Some theater chat

Grey Gardens: This past winter, my mom and I braved the New York TKTS line to see if we could get tickets to a show--any show. We hadn't really done any research beforehand and figured that we would just have to take what we could get when we got to the front of the line. So literally seconds before getting to the ticket window we decided on Grey Gardens, because I'd at least heard of it and some other people deliberating around us were getting tickets to it also. To my surprise, it turned out to be reallty excellent, with a huge powerhouse performance by its star, Christine Ebersole, who plays dual roles. Five months later, she's won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. How cool is that?

Anyway, for those of you unfamiliar with Grey Gardens, it's a musical based on a documentary of the same name from the 70s about two relatives of Jackie Onassis, a mother and daughter, who were once at the top of the New York social circle, but somehow ended up being famous recluses in their rundown Hamptons mansion. The first act takes place in the 1940s, with Ebersole as the elder Edith, and Little Edie, the daughter, set to be married. The second act skips forward to the 1970s, with Ebersole playing Little Edie. It's a really different kind of musical than I've seen in the past in that the cast is very limited so it feels more like a play in which the characters happen to sing every once in awhile. There's a full range of emotions running through the show, lots of laughs but also lots of sadness. And Christine Ebersole really was amazing. I'm pretty impressed by theater actors in general...playing the same part day in and day out for months on end and still keeping the performance fresh. How do they do it?

Spamalot:During our trip to the UK last month, my friend and I only had 3 days in London so we were trying to pack in as much sightseeing as possible during the day and wanted to do something a little more low-key during the evenings. So despite neither of us being huge theater buffs, we decided to try and get tickets to a musical in the West End. Both being from New York, we weren't really sure of our chances, but we decided to try our luck at a few box offices and were really surprised to learn that nearly every show had decent seats available right before the show, even ones that are sold out months in advance on Broadway like Wicked and Mary Poppins. Anyway, being in England and all, we decided to see Spamalot! Our seats were waaaay up in the theater, which had some seriously extreme stadium seating. I was in a seat that was sort of sticking out into the aisle with no seat in front of me and at times I felt like if I leaned a bit too forward I was going to topple over and fall off the balcony, but the view wasn't obstructed so I can't really complain. And the musical was really just great fun. It's loosely based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but most of it involves parodying and making fun of musicals in general. I'm not really going to go into the plot much because I personally thought it was a lot more fun not knowing what to expect. I will say though, that I'm pretty much totally dense and didn't even realize that Spamalot rhymes with Camelot until halfway through the show...