Sarah, Sarah
We are subscribers to the Manhattan Theater Club. You sign up at the beginning of the year for the amount of plays or tickets you want and they show up in the mail a few weeks before hand. I like it because they put on a variety of different productions and you are done for the season. Although some of the plays end up not being so great. One of the best values is if you can’t make a particular date they help you outs. I found out that I had to move something last week so I call the subscribers office. They asked me to rip up my tickets, tape them on a piece of paper and fax them to the office. Then, they sent me tickets for another night which I requested. That is a great deal.
Last night we went to see one of the productions, “Sarah, Sarah”. It was playing at the City Stage on West 55th Street. The play was written by Daniel Goldfarb. It was a 2 act play, four actors. The first act is set in a house kitchen apartment, 1961, in Toronto. You are introduced to the mother – a tough controlling Jewish mother and her Polish housekeeper who happens to be a man dressed in woman’s apparel that he likes. The mother is having her son’s new fiance over for tea. Once the fiance arrives, the mother basically tells her that she is not rich enough and her family is not good enough for her son. The son arrives on the scene and is mortified. Eventually the cleaning man gets furious and tells the mother he has had enough and tells her hidden secret that she is actually an orphan and has no right telling her son that this young woman is not good enough for him.
The second act is the son, who has now become a father to a brood of kids and is in his 60’s with one of his daughters in China. The son obviously married the woman his mother did not want him to. The daughter is 39 years old and is adopting an orphan in China. So, the story basically comes full circle. The father (who was the son ) tells the story of his mother being an orphan to the newly adopted baby although this is the first person he has told this secret to since the fateful afternoon in his kitchen.
All and all, it was not that great of a play but the acting of Richard Masur was fantastic. Also, the 2 young performers were first time Off-Broadway performers so it was fun to watch them act. The girl, Lori Prince was very good. The best line of the play, which did get quite a howl from the audience was in the last act. The daughter asks the father, “What do you think the baby is thinking”? He replys, “Chinese orphanage to Rich Jew…YES!”
The play was not too long and wrapped up by 9ish so we walked next door to Milos. The food is simple and always good. We sat at the bar. We had the tomato salad which has big slabs of feta cheese and ripe tomatoes and cucumbers. We also ordered the grilled shrimp, grilled octopus and calamari. The shrimp is large and grilled to perfection. The octopus is sliced, grilled and intermixed with grilled yellow and red peppers. It is all simply prepared and delicious. I’d never go out of my way to get there but if you are seeing theater in that area, you can’t beat it.