Catch up!

I am finally back upstairs in my parents house on their desktop. It's been forever since I used a PC keyboard, but there's some weird sensitive area on my Dad's laptop that makes typing emails difficult that I didn't even want to try to do a blog post. The cursor keeps shifting and I find myself adding characters to areas where I don't mean to be typing.

Anyway, the trip in NY is good. Yesterday my parents and I went to SOHO to have a piece of art that my parents bought fixed and then have lunch in Cipriani's. It was a fancy schmancy place but I am not really sure what all of the hoopla was about. They have EIGHT locations in NY but it was nothing outstanding. Fresh Italian fare. But our beet and asparagus salad with goat cheese was a whopping $27 and my Dad's veal was $40. I splurged and had a Bellini that was $14 which matched the price of my Dad's Bloody Mary. Again, all good, but I am not sure why we needed to pay $30 for Salmon with Leeks over rice. For lunch. I tried not to let the price bother me, but it was hard.

Afterwards we drove uptown and avoided the Puerto Rican Day parade to see the final performance of Exit the King by Ionesco. I didn't know what was in store, but was happy to see a little absurdist farce. Geoffrey Rush won the Tony award last week and that's the reason to have seen this show. He was truly fantastic. A real presence onstage. All of his choices were complex and interesting and fully realized. With the sheer radiance of his performance I really had a hard time with the lackluster showing of Susan Sarandon. I think it's mostly because she hasn't been on stage (or at least on B'way) since 1972 but her stuff was small. Boring. It was like she couldn't give two shits about being up there. She looked lovely, but so what? There was no drive, no objective, no interest. And for the love of pearl she had the last lines of the play and she couldn't even give it a good button. Okay, or even any button at all.

Whew.

The rest of the cast was okay. Andrea Martin was great, but as a schticky actress she indicated all over the place. Lauren Ambrose (as Marie) got better as the show went on. I think she just had to breathe some of Geoffrey Rush's King in and ride the wave. And she did. The actor who played the Guard, Brian Hutchison, was quite good. Very absurdy, but I didn't know why he did what he did. It was like he and Andrea Martin were in their own different plays. William Sadler was equally okay at the doctor, but I just sat back and kept saying - "oh that's the father from WonderFalls!!" Yeah, not a good thing.

After the show, my mother asked if Geoffrey Rush was a ballet dancer. I highly doubted it. But when I asked her why she thought that. She said when danced around the stage it was done with such grace that he must have ballet training. I did just do a little internet search and I cannot find ballet training, but he did do Le Coq physical training. I bet that's it. Watching him really made me value all of the movement work I've done and challenge all those actors who do not consider the physicality of their characters. Gosh, what a huge difference.

After the show, I saw Uncle Joseph who did not really remember me. It was a little painful, so I am moving on in the narrative. I then met up with Kristin Orlando at the Boat Basin Cafe on 79th and the river and after a yummy margarita hopped across town to hang with Mario Castro for the rest of the evening.

We went to sleep super late - up giggling like little school children. Mostly when we updated my online dating profile. I'm a little bolder now. Let's see what happens.