Dateline – Manhattan
It was a sleep in kind of morning as there was no where to be at any particular hour. So coffee in bed (it’s nice to travel with someone who will do that for you) together with today’s Wordle and catching up on various emails and other on line things before dragging ourselves out into a blustery Manhattan morning. Cloudy with wind and rain squalls racing up the avenues. We hiked over to Herald Square and past Macy’s in search of bagels and breakfast sandwiches and then decided to spend the afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as it really wasn’t the weather for anything outdoorsy. So off to Times Square (relatively uncrowded at noon in rotten weather) and to catch the subway to the Upper East Side.
I’ve been to the Met a few times over the last decade or so but Patti hadn’t been in many many years so I let her pick and choose. Some time in the Egyptian wing, some time in the American wing, but mainly with the 19th century European paintings as she wanted to see the Impressionist galleries. All of the usual suspects were there and I kept thinking of the famous Dr. Who episode where Vincent Van Gogh learns what he has meant to posterity. That’s why I wrote the books. I don’t expect them to be terribly successful in my lifetime but I do hope that a future generation can use them as a window into this really peculiar historical moment we all lived through.
Back down to Grand Central for cocktails and an early dinner with David Pohler and Vickie Rozell (who happened to be in town this week). David and Vickie met this past summer when we all went to ABBA Voyage together in London and it was time to introduce Patti to new interlocking circles of theater friends. I’m busy calling her to the dark side and making her into a true theater person. She recently worked backstage on a show in Birmingham (her first) and really enjoyed it so I think I have her nearly hooked.
Tonight’s show was the revival of Merrily We Roll Along with Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe. I had seen it back in January when I was last here but Patti wanted to see Daniel Radcliffe on stage and it was very definitely a show I didn’t mind seeing again. I wrote relatively extensively about it when I first saw it (you can go to the blog and look it up if you feel the need). The show holds up, continues to have a very special place in my heart given my love for Sondheim and how I belong to the generation for whom the show was originally written forty plus years ago. I cried during ‘Old Friends’ as it takes me immediately back to the early 80s when Vickie and I and Craig Mollerstuen were our own Frank/Mary/Charlie trio. We’ve managed to hang together without rupturing the friendship over the decades. I don’t see it ever breaking. I also cried during ‘Our Time’. I defy anyone who has ever been a young person full of dreams of possibility making it through that scene dry eyed.
And so, to bed… as Pepys would say.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 