We have had a crazy awesome brilliant couple of days!
It started out with Wednesday when we visited Central Park to check out our wedding venue and picnic area and just have a general look around. It is really beautiful there and we are so excited for next week! We also took our Don Giovanni opera t-shirts and got a fun selfie to send back to the troops going into production week in NZ just to let them know we are thinking of them.
Then we trekked to Times Square to the huge M&M store to create some personalized M&M’s for our wedding favours and we made friends with the staff – particularly Miss Coco who loved the fact we had come over to get married and went out of her way to help us, get us discounts and make our experience memorable.
That night our Broadway show was….
Broadway Show #2
Where: Music Box Theatre
Seats: Side Orchestra
Favourite number: ‘No Time At All’ – Berthe and The Players
Rating: 8/10
The show was spectacular and filled with amazing circus performers of great physique who performed incredible acts in and around the story and music. There was acrobatics, fire, pole climbing (and horizontal bodies hanging from vertical poles!), balancing acts, tricks on giant swiss balls and lots of juggling. The story is great, the music is fun and the acting was superb! Our favourite number was Pippin’s grandmother, Berthe. She must be in her sixties and she was singing about living it up no matter what age you are. As she was singing she did an upside-down act on a circular trapeze – she was incredible! And really proved the point of her song.
And as an added bonus we got to meet Berthe (Broadway legend Andrea Martin!) in an exclusive post-show talk. We got to meet her because we’ve booked so many shows with Broadway that I’m starting to get added bonuses through our membership. Pretty cool once-in-a-lifetime stuff, meeting Broadway legends. She created the role of Berthe in the revival workshops back in 2012 and played the role in the first year of its staging AND won a Tony for the role (no surprises why, once we saw her act!). She has returned for three weeks only in the role which happened to coincide with our viewing!
After the chat with Andrea, I made friends with the show’s Marketing Manager and got us a backstage tour on our way out. Backstage is TINY! It makes a lot of our NZ theatres look luxurious in space. We then exited through the stage door and confused all the fans waiting outside for autographs as to who we were.
Yesterday we went on the Staten Island Ferry, met Lady Liberty from a distance and went and got lost in Lower Manhattan. Then without meaning to, we found ourselves at the 9/11 memorial which was an incredibly humbling and beautiful coincidence on 9/11 Memorial Day. We paid our respects and moved on quickly back to Times Square.
We have a habit of making friends with our wait staff and dinner was no exception – our waitress was super lovely and at the end of our meal she delivered us complimentary congratulatory cupcakes! Yum! Then show number 3!
Broadway Show #3
Where: Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill
Seats: Upper Centre Orchestra
Favourite number: Moonlight
Rating: 8.5/10
Tickets purchased with contributions from: Sandra Rasmussen and Sr Trish Hanaray
Before we left New Zealand the lovely Sandra sent us an engagement card with some USD inside with a note saying to do something luxurious. With some extra added help from Aunty Trish, this was our pick. One of our favourite Broadway superstars doing a one woman show about Billie Holiday at the end of her career and it was INCREDIBLE.
With support from a jazz band and a cute chihuahua, Audra took us on an amazing journey of the highs and lows of Billie’s life while performing her biggest hits. She absolutely blew us away with how she embodies Billie Holiday and replicated her very distinctive voice. Incredible. And did I mention incredible?!
Oh and afterwards we got to meet her. It was AWESOME! So, so awesome.
Tx
Run away with us 