Broadway and the Big Apple--Part Four & Five

Catch up on the whole story by reading Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

Since Sunday was Mother's Day, we decided we would go back to Alice's Teacup for breakfast. I tried the ham and cheese scone, and I also had the Curious French Toast. This was a concoction of french toast served bread pudding style with a Vanilla glaze in it. It was delish!

We then went back to Central Park for a bit to see some things we missed while we were there the first time: Bow bridge and Bethesda fountain.

We said goodbye to Megan's brother, Aaron and went to see Anything Goes. This play is set on a cruise ship, and the music is written by Cole Porter. I wanted to like this play, I really did. I mean, this is a Cole Porter musical. I am familiar with some of the songs, it was nominated for 7 Tony awards, and my college friend Adam had worked on the production team. I was prepared to be blown away by this musical.

I found the plot line to be VERY boring. I couldn't care less if the two lovers ever got together at the end. And I found the conflict to be trivial. I kept looking at my watch the whole time.

Even as a person who likes musicals, I found the songs to be completely random. It seemed as though in the middle of a scene, the characters would just stop and break into song, though their song didn't match the action on-stage. The songs seemed to come completely out of left-field. I'm not sure whether to blame Cole Porter, or the authors of the story, Bolton and Wodehouse. Perhaps they had difficulty finding a story-line to match Porter's songs. But as a musical this just did NOT transition well. 

The only thing I DID like about it was Sutton Foster who played Reno. She was fantastic, and absolutely lit up the stage whenever she was on it. She delivered her lines with impeccable comic timing, and sung her songs with a HUGE chunk of personality.

It seems the authors wanted to tie everything up in a neat little bow. At the end of the story they paired Reno off with the most unlikely, stupid, ridiculous character, Lord Evelyn Oakleigh, which again, completely came out of left-field. My friend Megan liked it a lot better than I did, so you can go read her review here.

After the show, Larissa and Megan went to the stage door to see if they could meet Sutton Foster (she didn't come out). I had a nice conversation with my daughter, husband, and mom on the phone for mother's day. I was missing my family TERRIBLY. Then we had dinner and decided we should have a girl's night in. We went back to the hotel to eat junk food and rented "The Adjustment Bureau."

The next morning was leaving day, so we packed all our stuff and brought it to the porter to hold for us while we spent our last few hours walking around New York.

Our first stop was High Line Park. It used to be an elevated train bridge that got overgrown with vegetation when it stopped being used, so they decided to turn it into a park.

Next we went to South Street Seaport to see the Brooklyn Bridge.  

Finally, we stopped at Crumbs bakery for a GINORMOUS cupcake to take back home, grabbed our luggage and went to the airport.