September 19, 2024

Dateline – Buenos Aires –

I want to be a part of BA Buenos Aires big apple. The score for Evita has been rocketing around my head all day. Mainly the big production number, Buenos Aires from early in the first act when Eva, age 15, leaves the country to come to the city to make her fortune as an actress. I first saw the show in 1981 or 1982 on the first national tour in San Francisco (I saw most of the big shows of the 80s and 90s there). Loni Ackerman was Eva, John Herrera Che and Jon Cypher Peron. Don’t ask me why I remember that, I just do. What I remember most is Hal Prince’s cinematic and at the time highly original staging with a large metal light bridge creating multiple settings from its positioning up and down stage, becoming most effective at the top of the second act, transformed into the balcony of the Casa Rosada. A blinding spotlight hit a mirrored wall stage left, a door opened and out of the light appeared Evita in that iconic white dress. It was theatrical magic.

Evita was Steve’s favorite musical. He had seen that same tour in LA and fallen in love with it such that Don’t Cry For Me Argentina became his theme song. Years later, when we became regulars at Max’s Opera Cafe at Arden Fair in Sacramento, it was his entrance music when we came in (the pianist having a leitmotif for all of the regulars – mine was With So Little to Be Sure Of from Anyone Can Whistle). A few years later in the late 90s, on our first Atlantis trip, I got pulled out of the audience to do an Evita lip synch in drag and nailed it. (It was one of the things that started to convince me that I might have a certain flair for stage work.) And when the movie came out, I think Steve went to see it three or four times. I only went once. I did not care for it. Most people think the problem was Madonna in the title role. She was fine. The problem was Alan Parker’s direction. He hadn’t a clue as to what sort of filmic language makes a musical work. When it came to the aforementioned Buenos Aires, on stage it’s a huge production number with a lot of dancing encapsulating all of Eva’s feelings about growing up and meeting the city on its terms. In the film, its a gloomy piece of film making mainly set in a decrepit tango hall. There’s no life, no vibrancy, no understanding of what 1934 Buenos Aires was (at the time, it was on a par with London, Paris, New York and other world cultural capitals). Tommy had seen Patti LuPone in New York on a high school trip but never really cared for the show. He was indifferent to a lot of musical theater. I was once cast in the ensemble of a production, but I was offered a lead in a different show at the same time. I took the lead and the show hasn’t rolled around again through local circles. Probably too big an undertaking.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This morning, I was still in Iguazu at the Hotel das Cataratas. We had an early morning luggage pull as today was a travel day so I got up, got packed, had breakfast and then it was time to walk the trails on the Brazilian side of the falls. One of the advantages of staying at a hotel within the park is that we got to take advantage of the park from dawn without the hordes who were kept back until the official opening of the park at 9 am. This meant no one around when we set off on the trail from the hotel to the falls. The trails on the Argentinian side yesterday approach the falls from above and you end up at the top staring down into the abyss. The trails on the Brazilian side approach the falls from below so you are at the base looking up at all of the roaring cascades (and getting wet from all the spray in the air). The view from the Brazilian side, coming from below, also means that you get a much better idea of just how enormous the falls complex is. There are taller falls and falls with more cubic feet of water going over a single drop, but Iguazu is by far the biggest complex of water falls at a single spot in the world and it’s difficult to really explain. You just have to be there and try to take it all in. I did take pictures and video but without the engulfing sound, the spray in the air, the constant wheeling of the birds, it’s all too sanitized. It’s one of those you have to be there to get it experiences so I do recommend it go on your life list of travel destinations. It’s worth the inconvenience of getting to the middle of nowhere, South America.

After the semi-religious experience of the falls (where the only mishap was my slipping on a wet not to code step and falling on my hands and knees, ripping the knee out of one of my favorite pairs of jeans), it was back on the bus and back over to the Argentinian side and to the other airport in Foz do Iguacu. There’s one on the Brazil side (which we flew into) and one on the Argentine side (which we flew out of) making both flights domestic and not international and saving a bunch of headaches for everyone (clever Tauck tours). The flight to Buenos Aires, landing at the smaller airport, right next to the central city on the banks of Rio de la Plata, was uneventful. However, we arrived to darkening skies, and the promise of rain. Once again, we showed our impeccable timing. We disembarked, gathered luggage, got on the bus and the heavens opened with a deluge three minutes later. Rain was so heavy it was difficult to see much of anything so no particular sightseeing as we made our way to the Recoleta district and the Alvear Palace hotel. A message came through to the tour director as we were negotiating BA traffic in a thunderstorm. The hotel was short on our rooms due to unexpected bookings and therefore we would all have to be upgraded to deluxe suites. There were no complaints. It was still pouring when we got off at the hotel but, thirty minutes later when I decided to do some exploring, it was down to a few spatterings and has held off since. The weekend promises to be lovely per the weather report. We shall see.

The Alvear palace is a grand old hotel in one of the best neighborhoods in BA, close by the museums, the river and everything else you might need. My deluxe suite, on the 9th floor has two rooms of faux Louis Quinze, a chandelier in the bedroom and a huge bathroom with more gadgets and accoutrements than I know what to do with, including a television mounted over the bathtub. It had never occurred to me to watch TV while taking a bath. I guess I’m just behind the times again. As it was no longer raining, but still quite damp, I limited my exploration to some window shopping, including the famous El Ateneo Grand Splendid book store, built into an old movie palace from the 20s. I didn’t buy anything as my Spanish isn’t good enough to really read in that language. I speak California emergency room Spanish and have for years. But I don’t think I’m going to get very far with a shop clerk by telling her to take two tablets with food and to breathe deeply through her mouth. I also walked a bit through the park and then returned to put my feet up for a while before dinner.

Dinner was at the hotel restaurant – another sumptuous multi course feast. I had corn/cheese empanadas, roast duck, and a merengue with citrus fruit and lemon ice cream for dessert. I really don’t want to get on the scales when I get back to Birmingham. I have a feeling I’ll have to take five or ten pounds off again. Tomorrow we more formally tour the city and then we’re off to some sort of dinner and tango show. I just hope it’s not audience participation as my tango skills are not what they once were. In the meantime, some well deserved sleep.