NYC series no.2: practically perfect

I wasn't sure how we would see a Broadway show while we were in NYC. Cyndi thought it was one of the most important things we could show the boys, and as it turned out it was a highlight of our trip. Lion King and Spiderman I heard were either sold out or there were no discounted tickets. The War Horse, playing at Lincoln Center, was perhaps a little too old for the boys and it had just won the Tony for Best Play. Just before we left for NYC I printed a coupon from broadwaybox.com and brought it along.

On our first full day in NYC, on our second outing, in the early evening, it began to rain just as we left the lobby for the subway. The doorman gave us umbrellas to take with us. (Umbrellas developed into a bit of a leitmotif for the trip.) On this outing, we eventually found ourselves in the middle of Times Square at around 8 in the evening just as the lights were starting to shine against a darkening sky. We entered Times Square around 42nd and Broadway, near the New Amsterdam theater, and we walked to its box office. We found five seats together in the balcony for the next evening's performance of Mary Poppins, the cheapest seats in the house, and saved an additional $75 with the coupon. We took pictures of Cyndi and the boys beside the mural of Mary Poppins flying with her bonnet and frock coat and with an open umbrella in her hand.

On Saturday, Ariel met Cyndi in Midtown while the boys and I were at the Sony Wonder Lab and the five of us returned to the hotel together before the evening performance. We took the subway again to Times Square and walked over to the theater. Times Square was packed with people. We first went to the Toys R Us flagship store.

A crowd was milling around the mural of Mary Poppins next to the box office of the New Amsterdam theater for pictures, but we walked right in. At about twenty minutes or so before the performance, there was no line at all. An elevator immediately inside took us to the balcony and a small lobby of its own where we could buy candy and chocolates and souvenir mugs and even cocktails (one was called a Practically Perfect) in little plastic sippy cups to bring inside. (There went the discount.)

The balcony was small and high above the stage. Below us was a mezzanine we could not see and the large orchestra section in front of the stage. The balcony filled up before the lights flickered or an usher walked about with a small mallet and xylophone, and the entire theater looked to be sold out. In the balcony, the rows rose in tiers so you looked out above the heads of those in front of you.

I'm certain the experience from the seats below the balcony must have been different from ours, but our experience was a delight. The proscenium at the front of the stage was as wide as the the theater and as high as our seats in the balcony. The production design used the entire frame of the proscenium so that we weren't deprived of any action on the stage below us. It was like watching a large IMAX film screen, except all the action was live. The scenes dropped and changed constantly, often suspended above the stage, so that the dancing and singing was never confined to the floor of the stage but took place in the center of the frame of the proscenium. The scenes in the attic of the home or on the rooftops were appropriately staged above the stage floor. At one point, Bert, the chimney sweep, walked along the entire four edges of the proscenium frame.

From the very beginning the boys were riveted. They both sat at the edge of their seats, their eyes glued to the stage. I brought some binoculars, and Jack wore those around his neck and peered through them at the beginning. They clapped enthusiastically. They literally (one of their favorite words) squealed with delight. Jack bounced up and down in his seat through some numbers, and he looked for the wires that suspended the actors above the stage.

Cyndi loved the song and dance. Supercalifragilistic- expialidocious and Step in Time were full-out, energetic numbers, including tap, that you'd love to see on a Broadway stage. The musical had many but not all of the scenes and songs from the movie, many new scenes and songs (including one that repeated the line, "practically perfect in every way"), and I thought it must have followed the original book (or books) in ways the movie did not. Rylee crawled into my lap, twirling my hair and his own--the sign that he is tired--and fell asleep during the last half hour or so. At the end, Mary Poppins flies above the audience. For a while she disappeared from our view but then we saw her, with her opened umbrella in her hand, rising from below the balcony level, right in front of us, until she disappeared inside an enclosed catwalk at the ceiling, where she no doubt quickly unharnessed herself to get back onstage to take a bow with the rest of the cast.

Ariel left us when we exited the theater to catch a cross town bus or subway back to her apartment, and Cyndi, the boys, and I walked deep into the crowd of Times Square. After glimpsing the lights (it was now almost 11 p.m.), we haled a cab in the very heart of Times Square for a speedy exit to our hotel. I think that's when Cyndi and the boys began making jokes about being practically perfect.