What do you do in New York City on a beautiful Saturday in September when the weather is balmy and the skies are bright blue? How about spending the morning inside your expensive hotel room?
Notice I didn’t say “inside your nice hotel room.” Any hotel room in New York is expensive. Not all of them are nice. Ours is not conducive to lounging around, but it does have broadband Internet, and when two travelers have been deprived of Internet for a day, Nature calls.
Our first outing of the day was to Bryant Park on the Avenue of the Americas. It is a green oasis near Times Square, a compact 9 1/2 acres of activities and relaxation known as Manhattan’s Town Square. We missed the juggling lessons at 11 am but saw some still practicing. Lunch at an outpost of ale Pain Quotidian was avocado toast with chia seeds for me, and a quinoa bowl for Slava. (We’re going deeper into healthy eating).
It was with some misgivings that I went with Slava to the matinee of “Miss Saigon.” I had spent the previous week consciously avoiding my DVR recordings of the Ken Burns series on the Vietnam War. As a Boomer friend said to me, “I lived through it once. I don’t want to do it again.”
So here I was sitting in a theatre waiting for the start of a musical about the Vietnam War. It didn’t help that “Miss Saigon”is sort of an adaptation/ update of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly.” I’m not an opera lover.
“Miss Saigon”was written by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil. Who are those guys? Well, they wrote “Les Miserables,” and there are a number of similarities between these two love tragedies set in war time. Notably there’s a funny bad guy in both. In “Les Miz” he’s the delightful innkeeper who’s an amoral low-life. In “Miss Saigon” he is tagged “Engineer,” a man with big dreams and no scruples. The part is so significant that Engineer is the lead character in “Miss Saigon.”
The big dramatic moment in “Miss Saigon” is when the helicopter takes off with the American ambassador leaving Saigon. Those of us who remember that moment find it especially poignant in the play.
I’m not writing a full review of “Miss Saigon” and will go now directly to the bottom line: it’s wonderfully worthwhile, and I’m glad to have had the opportunity to see it on Broadway.
Notice I didn’t say “inside your nice hotel room.” Any hotel room in New York is expensive. Not all of them are nice. Ours is not conducive to lounging around, but it does have broadband Internet, and when two travelers have been deprived of Internet for a day, Nature calls.
Our first outing of the day was to Bryant Park on the Avenue of the Americas. It is a green oasis near Times Square, a compact 9 1/2 acres of activities and relaxation known as Manhattan’s Town Square. We missed the juggling lessons at 11 am but saw some still practicing. Lunch at an outpost of ale Pain Quotidian was avocado toast with chia seeds for me, and a quinoa bowl for Slava. (We’re going deeper into healthy eating).
It was with some misgivings that I went with Slava to the matinee of “Miss Saigon.” I had spent the previous week consciously avoiding my DVR recordings of the Ken Burns series on the Vietnam War. As a Boomer friend said to me, “I lived through it once. I don’t want to do it again.”
So here I was sitting in a theatre waiting for the start of a musical about the Vietnam War. It didn’t help that “Miss Saigon”is sort of an adaptation/ update of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly.” I’m not an opera lover.
“Miss Saigon”was written by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil. Who are those guys? Well, they wrote “Les Miserables,” and there are a number of similarities between these two love tragedies set in war time. Notably there’s a funny bad guy in both. In “Les Miz” he’s the delightful innkeeper who’s an amoral low-life. In “Miss Saigon” he is tagged “Engineer,” a man with big dreams and no scruples. The part is so significant that Engineer is the lead character in “Miss Saigon.”
The big dramatic moment in “Miss Saigon” is when the helicopter takes off with the American ambassador leaving Saigon. Those of us who remember that moment find it especially poignant in the play.
I’m not writing a full review of “Miss Saigon” and will go now directly to the bottom line: it’s wonderfully worthwhile, and I’m glad to have had the opportunity to see it on Broadway.
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