Nothing's as Amazing as a Musical

Context: This post is about the fifth day (and fourth day in the city) of my second New York City trip.

When we got back to Older Sister's dorm after School of Rock, all of her roommate's stuff was gone.

Goodbye, Older Sister's roommate. That we never saw. I don't know how that girl was getting in and out of 35 Fifth Avenue so sneakily. Probably it helped that she actually lived there. My younger sisters and I, as guests, had to produce our guest passes and photo IDs to the security guard every time we came through the door. These security guard changed every few hours, and they came in a wide variety. Some of them were friendly and polite. Some of them were totally indifferent. Some seemed almost antagonistic.

Anyways, I'm sure Older Sister's roommate wasn't thinking of our convenience, but her abrupt departure was a blessing nonetheless. We immediately strewed our stuff around the room, and Little Sister claimed the now-empty bed for her own. Older Sister didn't have work in the morning, so we could all sleep in if we wanted to. Now we were really living in style!

But we didn't want to sleep in. At the last minute, we decided that, since we'd hauled our American Girl dolls across the country, we were definitely going back to the American Girl Place to try our luck with the hair appointments.

The lady had said that we needed to be there as soon after 9:00 as possible. We got there around 9:20. Would there even be any appointments left at a time that we could go? We weren't sure. It was a Saturday, and there would be a lot of parents off work bringing their daughters, and a lot of tourists, and—and—and—

—and we rushed in, rushed up the stairs, and rushed to the pink-floored area where hair appointments could be made. And got appointments for all three of our dolls within the hour!

Watching our dolls get their hair done was so cute! They had miniature hairstyling chairs with miniature aprons to protect the dolls' clothes, just like in real life. The hairstyles we chose came with complimentary hair ribbons in the colors of our choices.

As she worked, the hairstylist told us that she had Molly when she was a little girl. She'd actually invented a hairstyle for Molly (pictured below). That was gratifying because growing up, it always seemed like Samantha was the most popular doll. It was nice for Molly girl to get some love.

A flipped ponytail with a braid for Molly!

Once our dolls' hairs had been brushed, sprayed, styled, and trimmed (we learned that, as the doll hair loosens over the years, it actually grows a little), they looked almost new. Little Sister and Baby Sister chose to also get Samantha and Kit's ears pierced. So many childhood dreams come true!

While we were in the neighborhood, we grabbed tickets for the top of the Rockefeller Center for 11:00 p.m. Little Sister and I had decided that, of all the cliché tourist-y things we could have taken Baby Sister to do during the trip, this was the one that we were willing to spend money on. We'd have just enough time to make it after our show ended that night.

We proudly escorted our dolls and their beautiful hair back to Older Sister's place. Older Sister accompanied us during a quiet lunch of meat pies and lemonade at the Union Square farmer's market, then to the matinee of Something Rotten!

The rest of the day was devoted to musical theatre.

First, Something Rotten! We saw this show last year, just weeks after it opened. I didn't like the moments of crude humor, but I loved the cleverness and the well-delivered performances.

By this point, July 2016, the show has been running for some fifteen, sixteen months. The leading man, Brian D'arcy James, left the show just a few months ago. So there was a new (but very excellent) leading man. The rest of the cast—John Cariani, Christian Borle, et al—was still there. And they did a good job, no question. But I could tell that they'd been doing this show for a long time and that they had gotten slightly bored with it. How could I tell that? Because every single main performer, except the girl playing Portia, was doing everything they'd done the last time I saw the show plus 200% more. They were hamming it up, over-exaggerating their character's quirks, delivering their lines new ways. Some of what they did was quite funny. Still, I felt like the original interpretations of the characters were much better and that the performance this time was a little jarring. To be fair, it may also have been the matinee slump; I feel like matinees never have the same energy as a nighttime performance.

So Something Rotten! is still great, but I didn't like it as much this time around.

Afterward, it was time to get dinner, but said dinner was essentially another musical theatre performance because we went to Ellen's Stardust Diner!

As soon as they let us into Ellen's (there was a line coming out of the building and wrapping around the corner), it was easy to see that the place was a classic tourist trap. In other words, everything was unjustifiably expensive. We were aware beforehand of the tourist trappiness yet chose to eat dinner there anyways. Why? Because singing waiters, that's why!

View from the balcony.

See, Ellen's wait staff is a bunch of actors and actresses who are either trying to get into a Broadway show, are between Broadway shows, or were on Broadway once but haven't been able to break back in. So while you eat your over-priced food, they sing and dance to karaoke tracks. Or rather, they belt and dance, because every wait staff personnel who sang that night seemed to have a Broadway-style belt. They belted songs from the radio and from Oklahoma. A guy and a girl belted "Suddenly Seymour." Five or six of them did "One Day More" from different parts of the restaurant: upstairs, downstairs, wherever, until they met at the front for the grand finale.

I also enjoyed the general atmosphere of Ellen's. The building style and the interior decor reminded me of a restaurant called Galaxy that I loved as a kid. Also, the chicken pot pie, though definitely overpriced, was the best chicken pot pie I've ever had.

The chicken pot pie: basically chicken stew (with mushrooms) that was topped with a square phyllo dough.

Towards the end of our meal, the manager guy, who had the voice of Fred Figglehorn, gave a speech about how, if we'd enjoyed our entertainment, we should put some money into the bucket they were passing around. The bucket money went towards paying for singing, dancing, and acting lessons for the wait staff.

I put a dollar in. When I graduated from college, I had two things: an arts degree and no real hope that I'd ever earn a steady paycheck. I've been fortunate to be as successful as I have. I could spare a dollar to help other creative-type people hone their skills and, hopefully, find work in their chosen field just as I've been able to find work in mine.

After Ellen's, we said good-bye to Older Sister, who was not going with us to the final musical of the trip, Waitress.

Waitress deserves praise for its clever use of theming alone. Based on a movie I've never seen, the musical is about a waitress who bakes pies to express her feelings about life events. The moment we entered the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, we were hit with the scent of fresh-baked pie. I don't know how they bottled that scent, but it was there, and it was amazing.

Then, before the show and during intermission, the theatre had people walking up and down the aisles selling tiny pies in jars. I wasn't super hungry after my delicious pot pie, but I decided that the experience of eating a tiny pie in a Broadway theatre while watching a show about pie was not to be missed.

This cute jar held one tiny, chocolate-Oreo pie!

And what about the show itself? Delightful! Sara Bareilles wrote the music and lyrics, which were fun. The performances were top-notch, particularly Jessie Mueller and Kimiko Glenn. There was one song that got really inappropriate, and a few instances of abstract dance-exposition that got a little weird. Still, though, it was entertaining and engrossing and emotional.

Some food for thought: Waitress is a musical about difficult, serious things; so is Fiddler on the Roof. Even though the subject matter is painful, the musicals themselves are fun. I think that's what people love about musicals...good ones usually don't take themselves too seriously, because it's hard to be serious when somebody is liable to burst into song and dance at any minute. Yet in spite of, or maybe because of, the levity, musicals often convey touching and life-changing messages. There isn't another art form quite like it.

After the show ended, we raced to the Rockefeller Center, where we boarded an elevator headed for the Top of the Rock. It was almost closing time, so the observation decks weren't too crowded. We got lots of pictures as we gazed out over the city.

I'm a night person; I think most clearly at night. And there's something about an inspiring landscape that makes the human soul ponder its utmost desires. I looked out at New York City and its skyscrapers and its parks and its patriotic red, white, and blue 4th of July lights, and I thought about what I wanted. I'd seen so little of the vast city, and I wanted to see more, someday, if I had the opportunity to return. Yet part of me wasn't sure that I wanted the opportunity to return. That part of me hoped that I would find myself doing more important stuff in the near future and that I would have neither the time nor the money to come back, simply because I would be spending that time and money on other, dearer things.

I looked, and I thought, but there was nothing on the horizon to indicate what the future might hold.

And that was my last night in New York City. I'd been planning blog posts in my head all week, and I wondered if I would even write about our trip home the next day. It seemed like I might not have anything to say about that.

I was wrong.