If you are going to New York City, it is a good idea to listen to the
soundtrack of Hamilton on the way there.
First, it is awesome. Second, it
is long so it uses up a lot of the ride.
Third, the whole thing takes place in New York City, and by the time
you’ve heard “the greatest city in, the greatest city in, the greatest city in
the WOO-OOO-RRRLD” several times you are totally pumped. You can also learn that in New York you can
be a new man, in New York you can be a new man, in New York you can be a new
man! (Three-peats are big in
musicals.) We love Hamilton the Musical,
but it is not a spoiler alert to say that we won’t see it because we aren’t
made of money, you know. The soundtrack
will have to do.[1]
There are any number of ways that you can get to New York City from
Cambridge, Massachusetts but we drive to Stamford, Connecticut and take a train
into the city from there because it is cheap and doesn’t really take much
longer than flying. But it does require
driving through Connecticut, which as far as I can tell is the most useless
state in the Union. It is nothing but
highways and strip malls. Its motto is
The Nutmeg State! Why does anyone live
there? Connecticut is basically just IN
THE WAY if you are trying to get to New York City from Massachusetts.
Bill and I had a super fun time last summer when we went, but the kids
have not been since they were quite small, so really don’t remember much of
anything. I think Izzy in particular is
going to love this trip, but she is pretty blasé going through Grand Central
Station, which is the greatest way to arrive in the greatest-city-in-the-world,
like she does it every day. I bet she’s screaming
inside.
Still we soon hit something guaranteed to get that girl going: an exhibit on a fave children’s book author,
Mo Willems, at the New York Historical Society.
We all learn a lot about Knufflebunny (pronounced: ka-nuffle bunny) and Elephant and Piggie and
of course, Willem’s master creation, the supremely self-absorbed Pigeon. Willems was an animator before he turned to
books, and it shows in the clean lines and movement of his creatures. He also grounds many of his stories in Brooklyn,
which is sort of New York to us foreigners, so it is a sweet kind of way to
start our visit.
Historical societies are funny places because if they are big like
this one, they have vast collections of things like Tiffany lamps, the world’s
largest Picasso mural, Al-ex-and-er HAM-il-ton ephemera, and the
Batmobile. Why the Batmobile? Who knows, but there it is.
We are based once again at the Park Central Hotel, from which you
don’t have to practice at all to get to Carnegie Hall because it is right
across the street. It is indeed pretty
central, we can walk to a lot of places and being Laskins, we do. From the It’s A Small World Department: on our way to get some (pretty awesome) pizza for dinner, we ran into
Izzy’s friend Ruth and her family, just walking down the street. It’s school break week, so of course everyone
in Massachusetts has gone somewhere else, and here’s Ruth. Peter tells us that that Cambridge Rindge and
Latin School Latin class is in Italy and the French Club has gone to
Paris. But we are in the greatest city
in the world according to Alex-an-der HAM-il-ton so we don’t feel too sorry for
him.
It was a given that we’d see a show while here, but what show? Kinky Boots made a strong play, but lost in a
close last-minute vote to “Shuffle Along, or The Making of the Musical
Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed.”[2] Hamilton may be totally awesome and tout la
rage, but Shuffle Along promised TAP DANCING and a lot of it, and Audra
McDonald, and is in the lovely little Music Box Theater so you feel like you
are almost on stage even up in the balcony.
Izzy is worried about the 8 p.m. curtain: what if she falls asleep? She does not, because she is mesmerized by
the tapping. Peter, on the other hand,
takes a power nap during the third quarter.
We are all completely thrilled by the fantastic dancing and singing, and
feel that our choice of show was well-made.
And cheap(er).
[1] Izzy particularly likes “You’ll Be
Back” in which a petulant King George III tells the colonists just what he’ll
do to them if they try to leave. Damn
her eyes for being a royalist!
[2] Yes, we looked into Hamilton.
And then looked away, temporarily blinded by the $900 tickets. Some of us actually considered – for about 10
seconds – how we could make that work.
Other members of our party did not.
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