Nicole schreibt...

Going to New York twice within one year is a new one for me, too - and a once-in-a-lifetime exception. We'll get to my beloved Bats later, so you can skip those bits if you're tired of hearing about the show. Let's start at the beginning instead and my old favourite Lufthansa flight directly from Duesseldorf to Newark, which they shunted off to Eurowings a few years ago. Luckily I was now braced for the awfulness of Eurowings long-haul and they did shape up their act at least a little bit. After the surprising swiftness of immigration at JFK in April, I now found myself back in the usual long queues at Newark, but it wasn't too terrible and the transfer by AirTrain and NJ Transit went faster than I had expected. I felt like going from one deja-vu to the next, using NJ Transit's rickety old commuter train and walking down 42nd Street past the theatre where I had seen the Yiddish Fiddler in April to our first hotel, the Travel Inn.
I tend to not book any shows for the first evening in New York as I can never predict what state I'll be in (usually not fit for anything). But this time I felt surprisingly awake and rested and so could fulfill my wish to grab the chance to see the very divisive new version of Rodgers/Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" at Circle in the Square. To my bigger surprise, my Mom decided she wanted to come along and we were able to get terrific seats at half price from TKTS in Times Square late in the afternoon (and the small-ish theatre wasn't sold out at all, with empty seats dotted here and there). "Oklahoma!" has a very special place in my heart as it was one of the first musicals I ever saw live - when our American relatives took us to the lavish open air production at Discoveryland in Tulsa during our visit in 1987 and when I visited them again in 1991 (having become a musical fan in the meantime) asked to return there. I only saw one "normal" production, this one the National Theatre production in London with young Hugh Jackman and when I first heard about "Woke-lahoma" as some people called this new version by Daniel Fish at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, my gut reaction was "hell, no!" - I get enough Regietheater nonsense in Germany after all. But what tickled me was reading that he managed this new interpretation without changing a single line in the script, bringing to the surface what had always been right there. And of course, when something is divisive, it's always better to check it out for yourself than dismiss it unseen. Good thing I did.
Just entering Circle in the Square theatre with its intriguing set-up was fun in itself (and in fact choosing a show that kept the house lights on most of the time was the best we could have done at the end of a very long travel day). As for the show itself - I'd say, it has good bits and bad bits. Daniel Fish is not the first director/creative to have picked on the fact that the attitude towards "strange loners" has changed a lot since "Oklahoma!" was written in the 40s and that the set-up of Jud Fry as the creepy baddie who threatens the idyll of Curly and Laurey doesn't really fly anymore. He just rammed the point home far more here, making Curly a manipulative bastard. The one thing I didn't like at all was the utterly bonkers dream ballet, now reduced to one modern dancer Laurey. I suppose there was lots of meaning in her solo dance, but whatever it was, it eluded me. Otherwise though, I did enjoy the stripped-back barebones production, which seems to fall in line with the similarly new refreshing productions of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Evita" in London and I'm all for breathing new life into shows that have been done to death. The best bit for me though? I'll start with a confession that might lose me several woke points, but there we go. When I first heard about wheelchair-bound Ali Stroker being cast as Ado Annie, I thought, what the hell, now they're really taking the diversity stuff too far, how's that even meant to work? Well... it worked fabulously. It took less than a minute to stop feeling odd - it seemed so perfectly natural and she sang, acted and moved so well, I really understood how and why she won that Tony Award and that it definitely wasn't a "disability bonus". So just seeing her performance and challenging (and overcoming) my own prejudices about her casting was for me worth seeing this alone and I applaud Fish for giving her this opportunity. That's not to detract from the other equally brilliant performers, including dishy Damon Daunno as Curly, American Idiot-alumni Rebecca Naomi Jones as Laurey and Mary Testa as Aunt Eller. I can definitely understand everyone who'll say that this new staging of Oklahoma is not their cup of tea and they'd rather avoid it altogether, but if you're up for seeing something fresh, clever and inventive (that still treats the original with far more respect than most of the Regietheater nonsense here), this is definitely worth seeing and I do hope it will come over to London.
Doing a long first evening proved the right choice though as it meant virtually no jetlag at all - just a bad first night due to food and stomach issues. As this spontaneous trip to New York had killed the plan for a late-summer-beach holiday, we had opted for a hotel with pool and took it easy on first day with a morning stroll along Fifth Avenue before spending the afternoon by the poolside. In the evening it was finally time for my longed-for reunion with my favourite Bats at New York City Centre, but for once I won't go chronologically here (no need to write about the same show three times!) and stick all of that at the end. So on Friday instead - we had to check out of the Travel Inn early because they had already been full for the Labor Day weekend, so moved our luggage to a new hotel in the morning, then took the Subway out to the beach - more specifically Coney Island, which was the perfect destination for a leisurely day. It was warm enough to not just spend some time lying down on the beach but to actually swim in the refreshingly cool but not too cold Atlantic. Afterwards we strolled along the Boardwalk and through the delightfully old-fashioned Luna Park with its many fairground attractions. We even went for a ride on the legendary Cyclone rollercoaster, which has been operating with only a few short breaks for renovations since 1927. While it doesn't even look like very much compared to modern coasters, it sure delivered the goods in terms of excitement! Of course it was impossible to resist that other Coney Island must-do, having hot dogs at Nathan's, despite the fairly insane queues at the main building. Then it was time to head back into Manhattan to claim our new hotel rooms and for me to meet my (no longer) local friend to catch up. We had dinner at the Irish Pub McGee's on 55th Street, that was the inspiration for McLaren's Pub of "How I met your mother" fame, then moved on to NYCC for the second instalment of Bat, making up at last for an evening of nothing in Philly in April.
After breakfast together on Saturday, it was time to go separate ways again, with my friend bound for Chicago and my Mom and me for Century 21, the big discount fashion store up at Lincoln Center. The less said about the money spent there, the better. We took the shopping back to the hotel and then it was time for the matinee already. One of my biggest regrets of the April trip had been that I couldn't really enjoy the over-the-top crazy funny and marvellously creative "Beetlejuice" at the Winter Garden Theatre because I had been so jetlagged and tired that evening. So I was really glad I got a second chance to see this show now and drag the mother along as well. The matinee started a good 20 minutes late and the queue snaked once around the block by then as there was some issue in the Subway station underneath with the fire brigade making a fuss and needing to give the all-clear for the theatre. I did not only enjoy this fun show a lot more now that I was more awake and rested (and familiar with the cast recording) but also felt that the cast had settled into their roles better with less over-acting by the ladies and an utterly adorable performance by Rob McClure and Kerry Butler as the dorky Maitlands. Sophia Anne Caruso has become even more assured as Lydia and the amazing Alex Brightman has the audience eating out of his hand right from the start. How he manages to "do this shit eight times a week" (his words, not mine) with so much energy and charisma is beyond me. Really happy I got a chance to see it again and I do hope it will find its way to London. Dinner plans fell through as the New Orleans-themed restaurant I had found online had rather abruptly shut down, so we ended up at good old Applebee's. Then it was time for my final trip to the NYCC to say goodbye to my Bats. So here we are. Let's back up to Thursday briefly. Since my Mom had seen so many shows with me over the years, I had always wanted her to see this one, which had come to mean so much to me. But by the time we had organized a trip to London together for spring 2019, the London production had already shut shop, leaving the German production in Oberhausen as the only alternative. And while I had been curious about it and the cast, nothing had prepared me for the appalling car crash that production would be - the spectacularly stupid decision to translate Meat Loaf's world-famous hits into German to begin with, topped off by a godawfully stupid nonsensical translation and (of course) performed by a mostly foreign cast, whose German was nearly impossible to understand and who were absolutely hamstrung by the German shit they had to sing. Not even top-class performers like Willemijn Verkaik and Alex Melcher could save that dumpster fire and the less said about the screechy disaster they had for some reason let loose to play Raven, the better. I admit with no shame that I cried on the way home to see my favourite show reduced to such a mess and I told my mother that this was by no means representative for how amazing this could (and would) be in English with the right performers and (half-jokingly) said: "If the production at New York City Center happens, I will drag you all the way across the Atlantic to see it there". Well, and here we were! And luckily I was proven right, with the best-possible cast on stage, she was blown away and finally understood why I loved this show so much. She (and I) really got the best of both worlds with London's leading ladies Christina Bennington and Danielle Steers having come over to re-join the one and only proper Strat Andrew Polec and some of the US-Tour Cast who had returned, like Bradley Dean as Falco. To top it all off, we got Broadway's leading rock lady (and first female Hedwig) Lena Hall as Sloane. My poor friend Peter has been listening to way more than his share of Bat talk throughout the last two years and even joined me on that ultimately pointless trip to Philly to catch the US-Tour in spring, so I appreciate more than I could ever say that he now came down from Boston to finally see the show with me after all. Having sat front row Orchestra with Mom on Thursday, we were up in the front row Grand Tier on Friday, which gave us a fine overview onto the stage (and more time in the spotlight than we would have wanted to!). So there was another convert to the Bat cause and a second wonderful evening spent at NYCC. However for my final show on Saturday evening (back in the front row of the Orchestra), I had known I'd want to be alone to say goodbye forever. I've talked at great length elsewhere about why this show has come to mean so much to me and while it sounds insane to throw so much money at a trip to New York for it, I knew I just had to do this to get the closure I wanted and needed after the dumpster fire in Oberhausen and the so much weaker leading men I saw in London (although I'll make an exception for Barney Wilkinson, he was adorable) and the fact that Queen Danielle had been off all four of my last visits in London. To see her again here, along with Christina and Andrew was truly the unexpected icing on the cake and all three of them were as formidable as ever (I know I needn't say how much it meant to me to see Andrew again as Strat). At the same time there were plenty of fresh faces to enjoy, most of all the absolutely stunning Lena Hall, whose duet part of "It's all coming back to me now" with Bradley Dean blew everything I've ever heard on stage out of the water. Together they were an adorable duo infernale as Sloane and Falco. Special mentions go to Avionce Hoyles, who was the first Tink to not just irritate me completely, but actually made me feel for him, sassy Jessica Jaunich as Valkyrie (whose part had received an upgrade by taking over the song bits from Blake, who had been cut) and the very dishy Billy Lewis Jr. as Ledoux. The US-Tour set had done away with the most spectacular bits from London, though the only thing I found myself truly missing was the pool and Falco's spectacular underwater costume change, because it was such a "bloody hell!" moment - just like the car being pushed into the orchestra pit. But for that one they had still come up with a funny solution, when skinny little Christina lifted the huge motor from the bonnet and carried it over to chuck it into the orchestra pit instead. The flying motorcycle parts forming a heart or pyro effects in "Bat out of Hell" I didn't miss much though, as I find the song and Andrew's kick-ass performance are dramatic enough as they are. If anything, I was sad that all the silver and red confetti ended up in the orchestra pit and I only got very few bits to take home (along with another golden streamer from Raven's birthday!). The stage sets, the amazing camera work by Paulina Jurzec and the fantastic music delivered by a top-notch cast are really enough to make this show the fantastic entertainment it is, bonkers though it may be. With sales at NYCC having been rather disappointing, I suppose an US-Tour is definitely off the cards now and while I'm sad that this show never found the audience it deserves (either in New York or London), I'm glad I've had it in my life for two years. I'll never forget the wonderful evenings I've had in London and New York and it will have always have a very special place in my heart. And while I wait for the cast to move on to new great things, I will now be able to look back not only on London but on a wonderful perfect long weekend in New York and the finale I had always hoped for. The beat is ours forever.