31 October 2009

Tonight, Tonight

Just as my shopping frustration is eased, so my pudding frustration must continue. New York has great puddings but also has great and filling main courses, which mean that I can rarely find room even for the most tempting of desserts. This evening we went to Del Frisco's, a huge, high-ceilinged chop house on Sixth Avenue, which, on a Friday night, was full of bankers. The waitresses, all beautiful, wore short black dresses, which made me, in my short, black, flouncy dress, feel a bit like a waitress but no matter.

Our waiter was a chatty fellow who took great pride in telling us that here they say tomaydoes. Thanks, waiter, I had been wondering all these years. He brought us a sampling platter of assorted, sauce-covered shellfish but I stuck to a couple of king prawns so that I could save room for the main course, a delicious filet mignon, which was perfectly medium rare, as requested. In fact, the waiter insisted we all cut into our steaks so that we could check the meat was cooked to our specification prior to eating, which was impressive. I could hardly even manage any of the potato gratin or the creamed spinach but consoled myself with the views out onto the Rockefeller Building and Radio City.

After dinner, we hurried to Times Square for West Side Story. It was quite a fun production--certainly a very colourful production, with the Sharks dressing in flamboyant shades of purple, fuschia and pink and the Jets in muted burnt orange, olive and khaki. The dancing and set pieces were excellent and Anita was particularly good, though it felt like there were too many fight sequences. I know it's West Side Story but there were too many same-ish fight scenes, anyway, which dragged on and left me with drooping eyelids towards the end of the first half. Usually in American musicals, the leads and other key parts will have very powerful voices but tonight, Maria and Tony seemed a little too tentative. The only song I really like from this musical is Somewhere, which has nothing to do with the Pet Shop Boys version that came out in 1997 but there was a good rendition of America tonight.

We had pretty good seats with a great view of the stage and--equally important--the percussion guys, who were sitting in two opposing boxes. Best of all though was the fact that the theatre (or at least the section in which we were sitting) only had odd numbered seats--there was not an even number in sight, which made me happy.

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