Recap and Pictures of Thursday and Friday
Also under cuts ...
So where we left off, I was in bed on Thursday morning at like 5:30, awake. Looking back, I wish I'd dragged Kasey out of bed to go stand in line for tickets to Live with Kelly, but hindsight is 20/20 and I was EXHAUSTED and wasn't thinking clearly. It turned out to be an AMAZING day anyway :)
So we got up that morning with a Plan. We got up, got ready, and went to this awesome diner for pancakes :)
(Lux is looking a little sleepy there... and I was having a MIRACULOUSLY wonderful hair and makeup day, praise be to God...)
Our diner with yummy pancakes.
From there, we took the subway to the Met (thank GOD for my iPhone, because my little GPS system got us around the city like nobody's business. It was fantastic.) The Met was awesome. I can't even ... it was ahhhhmazing. Love love love.
So THEN we walked across Central Park and went to the diner. THE diner. DARREN'S diner. Because we're stalkers like that. And in the most serendipitous moment EVER TO EXIST, we walk in and the guy asks us how many, we say 3, and he says "Okay, just go sit in the window." THE window. THE WINDOW WHERE DARREN SAT. So we quietly squeed and freaked out and lost it, and took pictures. (But there were lots of people, so we couldn't recreate the scene like we wanted to.....)
The diner
MY ASS IS SITTING WHERE DARREN'S ASS HAS SAT BEFORE. I should not be as excited about that as I am, but oh well. I am a crazy fangirl.
Wheeee!!!!
We even got a sundae to eat. We are crazy stalkers.
So THEN we got back on the subway and went to Magnolia Bakery and kind of didn't know where we were for a second but then we figured it out and then we went to this kindof kitschy Broadway store and I paid $40 for an A Secretary is not a Toy t-shirt which I loooove and then we went back to the hotel to get ready :)
So we're in our hotel absolutely FREAKING OUT and trying to get ready and I'm freaking out over omg I don't like this sweater anymore and WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WE'RE GOING TO SEE DARREN ON BROADWAY OMG when the bathroom door somehow gets locked. From the outside. (Luckily no one was locked inside because then we REALLY would've been freaking out.) So we call down to the front desk, they come unlock our door, and then we finish getting ready. And pose for a picture.
(yes, that's Darren with us. I printed him out and brought him along for posterity's sake :)
So we skipped, squealing down the street to the theater and got there around 5:30 or so and then we waited. And waited. And he was late, lol. I managed to catch one picture of him as he was rushing into the theater (he couldn't sign ANYTHING, it was just a little wave and a "hey, guys!" before he ran inside.)
Darren's name in lights. I nearly cried when I saw this the first time.
this is the original picture. What was so sad is that we were like at the VERY front of the gate cause we got there so early, and he couldn't sign anything, but once we got out of the theater that night, we were SO FAR AWAY because people left the show early to go stand by the stage door.
MY BABY. Also, my impressive master of an Instagram photo - this is a picture taken with my iPhone of the picture on my camera edited and zoomed in, and then filtered with Instagram. GOD I love technology.
So then we waited in line to go into the theater, and we were SO. FREAKING. EXCITED.
So the show. You GUYS. It was AMAZING. We were all clutching each other and I kept flopping over on Kasey and trying not to make crazy fangirl noises, but oh MAN he was good. A few points of note - his voice is not Broadway-strong yet. He still sounded AWESOME. He was ALWAYS on key, he never forgot a lyric, he was just like spot on, and there were several moments that just ... I just can't even say. Like his tone would hit some sweet spot or something and I was just GONE. And the DANCING...
Okay, let's back up and try to go sequentially. We had amazing, amazing seats, close enough to see his facial expressions, which were fantastic. I think my heart stopped when he first came out on the window washer seat thing, his leg twisted around that rope ... The first song was amazing. (I mean, this is gonna be a trend, so get used to it. They were ALL amazing.) One thing I was really disappointed with was that Rose Hemmingway was out that night. Her understudy was great, but I reeeeeally was looking forward to seeing her, so that was sad :( Happy to Keep his Dinner Warm has been stuck in my head off and on since Thursday. Coffee Break was FANTASTIC - looooved the dancing. The Company Way was so good too ... it was kind of the first time we got to see him a little dance-y, the first time he got to hop up on top of something, which just delighted me to no end ... and I kept waiting for him to drop an envelope, but he never did. A Secretary is not a Toy was amazing too - this cast was soooo good. Tammy Blanchard is PHENOMENAL as Hedy. I'd been waiting for WEEKS to see Been a Long Day - it's one of my favorite songs, and honestly Darren could have been a tiny bit stronger on it, but it was still just lovely :)
And THEN we come to Grand Old Ivy. I was DYING. It was just ... I cannot EVEN, I had no idea Darren could dance like that. I mean, his THIGHS, holy CRAP, his FREAKING EVERYTHING OMG. And it was HILARIOUS. Like, I was pretty much rolling on the ground - the groundhog dance just KILLED ME. Ugh ugh ugh. *deep breath* Pardon. Let me compose myself here....
Paris Original was great - love that song, the dancing with the dresses was really good.
And I thought I would literally, literally DIE when Darren started jumping up and down on the couch Tom Cruise-style during Finch is in Love - and then Rosemary was gorgeous, and my heart skipped a beat when he got down on one knee and proposed to her OMG.
I never, ever, ever stopped smiling. And the second act was just as good, if not better - he is such a good actor, and he was projecting a little better by then, and just UGH.
Cinderella Darling was great (and I realized, Mary Faber, who plays Smitty? I saw her in Avenue Q when I was in New York about five years ago - I had a full circle moment there!) The tapping was fantastic and those girls - man, they were good.
Love from a Heart of Gold was good mainly because of Tammy Blanchard - Beau Bridges was good, but he was no John Laroquette. (Unpopular opinion? I have no idea.)
And then I Believe in You - Darren was so good here. I've heard lots of comparisons that he played Finch a little more vulnerably than Dan did, and I think this is probably a good example of that - Darren's Finch was not freaking out exactly, but you could tell that he was really nervous, and that the song was really trying to CONVINCE himself that things would be okay. Then in the board room, I was really impressed with all those lines and the fast talking ... he was just SO GOOD.
Then came Brotherhood of Man and OH MY GOD I was LOSING IT with the dancing. He killed it. I was so, so impressed. I just ... ugh. It was all so beautiful and good and then at the end I saw that wedding ring on his finger and I just kind of died a little.
I wish I could've seen it twice. His curtain call was beautiful and I was so proud and I felt like my heart was about to bust out of my CHEST. Ohhhh it was so good. Bravo, Darren, Bravo :)
Madness. Pandemonium. It was so ridiculous after the show - we literally were in this mob of people when we exited the theater and we couldn't see whree we were going or really where the door even was, so we crossed the street and went down a little and it was a little bit better, but still absolutely INSANE. There were a lot of people who left the theater before curtain call, and I'm sorry, but I just think it's incredibly rude and wrong and not how Broadway is supposed to work. This show, for me, was about DARREN and how amazing I think he is and how proud I am that he's come so far in such a short amount of time, and I cannot imagine missing his curtain call. So when we finally did get out there... this is what it looked like:
And there were more people on the other side of the street.
We waited a while, met some tumblr people, fangirled like crazy, then Beau Bridges came out.
We actually had a nice little system worked out where Lux was our pack mule and held all our stuff, I was the photographer, and Kasey had all our posters and was handing them up to be signed. People were a little more civilized while he was out there, so I managed to get his autograph on the cover of my program.
So then we fangirled some more and waited some more, and then Darren came out and it was INSANE.
I got a really great picture of his back (and a lot of really bad pictures of nothing) and then he came over to the other side and this is all I could get my camera to see:
So I have a ton of very blurry pictures of Playbills and posters and arms, and then I got this one:
And you can actually kind of see his face.
The people on the other side of the gates started singing Goin' Back to Hogwarts and then he walked up to the front and got everybody to be quiet and made the most lovely little thank you speech, and then he left. And then we left, without an autograph or a hello or anything :( (But that's okay - I wasn't surprised at all, and maybe someday, right?)
So where we left off, I was in bed on Thursday morning at like 5:30, awake. Looking back, I wish I'd dragged Kasey out of bed to go stand in line for tickets to Live with Kelly, but hindsight is 20/20 and I was EXHAUSTED and wasn't thinking clearly. It turned out to be an AMAZING day anyway :)
So we got up that morning with a Plan. We got up, got ready, and went to this awesome diner for pancakes :)
(Lux is looking a little sleepy there... and I was having a MIRACULOUSLY wonderful hair and makeup day, praise be to God...)
Our diner with yummy pancakes.
From there, we took the subway to the Met (thank GOD for my iPhone, because my little GPS system got us around the city like nobody's business. It was fantastic.) The Met was awesome. I can't even ... it was ahhhhmazing. Love love love.
So THEN we walked across Central Park and went to the diner. THE diner. DARREN'S diner. Because we're stalkers like that. And in the most serendipitous moment EVER TO EXIST, we walk in and the guy asks us how many, we say 3, and he says "Okay, just go sit in the window." THE window. THE WINDOW WHERE DARREN SAT. So we quietly squeed and freaked out and lost it, and took pictures. (But there were lots of people, so we couldn't recreate the scene like we wanted to.....)
The diner
MY ASS IS SITTING WHERE DARREN'S ASS HAS SAT BEFORE. I should not be as excited about that as I am, but oh well. I am a crazy fangirl.
Wheeee!!!!
We even got a sundae to eat. We are crazy stalkers.
So THEN we got back on the subway and went to Magnolia Bakery and kind of didn't know where we were for a second but then we figured it out and then we went to this kindof kitschy Broadway store and I paid $40 for an A Secretary is not a Toy t-shirt which I loooove and then we went back to the hotel to get ready :)
So we're in our hotel absolutely FREAKING OUT and trying to get ready and I'm freaking out over omg I don't like this sweater anymore and WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WE'RE GOING TO SEE DARREN ON BROADWAY OMG when the bathroom door somehow gets locked. From the outside. (Luckily no one was locked inside because then we REALLY would've been freaking out.) So we call down to the front desk, they come unlock our door, and then we finish getting ready. And pose for a picture.
(yes, that's Darren with us. I printed him out and brought him along for posterity's sake :)
So we skipped, squealing down the street to the theater and got there around 5:30 or so and then we waited. And waited. And he was late, lol. I managed to catch one picture of him as he was rushing into the theater (he couldn't sign ANYTHING, it was just a little wave and a "hey, guys!" before he ran inside.)
Darren's name in lights. I nearly cried when I saw this the first time.
this is the original picture. What was so sad is that we were like at the VERY front of the gate cause we got there so early, and he couldn't sign anything, but once we got out of the theater that night, we were SO FAR AWAY because people left the show early to go stand by the stage door.
MY BABY. Also, my impressive master of an Instagram photo - this is a picture taken with my iPhone of the picture on my camera edited and zoomed in, and then filtered with Instagram. GOD I love technology.
So then we waited in line to go into the theater, and we were SO. FREAKING. EXCITED.
So the show. You GUYS. It was AMAZING. We were all clutching each other and I kept flopping over on Kasey and trying not to make crazy fangirl noises, but oh MAN he was good. A few points of note - his voice is not Broadway-strong yet. He still sounded AWESOME. He was ALWAYS on key, he never forgot a lyric, he was just like spot on, and there were several moments that just ... I just can't even say. Like his tone would hit some sweet spot or something and I was just GONE. And the DANCING...
Okay, let's back up and try to go sequentially. We had amazing, amazing seats, close enough to see his facial expressions, which were fantastic. I think my heart stopped when he first came out on the window washer seat thing, his leg twisted around that rope ... The first song was amazing. (I mean, this is gonna be a trend, so get used to it. They were ALL amazing.) One thing I was really disappointed with was that Rose Hemmingway was out that night. Her understudy was great, but I reeeeeally was looking forward to seeing her, so that was sad :( Happy to Keep his Dinner Warm has been stuck in my head off and on since Thursday. Coffee Break was FANTASTIC - looooved the dancing. The Company Way was so good too ... it was kind of the first time we got to see him a little dance-y, the first time he got to hop up on top of something, which just delighted me to no end ... and I kept waiting for him to drop an envelope, but he never did. A Secretary is not a Toy was amazing too - this cast was soooo good. Tammy Blanchard is PHENOMENAL as Hedy. I'd been waiting for WEEKS to see Been a Long Day - it's one of my favorite songs, and honestly Darren could have been a tiny bit stronger on it, but it was still just lovely :)
And THEN we come to Grand Old Ivy. I was DYING. It was just ... I cannot EVEN, I had no idea Darren could dance like that. I mean, his THIGHS, holy CRAP, his FREAKING EVERYTHING OMG. And it was HILARIOUS. Like, I was pretty much rolling on the ground - the groundhog dance just KILLED ME. Ugh ugh ugh. *deep breath* Pardon. Let me compose myself here....
Paris Original was great - love that song, the dancing with the dresses was really good.
And I thought I would literally, literally DIE when Darren started jumping up and down on the couch Tom Cruise-style during Finch is in Love - and then Rosemary was gorgeous, and my heart skipped a beat when he got down on one knee and proposed to her OMG.
I never, ever, ever stopped smiling. And the second act was just as good, if not better - he is such a good actor, and he was projecting a little better by then, and just UGH.
Cinderella Darling was great (and I realized, Mary Faber, who plays Smitty? I saw her in Avenue Q when I was in New York about five years ago - I had a full circle moment there!) The tapping was fantastic and those girls - man, they were good.
Love from a Heart of Gold was good mainly because of Tammy Blanchard - Beau Bridges was good, but he was no John Laroquette. (Unpopular opinion? I have no idea.)
And then I Believe in You - Darren was so good here. I've heard lots of comparisons that he played Finch a little more vulnerably than Dan did, and I think this is probably a good example of that - Darren's Finch was not freaking out exactly, but you could tell that he was really nervous, and that the song was really trying to CONVINCE himself that things would be okay. Then in the board room, I was really impressed with all those lines and the fast talking ... he was just SO GOOD.
Then came Brotherhood of Man and OH MY GOD I was LOSING IT with the dancing. He killed it. I was so, so impressed. I just ... ugh. It was all so beautiful and good and then at the end I saw that wedding ring on his finger and I just kind of died a little.
I wish I could've seen it twice. His curtain call was beautiful and I was so proud and I felt like my heart was about to bust out of my CHEST. Ohhhh it was so good. Bravo, Darren, Bravo :)
Madness. Pandemonium. It was so ridiculous after the show - we literally were in this mob of people when we exited the theater and we couldn't see whree we were going or really where the door even was, so we crossed the street and went down a little and it was a little bit better, but still absolutely INSANE. There were a lot of people who left the theater before curtain call, and I'm sorry, but I just think it's incredibly rude and wrong and not how Broadway is supposed to work. This show, for me, was about DARREN and how amazing I think he is and how proud I am that he's come so far in such a short amount of time, and I cannot imagine missing his curtain call. So when we finally did get out there... this is what it looked like:
And there were more people on the other side of the street.
We waited a while, met some tumblr people, fangirled like crazy, then Beau Bridges came out.
We actually had a nice little system worked out where Lux was our pack mule and held all our stuff, I was the photographer, and Kasey had all our posters and was handing them up to be signed. People were a little more civilized while he was out there, so I managed to get his autograph on the cover of my program.
So then we fangirled some more and waited some more, and then Darren came out and it was INSANE.
I got a really great picture of his back (and a lot of really bad pictures of nothing) and then he came over to the other side and this is all I could get my camera to see:
So I have a ton of very blurry pictures of Playbills and posters and arms, and then I got this one:
And you can actually kind of see his face.
The people on the other side of the gates started singing Goin' Back to Hogwarts and then he walked up to the front and got everybody to be quiet and made the most lovely little thank you speech, and then he left. And then we left, without an autograph or a hello or anything :( (But that's okay - I wasn't surprised at all, and maybe someday, right?)