By Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
March 17, 2020
In January, I asked my granddaughter where she would like to go for her spring break from the University of Florida. I was hoping for some place warm. Her answer was instantaneous – New York City. And specifically, to see a Broadway play. That morphed into two plays and 5 days in New York at the beginnings of the coronavirus scare.
And so it was that I had my first ever visit to a Broadway theatre. We went up on a Saturday, stayed near Times Square, and went to see “Moulin Rouge” and “Hadestown.” It was a great trip even with a few challenges.
The first night we arrived we walked to a ramen restaurant about a half mile from the hotel. The temperature was in the high 30s with a 19 mile an hour wind. I’d forgotten about the wind tunnel effect large buildings create. It’s been awhile since I arrived back at my hotel happy that I survived. The other challenge was that my granddaughter walks fast. Fortunately, she was wearing a bright red jacket so she was easy to follow in the crowd.
As to the musicals, they were both fantastic. “Moulin Rouge” was in an ornately decorated theatre with bistro tables set next to the stage. It is a boy meets girl, girl gets sick, boy loses girl plot set to a mash-up of music from the past few of decades. Remember “Nature Boy?” That was the oldest song. Funny to hear it in the same production as “Burning Down the House.”
“Hadestown” fully justified its 8 Tony wins, including Best Musical. It’s the Orpheus and Eurydice story. Staging was amazing. There was a circular platform probably 8 feet in diameter that went up to feature Hades and Persephone and down when Eurydice was descending to Hadestown. Around that platform was a circle that revolved so the dancers could appear to be walking. In the line waiting for the cast to come out, one of the dancers was asked what it was like to work on that circle. He said the first few rehearsals, they all had motion sickness.
When I got back and ran into Ron Kurtz, I thanked him. His classes in the Play’s The Thing series have really broadened my appreciation of plays. He’s made us aware of staging, lighting, props, music – all the things that go into perfecting the director’s vision of the playwright’s words.
My granddaughter was beyond excited and it was fun to be with her. I’m glad I did it before the coronavirus introduced the term “social distancing” to me.
Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. Evelyn is vice-chair on the Amelia Center for Lifelong Learning and is on the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.