But really, that’s New York in a nutshell.
So, why did I choose to spend a weekend wandering around a city that I typically avoid during the burger of tourist season?
I decided to take the opportunity to see a couple of plays. I got tickets to see To Kill a Mockingbird months ago (because any sooner was near impossible in my price range). Then, about two weeks ago I saw that Tom Hiddleston and Charlie Cox would be in the play, Betrayal, on Broadway. It was an opportunity I didn’t want to waste.
I felt it was too hard to do my usual commute back and forth into the city, so I opted to just stay the night. I call it a micro-vacation.
The plays were only part of the trip. I now had ample free time to do a few other things - like eat in Hell’s Kitchen (Maria Pia is one of my favorite restaurants in that area), see some of new exhibits at The Met, and enjoy my wanders around the many parks (Central being my favorite).
It’s calm and peaceful and everything is set to my pace.
This also isn’t the first micro-vacation I’ve taken this month (last weekend I was in Hershey with a friend). They’re a nice indulgence when I can’t get far away from home for a long period of time.
This trip has been centered around the Arts. The Art of the Stage Production, The Art of Fashion (The Met has a really cool exhibit on Camp right now that was really cool and informative on the history of LGBTQ+ culture), The Art of Food, and The Art of Adaptation.
I don't think that last art gets as much attention as many of the others. Adaptation takes an already created work and transforms it. In this case, I'm referring to the play To Kill a Mockingbird.
My introduction to the story was like many American high schoolers, by reading the novel for English Lit. class. I think it says something about the books that they were making us read that I still think of it as the "happiest" book we read that year. To be clear, this book is not "happy" in the slightest, just happier than everything else we read in 9th grade.
It wasn't that much later that I saw the movie with Gregory Peck as the too prefect for this world Atticus Finch. Both the book and the movie are excellent. The movie definitely does the book justice, though I recall it leaves a number of scenes out.
The play has a very different structure from the book and movie, but this is an adaptation that I think does both justice in a time where a few updates needed to be made. Jeff Daniels is excellent as Atticus Finch, showing both his strengths and deep flaws as a white man living in the south during the 1930s. He even gets called out several times on his actions by the family's black house keeper, Calpurnia, which I don't remember happening in the movie or the book.
I thought the updates were needed and I found myself frustrated by Atticus, more forgiving of Jem, and enjoying the non-linear story telling.
Which brings me to the other play I saw. I went into the play Betrayal only knowing that it was a play about an affair told in reverse, also Tom Hiddleston and Charlie Cox were in it. I enjoyed the acting and the story, but I didn't understand at all why two of the characters started having an affair (even at the end when it showed how the affair started).
I won't spoil the story, but I admit I had a hard time relating to the characters. The only character I somewhat sympathized with was Tom Hiddleston's Robert, though I might have also sympathized with Zawe Ashton's character, Emma, with a few more scenes providing context to some of her claims.
Charlie Cox's character, Jerry, was just an all around clueless B@$%@#d.
I think the coolest part of the play was how time was portrayed. They had a circular revolving stage (one ring on the inside and another on the outside) with only two chairs, and later a table, as the set. As time moved backward the circles would turn and there would be a projection of how far back in time we had gone in the story. There was also a lot of excellent shadow play with light projections and use of the circles to show how all of the characters orbited around each other.
My final thoughts on the weekend are from while I was at The Met. I got to see the incomplete masterpiece of St. Jerome by Leonardo Da Vinci, which was cool, a very cool presentation of music and visual landscape of Iceland called "Death is Elsewhere" which was projected on screens surrounding the viewers, and an exhibit on Camp.
I honestly knew nothing about Camp before I went into the exhibit. It's history and evolution are closely tied to the history of (mostly male) LGBTQ+ culture. It's an Art of Fashion and Self Expression. Though I don't think I could pull off any of the looks, I was fascinated by everything I saw.
It was a fun weekend and I experienced a lot. I'd recommend any of the plays I saw and the exhibits at the Met. Also Hell's Kitchen is a must for people who like good food.
Until next week.
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