as it’s supposed to be. And none of the crystal dribbles wine on anyone. Much more civilized, but I will always remember that first Thanksgiving with fondness. My brother-in-law is probably just glad we exchanged the glass.
This is the time of year, as we gear up for the holiday season, to stop and remember all the wonderful things we have in our lives. No matter how challenging things may be, there’s always something to be grateful for. We just have to stop long enough to look around and see it.
Here’s wishing you and yours a magnificent Thanksgiving with your family and friends!
When I was young I got the album to a new musical in New York—Godspell. At the time I about as far away from the big city lights as a girl can get. But I fell in love with the music and the message. And played that album (cassette if we want to be technical) over and over and over. And finally, got to see a performance in Oklahoma City as well as the movie version with a very young Victor Garber (who’d I’d see some thirty years later on Broadway last year in Present Laughter).
The words and music are literally etched upon my heart. So it was with great anticipation that I went to the Circle on the Square (where I fell in love with The Putnam County Spelling Bee and Jesse Tyler Ferguson) to see the newest incarnation of Godspell. And while I had a lovely evening and totally enjoyed my blast from the past, I’m afraid I can’t tell you that the new and supposedly improved version lived up to my expectations.
My love affair with Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell runs deep, so maybe I was bound to be disappointed. (However, as an aside, the first show I ever saw on Broadway was A Chorus Line, in 1977, and when I took my daughter to see the revival a few years back, it was everything I remembered it to be. Pure magic.)
Anyway, for me in many ways, Godspell, was a spiritual awakening. And I not only knew all the words to all the songs, I could perform most of them on my guitar and quite often did (I still have the sheet music in my closet). I grew up with the advent of folk masses and the initial movement of more popular music sharing space with standard (and quite beautiful) hymns and liturgical music. It was new and exciting. And the music from Godspell played a role in all of that.
Telly Leung and Lindsey Mendez
So heading out for Circle on the Square I was ready to be taken back. To a more innocent time in my life when the music and movement were fresh. And to be fair, in certain moments, I still felt the magic. But a lot of the time I felt like I’d wandered in to a Gleeified (and I’m a Gleek, or at least I was until this season) version of my show.
The opening, while definitely attuned to a modern world, seemed out of place somehow with the rest of the show. As did a lot of the modern day references (although I did laugh at several and the cast’s ability to mimic certain personalities was certainly up to Saturday Night Live standards) which seemed to overshadow the message at certain points. In fact, that would be my most overriding critique—the message was lost amidst attempts to modernize. The power, except in a few places, was diluted so that the heart of the piece was lost amidst the constantly moving patter.
Telly Leung
As I said, there were exceptions. And they were powerful. Lindsey Mendez, singing Oh Bless the Lord My Soul, was absolutely flawless. She not only has an amazing singing voice but a magnificent stage presence. And Telly Leung’s version of All Good Gifts was simply spell-binding. (One of the best moments of the night was a revival of Learn Your Lessons Well, with a little bit of Pippin thrown in for good measure, just before the beginning of the second act, with Leung on piano singing with Mendez.) Uzo Aduba gave a much more earthy delivery to By My Side, the result giving it more depth than the original (and as it’s one of my favorite songs, that actually is saying a lot).
Wallace Smith, playing both John the Baptist and Judas was more of a mixed bag. His opening Prepare Ye gave me goose bumps, his voice powerful and sure. And the setting with the baptismal “river” was wonderful. But I never really felt his indecision and pain in betraying Jesus and since that is the pivotal moment between the light-hearted beginning and the dark turn of the ending—it’s a crucial note to hit. Day by Day, sung by Anna Maria Perez de Tagle, was lost in the choreography and business of the staging. What is a moving and simple song became overrun by too many other things, although Ms. Parez de Tagle was charming. Julia Mattison, coming in as an understudy, was also good singing Turn Back Oh Man, but again I just felt as if some of the power of the piece (the dichotomy between her vamp and Parrish’s wistful singing) was lacking.
Hunter Parrish
Which leaves us with Hunter Parrish playing Jesus. To be fair, I must say that both Stephen Nathan and Victor Garber played Jesus with soft spoken words and fly-away voices. So Parrish is following in the same vein. But the difference for me lies in the fact that both of the former cast members were able to make the transition from the soft-sung folksiness of God Save the People (re-orchestrated in the new version to its detriment, I might add) to the unbridled power of Alas for You. There is anger in the latter song. And we see Jesus as he begins to transform from gentle teacher to the man who will sacrifice all. And in Parrish’s version we never saw any of that. In fact, the musicians (placed amongst the audience) overwhelmed him at times. And without the power of that song, the second act felt flat.
Costuming, by Miranda Hoffman, echoed the original (but without the clown face for Jesus), and overall it enhanced the performances rather than detracting. There was a funny bit in the opening where Parrish is choosing a shirt and rejecting, among other choices, the Superman T-shirt.
Circle in the Square is a small theatre with seats surrounding the stage. It provides an intimacy that can’t be obtained on a standard Broadway stage. And a word should be said about the innovative staging, some that worked (the baptistery river), some that did not (trampolines?). Overall, I thought it was an innovative use of space, and never once did I feel as if I was behind the action so to speak. It was constantly on the move and mostly captivating. The newly added song Beautiful City fit seamlessly although the reprise at the end was frustrating for those of us used to the original and waiting for the reintroduction of Prepare Ye into Long Live God (it was there just muted by the addition of the new song).
Overall, I think that the power of the musical was lost a little in the attempt to add modern patter and Twitteresque humor. But the cast was sparkling, with some of them out-singing, or at least equaling the originals. And I defy anyone not to feel their spirits rise as they’re reminded of the exuberance of youth and the power of believing.
So on Monday we went to the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. Spurred on by visiting friends, (isn’t that always the way), we decided to tag along with their plans, and all met up in time for the 1:45 tour.
The Museum, founded around 1988 by Ruth Abrams and Anita Jacobson, owns the now partially restored tenement at 97 Orchard Street. Built in 1863, the tenement (actually just a common word for apartment, despite negative connotations) had over 7000 occupants in the fifty years that it was open for business. After sitting idle for almost as long, the building was discovered, and the museum’s journey begun.
Helping visitors understand life in working class New York at the end of the nineteenth century is the goal of the museum. By taking museum patrons on a journey through the life of one of four different families, the tours open a specific window into lives that were difficult by modern standards, and yet surprisingly parallel to experiences some immigrants still have today.
We chose the newest tour, the Moores, a family of Irish immigrants that were part of the wave of Irish people coming to the US in the 1860’s. The Moores lived briefly at 97 Orchard Street starting in 1869. A primarily German area at the time, the Moores would have been out of place in the building, isolated because of language. But the building itself had certain amenities that would have meant a “step-up” from other more Irish neighborhoods. Certainly nothing to speak of now, the building’s underground sewage system meant that waste was carried away from outhouses located in the back “yard” of the building, and that running water in the form of a tap out back (next to the outhouses) was available.
Inside the apartments, however, there was no water and no indoor plumbing. Because there were no city health ordnances yet, there was no protection for renters. Diseae ran rampant. So much so that infant mortality was exceedingly high–as Bridget and John Moore found out when their five and a half month old passed away.
Wages at the time (if you could find a job—racism was at an all-time high—especially where immigrants were involved), were something like $20 a month. To put it in perspective, rent at 97 Orchard at that time was $10. So the Moores were paying half their income for a three room walk up on the fourth floor with five of them, including the baby, in residence at the time.
The apartment itself, had a large (for New York) living area, a smallish kitchen/workroom and a tiny bedroom. Only one room had windows, and while it might have afforded a breeze, the rest of the apartment would have been stifling in the summer and probably except for the kitchen with its iron stove, freezing in the winter. Living just below subsistence level, families were malnourished, which lead often times to disease and early death.
In addition immigrants also delt with isolation, due to in part to prejudice and in larger part to the fact that often one’s entire family had been left in the “old country”. And yet, many of these people not only survived but triumphed, their children moving up and onward, finding their place as Americans in New York.
The Museum, open every day except holidays, can be contacted through their website at http://www.tenement.org/tours.php or by phone, 866-606-7232. Tour reservations are recommended. Other tours include different decades and immigrants, so I suspect repeat visits would be equally interesting. All in all I highly recommend taking the time to get to know a little bit more about New York’s immigrant communities. There are also two walking tours of the area available.
Photographs are not allowed, so all pictures used here are from Flickr and the Tenement Museum website.
So I’ve just had my first venture in to the world of re-releasing backlist. My holiday romantic suspense novella, Still of the Night (orginally in the Anthology Silent Night), is now available for download on both Smashwords and Amazon.com. It should be available on Barnes and Noble and iBooks shortly. It’s definitely a brave new world.
In the still of the night…
Christmas is coming and Jenny Fitzgerald couldn’t care less. She’s getting divorced, and her life is in tatters. And just when she’s thinking it couldn’t possibly be worse, her husband is killed on the job, an undercover operation gone bad. In the midst of her grief, Jenny is confronted with a killer. A hunter who will stop at nothing to see her dead…
Next up—the Time Travel Trilogy: Everything In Its Time, Wild Highland Rose, The Promise
And congratulations to winners Terri, Jean, Peggy, Glenda, Arianne, Lara, Lynn, Sandi, Jackie, and Lynn! They each won a hard copy of my A-Tac e-novella Daring!
So last weekend, I met friends at Balthazar in SoHo. After exiting a taxi on Spring Street, we literally had to fight our way inside. There were people milling everywhere. Clearly a popular Sunday venue. Once inside we discovered that our friends hadn’t arrived yet, so we fought our way back outside and settled on one of the benches lining the wall that fronts the restaurant. I have to admit, it was a spectacular fall morning and it was great fun to sit and watch the people go by. And once our friends arrived we were gratified to find that even though the place was still overly packed, our reservation was promptly honored and we were shown to a lovely table.
Like all New York restaurants the tables were squeezed together and we were a little too close to our neighbors for comfort, but we quickly forgot as we began to peruse the menu and catch up. My first thought on entering the cavernous American bistro was that it looked a lot like Artisanal, the Terrance Brennan’s cheesery in Murray Hill. Which isn’t a bad thing. Airy and, squashed tables aside, comfortable, the place is all marble, velvet and brass. With the soaring ceilings of a building converted from a leather wholesaler’s warehouse.
Opened in 1997 by Keith McNally (of Patis fame), Balthazar’s co-chefs are Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr. Both men have resumes that include some of New York’s finest dining establishments. And the restaurant is both a tourist draw and a neighborhood favorite.
The brunch menu, with a definite Parisian slant, offered entrees for both breakfast and lunch. I chose the Brioche French toast with smoked bacon. And although the French toast had a lovely touch of cinnamon in the batter, I found it dry and slightly overcooked. My friend however, had the scrambled eggs in puff pastry with wild mushrooms and asparagus, and it not only looked wonderful, it apparently tasted fabulous as well. The other egg dishes ordered were tasty as well.
While I’m not sure that I’d make the effort to travel downtown again just to go to Balthazar’s, I’d definitely recommend it as a fun way to spend a fabulous fall morning with good friends. And I am interested in trying out the bakery next door. The pastries are supposed to be fabulous!
I love Gnocchi! My favorite place to have it is at Fiorini, a fabulous Italian restaurant on 56th between 2nd and 3rd. And although I adore the standard potato version, when we had ricotta gnocchi at Filomena’s in Washington DC, I came home wanting to try and make them myself. And with a little trial and error, I found a great recipe. So thought I’d share it with all of you! I will confess I haven’t managed the art of using the fork to crimp the little “pillows”, but they taste awesome just thrown straight into the pot right after cutting.
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl, mix well. Knead until a dough is formed (if too loose, add a little more flour). Cover bowl and let stand one hour.
Sprinkle flour on your work board and hands; remove a tennis ball size of dough; roll gently with both hands to form a long rope about 1″ thick. Repeat until you have used up all the dough. Cut the rolls into 1″ long pieces and set aside on a cloth lightly sprinkled with flour (do not place on Formica or other hard surface).
Cook gnocchi in a large pot of rapidly boiling salted water. Water should not stop boiling. After they rise to top, boil gently 2-3 minutes more. Remove with slotted spoon to a large bowl. Toss gently with sauce . Serves 4-6.
We use Alfredo with garlic. But your favorite will do. Filomena’s serves their ricotta gnocchi with a creamy tomato sauce.
Spent Friday evening at the Beacon theater on Broadway over on the West side. The theatre is gorgeous and we had great seats, second row balcony, dead center. As has been Steely Dan’s custom for their last two tours each night of the seven they spent in New York was geared around one of their albums. This night was billed as Royal Scam and Twenty-first Century Dan (meaning Two Against Nature and 2003’s Everything Must Go).
I’ve been a Steely Dan fan since way back. I fell in love with the album Aja my freshman year in college and never looked back. So it seems natural that I’d also fall in love with a guy crazy for Steely Dan. He’s subsequently introduced me to all of their albums (and much to my surprise several favorite songs were actually Dan songs—like Reelin’ in the Years). Anyway, add to this story the fact that my daughter now knows the lyrics and background stories on every single song Donald Fagan and/or Walter Becker ever wrote and we’ve been come a family of Steely Dan fans.
photo by MSG
The concert hall was packed, everyone waiting with anticipation for Steely Dan to begin, which made it a little difficult for the very talented opening act because everyone was talking. In some ways it felt more like a bar than a concert hall. But hey, such is the life of opening acts.
Despite the elegant interior of the hall, nothing much has changed when it comes to concert goers. Granted, the room was filled with gray-headed people—most of us with wrinkles to mark the years, but still, the majority of folks arrived late, around nine, anticipating the actual start of Steely Dan.
The concert opened with a jazz piece that introduced the band—highlighting the brass section in particular (a trumpet, trombone, tenor sax and baritone sax). And then guest guitarist Larry Carlton (who played with the group in the 70’s). And finally the two men who will forever be Steely Dan—Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. The crowd went wild and the concert began.
The music was broken into three “sets”. The first being a complete rendition of Royal Scam including my favorites; Kid Charlemagne and Haitian Divorce. Fagen’s voice was a little hoarse in the beginning. Possibly a cold. But by the second set, the microphones had been adjusted and he’d warmed up, the resulting sound much better.
For the second set of songs, they concentrated on albums Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go. Playing among others, the title songs from each and my favorite, Cousin Dupree. By that point the audience was totally into the performance and many were on their feet.
The last set, and definitely the most high energy, consisted of favorites from across the years, including Josie (with a fabulous piano solo to open), Peg, and Reelin’ in the Years. The show stopper was a rocking rendition of Bodhisattva. And then they finished off the night with Pretzel Logic, leaving us all satisfied, yet still wishing for more. All in all—a fabulous way to spend a Friday night in New York City.
The first Thanksgiving after I was married, I cooked dinner for my brother-in-law and my new husband. I was so excited and determined to put on a great feast. Everything that could possibly have gone wrong with that meal—did. The rolls never rose. The piecrust literally dripped off of the pan and onto the bottom of the oven. Having carefully secured cherished family recipes, I proceeded to make them as written even though they’d been intended for crowds of 10 to 12 people. There were just three of us, and as you can imagine a mountain of food—most of it with something desperately wrong.
goblets and toasted our “feast”. My brother-in-law lifted the glass to his lips and promptly dripped wine on his shirt. We all laughed and then he did it again. This time much worse. And it was then that we realized that it wasn’t my brother-in-law, it was the glass—the beautiful Waterford glass. The glass had been cut through in several places, making it probably one of the world’s most expensive dribble glasses.
