First Date, Last Date

Going to diverge a little bit here from talking about the kids. And talk about my date on Friday night. I went out on a date with a girl that I used to go out with all the time. She's beautiful and funny and could always talk about anything. I haven't been able to go out with her since I became a father, but we got together on Friday for dinner and a show.

I met my date in Hoboken and we took the PATH and subway up to 51st for dinner at Bobby Flay's Bar Americain. Dinner was good. Overpriced but good. I wouldn't go back and I am not completely sure I'd recommend it. I had a pork chop and my girl had mussels. The only thing that was really good was the sweet potatoes gratin, that was amazing. Worth the $9. Dinner was OK. However, I've had better meals that didn't cost me $120.

On to the show. The weather was amazing on Friday so we opted to walk nine blocks down to the Hilton Theater. Which was a bit of a mistake, because so did every other tourist in the City, as the scurried to their theaters. The Hilton Theater is beautiful. Really quite breathtaking. It must have been recently renovated, because it is amazing. The theater was really nice.

We were going to see The Pirate Queen, the somewhat true story of Grace (Grainia) O'Malley, a female 16th Century Irish Chieftain/pirate. It is the stuff of Irish legend. The main reason I chose this show was because, the male lead character's name is Tiernan. The musical is written by the same Frenchmen who wrote Les Miserables and Miss Siagon and the producers are the Irish husband and wife team that gave the world Riverdance. The pedigree seemed pretty good.

And pedigree is a good term. This show is a freaking dog. It was more inbred than purebred. The show opens with a lone man walking on stage with a pan flute. A pan flute that his obviously not playing. It never got any better than that. The music sounded like one long never ending Celine Dion song. (I hate Celine Dion, even more then that whiny little bastard Caillou. And I hate Caillou.) The show is set in Ireland in 1580 or so, but not everybody has a Irish accent all the time. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The only thing touching Irish was the Irish step dancing, thank you Riverdance folks. However, only one or two cast members actually could do the steps. The rest just faked it. Poorly. I kept trying to figure out how the Irish Dancers were making the "tapping sounds" with soft soled shoes.

The show is almost entirely sung. The music never ends and as you are sitting there, it seems like the show will never end. It freaking plods. It struggles. It fights the audience to maintain focus. It insults the audience with hack-kneed character strokes. It embarrasses the audience for showing up. The singing doesn't stop, which is unfortunate because the lyrics are so abhorrent. The rhyming is shoehorned in to make them fit. Or just so bad that its seems like the actors are just making it up on the spot. "God above/I am in Love/Hand me that glove." The songs are utterly forgettable, and every one is sung like its going to save the world with its beauty and depth of emotion. But it ends and you ask, "What was she singing about? Did she just say something important? Something about no glove, no love. I think."

The entire show is just one big Procrustean Bed that the entire audience must lay in and discover that it doesn't fit. Nothing fits. And everything has had either its head or knees cut off to fit the into the bed. And the audience wishes that someone would decapitate them. Everything is so very contrived. I understand the theater is the realm of contrivance, but good theater is subtle contrivance.

I am not a Broadway illliterate. I get musical theater. I like it. I’ve been part of it, doing some acting in the local church productions. Last year, we did Oliver! I played Bill Skyes. I got to sing and die on stage. I like showtunes. I am not gay, but I get theater.

The scene that put it over top for me was the bachelor party scene with Grace's husband in a arranged marriage, where all the men including her betrothed are wearing codpieces. Yes, codpieces. Irishmen in the 1500s wearing leather pants and codpieces, singing "Boys will be Boys." The last time I saw anyone wearing a codpiece was when I saw W.A.S.P. open for Kiss in the Brendan Byrne Arena. I was 14. I thought it was stupid then. This was a big budget Broadway show, with men wearing codpieces and not for comic effect. Still stupid.



It was right after that scene when my beautiful date started looking through the Playbill looking for Intermission. I was sitting there in my orchestra seats, thinking, "Is this really that bad? Or am I just being overly critical?" I look at my beautiful and funny date she is ready to blow her brains out.

We left at intermission. I don't think this girl is going to want to go out with me ever again. Which is really unfortunate since she's my wife.