No one mourns the Wicked!
Gill and I went to see Wicked! on Sunday night.
I met up with her and Oisin and my parents at Maggiano's for dinner near the theatre before the show started. You wouldn't expect that the restaurant would have been staggeringly over-busy at a 5:00 p.m. on a Sunday but the place was packed and it was a good thing we had a reservation....
As far as the company and the meal went, it was wonderful....our waiter left much to be desired however. He never introduced himself, he messed up the drinks, he didn't ask if we had heard what the specials were for the night, gave our appetizer to another table (that was seated after we were) and tried to blame another server when we inquired about the status of the appetizer (stuffed mushrooms). Since dinner was almost ready to be served by the time we flagged him down (he was ignoring us!), we asked him to cancel the order....we wouldn't be able to eat the appetizer and the meals (too much food to deal with at that point) and lo and behold, in the next breath (literally two minutes after he left to take care of everything), dinners arrive and the appetizer comes out and is placed in front of dad as though it were the meal he had ordered....but his actual meal (veal & portobello mushroom ravioli) was nowhere to be seen. Turns out, the waiter never even placed the order with the kitchen and had to put a rush on it. So my dad wound up filling up more on the stuffed mushrooms instead of his actual meal. :-/
To top it all off, the waiter never once came back to check on us to make sure things were alright, never refilled the water glasses (mom had to snag another server to get that taken care of!), never once apologized, and we had to snag another server to tell our waiter we wanted our check so we could leave since he never approached us even after the table had been bussed of the empty dishes to see if anyone wanted coffee or dessert.
My dad was fit to be tied and although he had proclaimed to the table that the waiter's tip had gone from 20 to 15 to 10 to 5% to eventually nothing, he still wound up leaving a 10% tip on a $160 bill. On the way out though, he stopped the manager and told him that he had tipped our waiter "10% and that's 9.5% more than he deserved." The manager was taken aback but made no overtures to my dad to apologize for the poor service or offer free drinks if we were to come back some night or anything (not that we were expecting it, but at the very least an apology should have been offered for the poor service).... We've eaten there before and never had troubles so I don't know if it was just an off night or the beginning of a shift in a downward spiral.... I don't think we'll be going back again.
From dinner, my parents headed for the Cape and Oisin went home and Gill and I skipped off to the Opera House to see Wicked!
From opening note to when the curtain dropped at the very end, we were spellbound. ;-) Seriously, what an amazing, amazing show and it makes me want to go dig up my copy of the book and reread it! The music was wonderful, the actors were outstanding, and the stage set-up very unique! I especially loved the giant bubble apparatus that Glinda floated onto the stage in the first song...it even blew bubbles!! So cool! :-) I've been listening to the soundtrack non-stop since then and cannot get the songs out of my head.
I think it has become my new favorite and I would love, love, love to see it again!
I met up with her and Oisin and my parents at Maggiano's for dinner near the theatre before the show started. You wouldn't expect that the restaurant would have been staggeringly over-busy at a 5:00 p.m. on a Sunday but the place was packed and it was a good thing we had a reservation....
As far as the company and the meal went, it was wonderful....our waiter left much to be desired however. He never introduced himself, he messed up the drinks, he didn't ask if we had heard what the specials were for the night, gave our appetizer to another table (that was seated after we were) and tried to blame another server when we inquired about the status of the appetizer (stuffed mushrooms). Since dinner was almost ready to be served by the time we flagged him down (he was ignoring us!), we asked him to cancel the order....we wouldn't be able to eat the appetizer and the meals (too much food to deal with at that point) and lo and behold, in the next breath (literally two minutes after he left to take care of everything), dinners arrive and the appetizer comes out and is placed in front of dad as though it were the meal he had ordered....but his actual meal (veal & portobello mushroom ravioli) was nowhere to be seen. Turns out, the waiter never even placed the order with the kitchen and had to put a rush on it. So my dad wound up filling up more on the stuffed mushrooms instead of his actual meal. :-/
To top it all off, the waiter never once came back to check on us to make sure things were alright, never refilled the water glasses (mom had to snag another server to get that taken care of!), never once apologized, and we had to snag another server to tell our waiter we wanted our check so we could leave since he never approached us even after the table had been bussed of the empty dishes to see if anyone wanted coffee or dessert.
My dad was fit to be tied and although he had proclaimed to the table that the waiter's tip had gone from 20 to 15 to 10 to 5% to eventually nothing, he still wound up leaving a 10% tip on a $160 bill. On the way out though, he stopped the manager and told him that he had tipped our waiter "10% and that's 9.5% more than he deserved." The manager was taken aback but made no overtures to my dad to apologize for the poor service or offer free drinks if we were to come back some night or anything (not that we were expecting it, but at the very least an apology should have been offered for the poor service).... We've eaten there before and never had troubles so I don't know if it was just an off night or the beginning of a shift in a downward spiral.... I don't think we'll be going back again.
From dinner, my parents headed for the Cape and Oisin went home and Gill and I skipped off to the Opera House to see Wicked!
From opening note to when the curtain dropped at the very end, we were spellbound. ;-) Seriously, what an amazing, amazing show and it makes me want to go dig up my copy of the book and reread it! The music was wonderful, the actors were outstanding, and the stage set-up very unique! I especially loved the giant bubble apparatus that Glinda floated onto the stage in the first song...it even blew bubbles!! So cool! :-) I've been listening to the soundtrack non-stop since then and cannot get the songs out of my head.
I think it has become my new favorite and I would love, love, love to see it again!