Dinner, theater and the bowery

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We had quite the evening last night.  We started at Kyma which is a Greek restaurant on 46th and 8th.  Believe me, nothing to write home about but edible.  Delicious food in the theater district is hard to come by.  I know a few new places have opened up recently but I am not sure they are in the location we were.

Second Stage Theater’s next production is Next to Normal which premieres in a week or so.  The place was packed last night with lost of theater buffs from writers to actors.  Fun to see their reaction to the play.  Next to Normal is a musical.  I am generally not a big fan of musicals but the songs are fresh and the music is pretty good.   Tom Kitt is the composer who wrote the music for High Fidelity. 

Next to Normal centers on a family.  The set was clever.  An open house, 3 flights up.  At all times you can see the characters if they are on stage in different areas of the house.  As first I thought the musical was about a typical dysfunctional suburban family but as the story unfolds there is more to it.  The story is about loss and mental anguish, looking at the past while attempting to deal with now.  One person in a household who happens to be completely nuts can really screw up the foundation of a family.   

The voices and acting were really good but I found the production to be about 25 minutes too long.  Much preferred the first half to the second half.  They have been tweaking the musical every night so by the time Next to Normal opens they will probably flush most of that out.  At least I hope so.  Interesting topic but it just went on a little too long.   Jessica and Emily are going on Sunday so let’s see what they think.  We both said it was worth seeing. 

We happened to have tickets to Vampire Weekend, who I can’t listen to enough, at the Bowery Ballroom last night.  Jessica had bought tickets for last night for her and her friends a few months back.  Wednesday night was for the over 16 crowd and last night was for the over 21 crowd.  She freaked when she realized it since she could have bought the tickets for Wednesday night in the first place.  Fred went down to the Bowery Ballroom on Wednesday night, established that she could not get in on Thursday night so they let him buy tickets right there for that evening so Jessica could see them.  Very nice of the the Bowery Ballroom because they were sold out.  Her friends couldn’t make it at the last minute but Fred and Jessica went down to the Bowery Ballroom around 1030 on Wednesday night so Jessica could see them.  We were then left with tickets for last night.  I couldn’t resist.  After the play, we grabbed a cab and headed down to the Bowery.  Fred had already seen the show and it was late so we stayed for 5 songs.  Vampire Weekend is great.  The band just graduated from Columbia University.  They are young and adorable.  Their songs are fun.  Really glad I got to see them play.

Home around midnight.  I think I might be getting too old for this.