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I'll get back to my reviews next month, I promise. I'm just so AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!! from trying to wrap up my current job that I can't think critically about anything else.

To tide you over--in case you've already seen every cat photo on the Internet--here is a list of my favorite search terms that have brought people to this blog:

• "mark rylance" "hot" "michael esper" "sexy" "assistance"
• "mark rylance" "hot and sexy"
• "Michael Esper hot."
• michael esper beard
• ginger beard
  
• steve kazee s bare feet
• bobby steggert barefoot (Someone has a foot fetish, eh?)
  
• should i go see american idiot
• "the power of theatre"
• "the normal heart" sobbing
• lupone's belch during anything goes (Please tell me that really happened!)

I love all you crazy Googlers. Let's be BFFs. Let's drink lots of Jameson and Guinness next time I'm in the city, which happens to be this weekend. (When buying theater tickets, I didn't think through the implications of being in New York for St. Patrick's Day. Or, as my friend Hilary calls it, Amateur Night.)

Go see Assistance. Now.

[SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM FOR TWO PHOTOS OF THE ASSISTANCE CAST BEING RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME.]

So, as I mentioned earlier, I'm leaving my awesome publishing job at the end of this month. And this is interfering with my theater life. Wrapping everything up is taking over my life. I suppose leaving a job I love and moving on to a new adventure should be difficult, though. And the end is in sight!

I'm really looking forward to no longer canceling New York weekends. Last weekend I missed all of the following:
* How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (canceled in advance because Michael Urie was going to be out to film a pilot, and I didn't really need to see it without him and without Mary Faber, who has left the show).
* CQ/CX, at the Atlantic Theater (closing March 11, so I won't get to reschedule because I'll be in Denver this weekend visiting my brother and seeing the American Idiot tour again)
* Once, on Broadway (rescheduled for early April, which cannot come soon enough because I loved it the 4 times I saw it at the New York Theatre Workshop)
* How I Learned to Drive, at Second Stage (also closing March 11, so I won't get to reschedule)
* An Iliad, with Denis freaking O'Hare, at NYTW (closing March 25, so I hope I get to reschedule--I do still have tickets to see it with Stephen Spinella at least--they're alternating performances) [ETA: SORTED! As Stockard Channing will be out of Other Desert Cities to film a pilot with Mandy Moore(!), I got a ticket to see O'Hare. So I'll be seeing An Iliad twice in one weekend!)

Anyway, the real purpose of this post isn't actually to complain! *gasp* I just want to highly recommend that you run out to Playwrights Horizons to see Leslye Headland's OMGSOFANTASTIC play Assistance.

Every single person in the cast is perfect (Michael Esper, Sue Jean Kim, Virginia Kull, Lucas Near-Verbrugghe, Amy Rosoff, Bobby Steggert). Headland's play is great. David Korins's set design is unfrakkingbelievable. Trip Cullman's direction is wonderful. Really, I love pretty much everything about this show. So go see it. Now. Because it closes March 11. If I could recommend only two shows currently running, they would be Once and Assistance. And you would kiss my feet to thank me for seeing both. I promise. (But don't do that, please. Ew.)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting back to actual theater reviews next month. In the meantime, just do as I say and go see Assistance? Thanks. And you're welcome.

ETA: Here are two photos of the cast of Assistance being awesome.

Broadway houses (wistful thinking)

It's good to have goals. Like many a theater nerd, I'd like to see at least one show in every Broadway theater. As of today, I'm still missing 10. And I'm not going to see Chicago, Jersey Boys, Mama Mia (saw on tour), Spiderman, or Wicked (saw on tour), so I'll have a long wait for those last 5. Well, it's good to have goals anyway.


Al Hirschfeld Theatre
Ambassador Theatre
American Airlines Theatre
August Wilson Theatre
Belasco Theatre
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
Booth Theatre
Broadhurst Theatre
The Broadway Theatre
Brooks Atkinson Theatre
Circle in the Square Theatre
Cort Theatre
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
Eugene O'Neill Theatre
Foxwoods Theatre
Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre
Gershwin Theatre
Helen Hayes Theatre
Imperial Theatre
John Golden Theatre
Longacre Theatre
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
Lyceum Theatre
Majestic Theatre
Marquis Theatre
Minskoff Theatre
Music Box Theatre
Nederlander Theatre
Neil Simon Theatre
New Amsterdam Theatre
Palace Theatre
Richard Rodgers Theatre
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Shubert Theatre
Stephen Sondheim Theatre
St. James Theatre
Studio 54
Vivian Beaumont Theatre
Walter Kerr Theatre
Winter Garden Theatre

The power of theater

I am making a big change in my life. It's only fitting that I have theater to blame thank. Last summer, The Normal Heart devastated me. It broke me. Or, rather, it showed me that my life was a bit broken. Seeing all those names projected on the walls just ... hurt. I cried for half an hour. I could barely speak. I couldn't even string words together more than to say that I was wasting my life. That I needed to do more. That I missed the kind of passion for a cause that Ellen Barkin scorched the stage with. I missed feeling that I could change the world--that I could fix more problems than I was causing.

It took me six months to gather my courage to act on the epiphany I had walking out of the Golden Theatre. How funny it was, so soon after making my decision, to be back in the Golden in December seeing Seminar--a play about editing, which is the profession I am about to leave. (To all my former authors: Just be glad that I'm nothing like Alan Rickman's character in that show.)

I'm giving myself two months to phase out of my job and into my new one as part-time caregiver to my grandmother. She's a 91-year-old force of nature, and I'm really looking forward to hanging out with her and causing as much trouble as we can possibly get into together. (After moving into her retirement building in Brookline, she produced a reading of My Fair Lady that rehearsed for two years before playing to the residents and garnering great acclaim. I bought her the book with the scripts for Pygmalion and My Fair Lady at the fantastic Drama Book Shop in Manhattan.)

Eventually, this time-out should help me plan my next step, which will be volunteer work (or an extremely underpaid job) at a nonprofit organization in the Boston area. I think I'd like to work with transgender teens and young adults, or maybe to help people transitioning off Welfare with their interview skills and resumes. The more I think about it, the longer the list grows with things I want to do with my free time, once I have some.

I'll come back and talk more about this later, I'm sure, but I started this post a month ago, so it's time to just throw this out there. And it's past time to publicly thank theater, and The Normal Heart in particular, for kicking me in the ass. I have so much gratitude for Larry Kramer, Joel Grey, George C. Wolfe, Ellen Barkin, and the rest of the cast and creative team for setting me on this new path--wherever it takes me.

Please, go back and read what I said after seeing the show last June. That feeling I had as I left the theater never went away. What a powerful show! I'm looking forward to taking a trip to D.C. in June to see it on tour. That should wrap this story up perfectly, I think.

Dreamcasting Anais Mitchell's Hadestown

http://www.hadestown.com




I'm still awaiting more news on when we'll see a full stage production of Anais Mitchell's brilliant Hadestown, a depression-era folk-opera retelling of the story of Euridice and Orpheus. In the meantime, I can't help but do a bit of dreamcasting.

Listen to the show recorded live at Club Passim (legally) then tell me your dream cast!

Eurydice: ROSE HEMINGWAY

u/s Elizabeth Davis, Arielle Jacobs [NOT Laura Osnes!]

Orpheus: COLIN DONNELL

u/s Stark Sands, Bobby Steggert

Hades, king of the underworld: TOM WOPAT

u/s Chuck Cooper, Michael Cerveris

Persephone, who runs a speakeasy: SARA RAMIREZ

u/s Kate Baldwin, Idina Menzel, Jan Maxwell, Andréa Burns

The Three Fates: HEATHER ROBB (of The Spring Standards), ASPEN VINCENT, and HOLLY BROOK (of Duncan Sheik's Whisper House)

u/s Alysha Umphress, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Lauren Pritchard

Hermes the storyteller (a hobo): RAUL ESPARZA

u/s Brian d'Arcy James, Steve Kazee, ginger-bearded Michael Esper, Norbert Leo Butz

Ensemble: Mikey Winslow, John Rua, Gerard Canonico, Declan Bennett, Colman Domingo, David Alvarez, Seth Stewart, Eliseo Román, Olga Merediz, Scott Porter, Andrew Call, Bryce Ryness, Sydney James Harcourt, Leslie McDonel, Jennifer Bowles, Krysta Rodriguez, Nina Lafarga, Afra Hines, Eryn Murman, Alice Lee, Kimiko Glenn, [NEEDS MORE WOMEN]

Director: John Tiffany

Choreographer: Steven Hoggett