Weekend, with art and RSL
As previously mentioned, deelaundry and I drove up to NYC this weekend to see Robert Sean Leonard in the play Born Yesterday and do a bit of sightseeing/friend- and family-visiting while we were there.
I had an emotionally taxing Friday but perked up after rejoining Dee on Saturday. We spent several hours wandering through the Museum of Modern Art, which I hadn't been to since they refabbed in 2004. Highlights included World War I prints by Otto Dix; exhibits on plywood, recently acquired typefaces, and dozens of painted vignette-on-wood tiles by a Belgian artist living in Mexico named Francis Alÿs (examples); and a disappointingly small exhibition on film director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Strange Days, Near Dark, Point Break etc.).
Then we dropped by Midtown Comics, at which point we found out we'd missed a Big Apple Comic Con event that very day which included guest appearances by Tom Felton, Morena Baccarin and James Marsters. Oh well. Once you've attended a Marsters concert, you feel less motivated to fangirl all over him.
Speaking of fangirling all over someone. If you follow deelaundry, you already know how this turned out, but after the play that night we waited by the stage door and met RSL. Yay!
There weren't as many people crowded around as I'd expected-maybe 30 in all, split to the left and right-and I don't know how many were waiting on RSL as compared to Jim Belushi, but I was still uncertain whether RSL would come out and whether he would visit both sides before taking off.
As it happened, he was one of the first actors to come outside-maybe 10 minutes after we'd leisurely made our way down from the mezzanine-and he patiently and affably signed or took pictures with the people who asked. It was cute; after finishing with one person or group, he'd glance at the rest of the crowd, see if anyone was looking at him and ask if they wanted him to sign something. Not stuck-up and not weary, just wondering. Very sweet.
He looked really good. Really surprisingly good. So much better than he has the last few seasons on House, where they cut his hair too short and where he has looked puffy in the face. He had his glasses on, which I adore, and a tan baseball cap (Grey's Anatomy, ha, what the hell), under which you could see a spray of bangs, and his cheekbones were back. He looked young and slim like five years ago, like when my friend and I saw him read Henry IV, and it was just fantastic.
He went to the other side first. Some group of guys started chanting, "Wil-son! Wil-son!" which was sort of embarrassing, but no one got punched in the face and RSL didn't leave, so no harm done. (Dee had been telling me stories about other fans who'd seen the play and about interview clips RSL has done that imply that he is not thrilled with everyone fawning over House instead of his theater work; but then again, he's apparently said some tactless things when people have complimented the latter, too, so overall we were just expecting him to say something weird.)
When he was done with the other side, he started in on ours. One or two autographs and then he caught my eye and did his "Do you want me?" thing and I was all *nod, nod, yes, yes* and he came over to sign for us. Dee was all adorably flustered as she offered him the infamous House/Wilson TV Guide issue with the silly string to sign. He said, "Oh!" or "Oh, wow," when he saw it. That could have been because of the House-ness or age of it or because of what he asked as he was looking for a place to sign, which was along the lines of "When did TV Guide get so big? It used to be Reader's Digest-sized." So that was the winning comment of the evening.
Dee relayed this afterwards. I was making my way around the metal barrier so I could hand RSL my Playbill and ask for a picture. I'd been thinking during the week about what I wanted from the encounter, and while an autograph was nice, mostly I wanted an exchange of touches. Not to sound creepy or anything; it just meant more to me in this case. Since "Will you take a photo with me?" sounds more legitimate than "Can I have a hug?" I went for the former.
So he was so pretty, did I mention? signed my Playbill and agreed to take a picture, and I got to put an arm around his back and rest it on his waist while Dee got the camera ready. Figuring the genre-neutral path was best, I said it was great to have him back in New York, which I think got a "thank you." Then I added that we'd come up from DC to see the play, which got… nothing, heh. Anyway, Dee took a photo and he started to move away, but he agreed easily enough when she said it was blurry and asked if we could try again. Thus I had a very pleasing 30 seconds or so in a half-hug with him. Dee wasn't kidding when she said in her post that I cared a lot less about the quality of the resulting images than about the extra time beneath his arm.
(He looked so much better than that, I can't even tell you.)
\o/
One more person asked for a photo-a man who said it was his wife's 50th birthday, and RSL was like, 'Ah! well, then'-before he got into the passenger seat of a waiting car, was handed a backpack from someone in the back seat and chatted with the moustachioed driver who may or may not have been a cast member, and a short while later they drove off (not without being honked at by a cab as they tried to pull out). Dee said one of the women in back was co-star Nina Arianda, who'd come out while RSL was with us and who was the best thing about the play.
Then we (deelaundry and I, plus no_detective, who'd looked on in fond amusement, and pun and a friend of hers, who'd also seen the play but didn't feel like waiting after) met up at a lovely little wine and chocolate bar for a postmortem and other conversation. There followed squee and discussion of the latest staging of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and this cute and delicious key lime truffle:
About the play itself: Quite enjoyable. Applicable to today's political climate, which is doubtless why they decided to stage it again despite it being 65 years old. One character each to represent industry, government, law, journalism (the fourth estate) and the people, plus one who was either the increasingly irrelevant gangster type or the proletariat, depending on whether you ask me or Dee. Regardless, the characters were fleshed out just fine so it didn't feel like a simple caricature of a morality play.
Nina Arianda, as mentioned, was fantastic as the self-professed "stupid" and uncultured girlfriend of Jim Belushi's arrogant, coarse, self-made "junk" magnate. The plot sounded akin to Pygmalion-Belushi's character hires a guy (RSL's investigative political journalist) to smarten up Arianda's so she won't embarrass him when they move to DC (ironic, as he is no suave or educated businessman himself)-but it pleasantly was not very close. They focused on education and awareness, not diction-she sounded just as Jersey at the end as she did at the start-and it took on an unstated feminist angle as she began to stand up to the powerful men around her with increasing confidence.
I really empathized with one of the more emotional moments during her journey, in which she broke down crying because she realized she could never read all the books in a single bookstore and was distraught that now that she was beginning to understand how the country actually worked as compared with how its founders dreamed it would, she was no longer happy with it or with herself or her life or her relationship and didn't know what to do about it and she missed the blissful ignorance she'd enjoyed up to that point. As Dee said, she wasn't stupid, she was just empty, and happily so; but by the end of the play, filling up, she'd come into herself more and seemed capable of taking on whatever she wanted to (as symbolized in part by her choosing to be with RSL's character, agreeing with his ideals and support of the pursuit of knowledge more than with Belushi's character's corruption and mistreatment-and it wasn't exactly leaving one man just to become attached to another, since she turned them both down first).
And there was a part about the need to use plain language! Yay plain language.
It was a comedy, if I haven't mentioned, and generally funny with the exception (rightly so) of a few minutes when Belushi knocked Arianda around to force her to sign some papers for him.
Speaking of performance fighting-excellent fangirly moment when Belushi attacked RSL and choked him on the floor. Glasses flew. His face went all red. Mm. Even if it, like the above, still felt a bit clunky in the staging.
A good line, Arianda's character to RSL's: "You don't love me, you just love my brain."
Here are some photos that represent how he looked on stage the night we saw him:
Ah, yes, did I mention? RSL and Arianda kissed in the first act, and oh, it was lovely and sudden. Felt much more genuine than most of the on-screen kisses I have seen him do. Maybe the distance helped? Or maybe he just does better in theater.
The set was gorgeous, the costumes colorful. Arianda was completely believable; Belushi and RSL almost as much so, although the former could be improved with tighter direction and the latter I've seen more engaged in other performances. Most of the period-specific vocabulary worked all right, but I had trouble buying Belushi's use of the word "broad." RSL had a tendency to deliver his one-word answers a little too late and a little too short, as though his mind were elsewhere. I'm attributing that to his character, who must always have been thinking about his articles and the nation while visiting Belushi's rooms. There was some difficulty hearing people in the first few minutes as characters banged around with luggage and drinks. The guy playing the lawyer needed to stop trailing off at the ends of his sentences.
My biggest complaint is that the first act needed to be tightened up in both words and direction (a surprise, since Doug Hughes is at the helm) to take about half the time. Most everything happened in the second act; could have watched another hour of that.
Overall, a good show, definitely enjoyable in and of itself, Arianda is getting justifiably good press, and it was of course made better for this viewer with RSL on stage. Our seats were excellent in the second row of the low mezzanine. No squinting required.
To summarize, I agree with Charles Isherwood:
I had an emotionally taxing Friday but perked up after rejoining Dee on Saturday. We spent several hours wandering through the Museum of Modern Art, which I hadn't been to since they refabbed in 2004. Highlights included World War I prints by Otto Dix; exhibits on plywood, recently acquired typefaces, and dozens of painted vignette-on-wood tiles by a Belgian artist living in Mexico named Francis Alÿs (examples); and a disappointingly small exhibition on film director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Strange Days, Near Dark, Point Break etc.).
Then we dropped by Midtown Comics, at which point we found out we'd missed a Big Apple Comic Con event that very day which included guest appearances by Tom Felton, Morena Baccarin and James Marsters. Oh well. Once you've attended a Marsters concert, you feel less motivated to fangirl all over him.
Speaking of fangirling all over someone. If you follow deelaundry, you already know how this turned out, but after the play that night we waited by the stage door and met RSL. Yay!
There weren't as many people crowded around as I'd expected-maybe 30 in all, split to the left and right-and I don't know how many were waiting on RSL as compared to Jim Belushi, but I was still uncertain whether RSL would come out and whether he would visit both sides before taking off.
As it happened, he was one of the first actors to come outside-maybe 10 minutes after we'd leisurely made our way down from the mezzanine-and he patiently and affably signed or took pictures with the people who asked. It was cute; after finishing with one person or group, he'd glance at the rest of the crowd, see if anyone was looking at him and ask if they wanted him to sign something. Not stuck-up and not weary, just wondering. Very sweet.
He looked really good. Really surprisingly good. So much better than he has the last few seasons on House, where they cut his hair too short and where he has looked puffy in the face. He had his glasses on, which I adore, and a tan baseball cap (Grey's Anatomy, ha, what the hell), under which you could see a spray of bangs, and his cheekbones were back. He looked young and slim like five years ago, like when my friend and I saw him read Henry IV, and it was just fantastic.
He went to the other side first. Some group of guys started chanting, "Wil-son! Wil-son!" which was sort of embarrassing, but no one got punched in the face and RSL didn't leave, so no harm done. (Dee had been telling me stories about other fans who'd seen the play and about interview clips RSL has done that imply that he is not thrilled with everyone fawning over House instead of his theater work; but then again, he's apparently said some tactless things when people have complimented the latter, too, so overall we were just expecting him to say something weird.)
When he was done with the other side, he started in on ours. One or two autographs and then he caught my eye and did his "Do you want me?" thing and I was all *nod, nod, yes, yes* and he came over to sign for us. Dee was all adorably flustered as she offered him the infamous House/Wilson TV Guide issue with the silly string to sign. He said, "Oh!" or "Oh, wow," when he saw it. That could have been because of the House-ness or age of it or because of what he asked as he was looking for a place to sign, which was along the lines of "When did TV Guide get so big? It used to be Reader's Digest-sized." So that was the winning comment of the evening.
Dee relayed this afterwards. I was making my way around the metal barrier so I could hand RSL my Playbill and ask for a picture. I'd been thinking during the week about what I wanted from the encounter, and while an autograph was nice, mostly I wanted an exchange of touches. Not to sound creepy or anything; it just meant more to me in this case. Since "Will you take a photo with me?" sounds more legitimate than "Can I have a hug?" I went for the former.
So he was so pretty, did I mention? signed my Playbill and agreed to take a picture, and I got to put an arm around his back and rest it on his waist while Dee got the camera ready. Figuring the genre-neutral path was best, I said it was great to have him back in New York, which I think got a "thank you." Then I added that we'd come up from DC to see the play, which got… nothing, heh. Anyway, Dee took a photo and he started to move away, but he agreed easily enough when she said it was blurry and asked if we could try again. Thus I had a very pleasing 30 seconds or so in a half-hug with him. Dee wasn't kidding when she said in her post that I cared a lot less about the quality of the resulting images than about the extra time beneath his arm.
(He looked so much better than that, I can't even tell you.)
\o/
One more person asked for a photo-a man who said it was his wife's 50th birthday, and RSL was like, 'Ah! well, then'-before he got into the passenger seat of a waiting car, was handed a backpack from someone in the back seat and chatted with the moustachioed driver who may or may not have been a cast member, and a short while later they drove off (not without being honked at by a cab as they tried to pull out). Dee said one of the women in back was co-star Nina Arianda, who'd come out while RSL was with us and who was the best thing about the play.
Then we (deelaundry and I, plus no_detective, who'd looked on in fond amusement, and pun and a friend of hers, who'd also seen the play but didn't feel like waiting after) met up at a lovely little wine and chocolate bar for a postmortem and other conversation. There followed squee and discussion of the latest staging of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and this cute and delicious key lime truffle:
About the play itself: Quite enjoyable. Applicable to today's political climate, which is doubtless why they decided to stage it again despite it being 65 years old. One character each to represent industry, government, law, journalism (the fourth estate) and the people, plus one who was either the increasingly irrelevant gangster type or the proletariat, depending on whether you ask me or Dee. Regardless, the characters were fleshed out just fine so it didn't feel like a simple caricature of a morality play.
Nina Arianda, as mentioned, was fantastic as the self-professed "stupid" and uncultured girlfriend of Jim Belushi's arrogant, coarse, self-made "junk" magnate. The plot sounded akin to Pygmalion-Belushi's character hires a guy (RSL's investigative political journalist) to smarten up Arianda's so she won't embarrass him when they move to DC (ironic, as he is no suave or educated businessman himself)-but it pleasantly was not very close. They focused on education and awareness, not diction-she sounded just as Jersey at the end as she did at the start-and it took on an unstated feminist angle as she began to stand up to the powerful men around her with increasing confidence.
I really empathized with one of the more emotional moments during her journey, in which she broke down crying because she realized she could never read all the books in a single bookstore and was distraught that now that she was beginning to understand how the country actually worked as compared with how its founders dreamed it would, she was no longer happy with it or with herself or her life or her relationship and didn't know what to do about it and she missed the blissful ignorance she'd enjoyed up to that point. As Dee said, she wasn't stupid, she was just empty, and happily so; but by the end of the play, filling up, she'd come into herself more and seemed capable of taking on whatever she wanted to (as symbolized in part by her choosing to be with RSL's character, agreeing with his ideals and support of the pursuit of knowledge more than with Belushi's character's corruption and mistreatment-and it wasn't exactly leaving one man just to become attached to another, since she turned them both down first).
And there was a part about the need to use plain language! Yay plain language.
It was a comedy, if I haven't mentioned, and generally funny with the exception (rightly so) of a few minutes when Belushi knocked Arianda around to force her to sign some papers for him.
Speaking of performance fighting-excellent fangirly moment when Belushi attacked RSL and choked him on the floor. Glasses flew. His face went all red. Mm. Even if it, like the above, still felt a bit clunky in the staging.
A good line, Arianda's character to RSL's: "You don't love me, you just love my brain."
Here are some photos that represent how he looked on stage the night we saw him:
Ah, yes, did I mention? RSL and Arianda kissed in the first act, and oh, it was lovely and sudden. Felt much more genuine than most of the on-screen kisses I have seen him do. Maybe the distance helped? Or maybe he just does better in theater.
The set was gorgeous, the costumes colorful. Arianda was completely believable; Belushi and RSL almost as much so, although the former could be improved with tighter direction and the latter I've seen more engaged in other performances. Most of the period-specific vocabulary worked all right, but I had trouble buying Belushi's use of the word "broad." RSL had a tendency to deliver his one-word answers a little too late and a little too short, as though his mind were elsewhere. I'm attributing that to his character, who must always have been thinking about his articles and the nation while visiting Belushi's rooms. There was some difficulty hearing people in the first few minutes as characters banged around with luggage and drinks. The guy playing the lawyer needed to stop trailing off at the ends of his sentences.
My biggest complaint is that the first act needed to be tightened up in both words and direction (a surprise, since Doug Hughes is at the helm) to take about half the time. Most everything happened in the second act; could have watched another hour of that.
Overall, a good show, definitely enjoyable in and of itself, Arianda is getting justifiably good press, and it was of course made better for this viewer with RSL on stage. Our seats were excellent in the second row of the low mezzanine. No squinting required.
To summarize, I agree with Charles Isherwood: