#3 and #4, 24 February 2007

[originally written on 26 February 2007, with a few small edits]

I doubt this is going to be as long and as interesting as the last one, but hey.

So I was an idiot and left about a half hour late. It wasn't too bad, but it did mean I was rushing down the streets of NYC to make the show before it started. Luckily I did, and it wasn't too bad. The seats were nice -- right mezzanine, fourth row back and four seats off the aisle, and I pretty much saw everything.

The matinee show was nice, no understudies -- Nikki was listed as the principal Fantine until Lea starts -- and the cast was great, as usual. Alex cracked a little during an early note in Bring Him Home, but it was minor and forgivable, and he was less... cranky as Valjean than he was the first time I saw him. XD I particularly loved the interaction between Aaron and Drew during the matinee show. Drew was his hilariously slashy self, as usual, and during Drink With Me Aaron slams down that bottle and glares at him, then leans down to 'whisper something in his ear'. I giggled. XD

La la, so we went to the stage door afterwards, Marianne and I, and... holy shit. There was a throng. Seriously, a throng, people crowding around all the actors trying to get autographs. Marianne and I were smashed in almost past the point of going anywhere, and when Aaron came out, poor guy, he looked so bemused by all the people crowding around. We didn't get pictures this time around, but in the five seconds that we did get to talk to him after the matinee he indicated that he's feeling better after his injury, so definitely some good news in that quarter. :D We found out not long afterwards that the thronging crowd was due to a school field trip as well as a general group. Lotta people, yo.

Next up was dinner, we found this little Thai place called Pongsri and sat and chatted and fangirled over dinner. I ... tried some calamari dish, and really disliked the way they prepared it. Blah. I love calamari, I really do, but I couldn't stand this stuff that they made. I'm totally against spicy food, it makes my palate cry out in pain and horror, so I avoid spicy things like the plague, hence why I almost never eat Mexican food. Turns out that Thai food is pretty spicy too, and so I don't know. I didn't recognise a lot of the stuff on the menu, and most of what I did recognise was either spicy or vegetables, neither of which I eat. Next time I go to a Thai place, I'll try one of the duck dishes. I like duck. :D But I don't foresee Thai anytime soon, we don't have anything more exotic than Chinese around here. XD

So after dinner we wandered the streets awhile. We went into this little souvenir store, cornily named The Phantom of New York. The place was full of cheesy, clichéd New York City souvenirs, and a lot of heavily-male oriented posters. But the most hilarious thing in there was a pen holder, which was basically a guy on his hands and knees, arse in the air and drawers around his ankles, and if you pushed the pen into his buttcrack, he would... shout things. ...I just have no words. XDDD The store also had massively oversized pens, and I've always wanted one, but not nearly enough to pay $7.99 + 8% sales tax to have one.

And then it was time for the evening show. This is where I had my partial-view orchestra seats. They were indeed limited, couldn't see the back right of the stage, but.... uh. Some views weren't exactly limited. :D The lady who came in and sat next to me bitched about how horrible the seats were. And the girl who was in the seat in front of me told me about how she saw the 'old' Broadway production four times, and then mentioned that she lived in Bethlehem. Which is like an hour from where I live, nifty. So, the show. Haviland Stillwell understudied for Fantine, and I really liked her. Her voice sounded a bit modern for the role, but she has a nice voice and I wouldn't mind seeing her again. Definitely better than Daphne, but that doesn't say much as pretty much anyone is better than Daphne. In fact I liked Haviland better than I liked Nikki, so. *shrugs* Take that as you will.

As I said some things weren't quite limited view. Don't care if I come across as obsessed fangirl, but... damn. So these barricade boys are pretty damn affectionate, and this is rarely more apparent than in the ABC Café scene. This is mostly Drew's fault, but all the boys are touchy-feely with each other to some extent. Aaron bends over the table at one point, and uh... my brain pretty much short-circuited. Those pants are tight, and damn but he looks good in them. Like, whoa. o__o; And then there's Drew, who while singing "Give me brandy on my breath, and I'll breathe them all to death!" pulls Robert Hunt so close their lips are practically touching. And then there's Aaron and Adam. Aaron grabs Adam's head as they segue out of Red and Black and into Do You Hear the People Sing? and I swear they look like they're about to share some quality kissing time together. XD Of course there's other times, for example when Aaron and Drew hug during One Day More (just before the "One more day before the storm..." bit), which definitely was not there last time we went. And there's Drink With me, which Aaron changes subtly every time. Like in the matinee he didn't chug from the bottle but in the evening he did, but both times he gave Drew a Look. During the evening show I could see this pretty well -- Aaron bent down close enough so their heads were practically leaning together. And then there's Drew grabbing Bossuet(Nehal Joshi) and "demonstrating" the "screwing that they'll never forget". And the very close hug Aaron and Adam share after Eponine kicks the bucket, and... yeah, I could go on. XDD Oh, boys. ♥ (And Aaron still bends suggestively over the barricade.)

There was quite an amusing flub during the evening show: the gate broke. XD The two ends got shoved together so the gate doors kept flapping around, and all the actors kept trying to push it shut. Ahahaha. See, in days of yore Marius would trip over the gate; now he just breaks it. (Nah, it wasn't Adam's fault, it just didn't click right on stage or summat.)

During intermission the folks behind me bitched up a storm about how much the cast sucked and the show was shit and how Cats was better. Fucking hell, kids; go see Wicked or something if you hate LM that much. Or Spamalot, or Phantom, or the Producers -- hell all three of the shows were practically next door to LM, so it hardly would've been out of your way. :P

Marianne and I attempted, since the crowd seemed to be really enjoying the show, to get a round of applause for dangling!Aaron. It did not work, sadly. Apparently we need to get some more people to join in and help us. XD Look, dude. If people are going to applaud when Fantine and Gavroche and Javert snuff it, dammit, Enjolras hanging majestically upside down on the barricade deserves some plaudits too. They applauded for scenes that usually don't get them -- for example, after the Madame Thenardier and Cosette inn scene.

The stage door was much less crowded after the evening show. The police didn't bother to set up any barricades this time, which was nice. Marianne stopped Dan Bogart and we did have a nice short chat with him. We had a nice talk with Norm, as well: we asked him flat out about the whole rumour about him leaving, and he was awfully evasive. Wouldn't give any straight answers, so I'm going to assume no one's made any official decision on whether he or anyone else is going to be leaving in April. So I'm just going to continue treating it as a rumour until it's officially announced. Because of what Norm said (or rather, didn't say...) on the subject, I didn't ask Aaron about it. I may do that next time I go, though.

Aaron, actually, was one of the last people to leave the stage door; Adam mentioned that he had guests backstage so I was definitely prepared to wait. It was actually really nice, by the time he did come out all but a half dozen of the fans had dispersed, so Marianne and I patiently waited so we could talk to him afterwards. We had a nice little chat, and we got him to sign our souvenir programmes. Unfortunately all I had was a black ballpoint pen, no silver sharpie, so he ended up signing his arm. XD That's okay, it's nice that way, it doesn't overpower the page (like Jacob Levine's signature does on the front of it). Since we were the only fans left, he ended up talking to us for a few minutes, telling us that the injury was in fact a herniated disc in his back, but confirmed what he said after the matinee, that it's improved a lot by now. In any case, he was terribly sweet and wished us safe journey home ("especially drive safe," he said to me after I mentioned that I was parked in Hoboken) and I got another hug. :D I ♥ Aaron a lot, for seriously.

So then the fun part. Um. The only trouble I had in actually getting back to Hoboken was finding the entrance to the 33rd Street PATH station. It's actually across 6th Avenue on the corner of 32nd, because after 11pm the Mall of Manhattan entrance (which I came out of) closes. But I didn't have any trouble getting on the train itself, and then after I got into Hoboken had no troubles finding my garage. It was $25 for the day, which wasn't too bad considering I got to park myself there and everything. And I had no troubles leaving the garage and finding the correct route out of Hoboken towards I-78. The problem was in fact finding I-78. I followed my directions as well as all the road signs and ended up on I-80 anyway. I determined after I got home that I probably should have driven towards I-95/the NJ Turnpike to find I-78 again, rather than following I-1/9, because that just dumped me onto 280 and then I-80. It's not that I can't find my way back home from I-80, since I can (I actually, after this adventure, now know two ways of getting back to I-78 from I-80), it's just that it's an hour to an hour and a half out of the way. I could have been home by 3am rather than the 4am I ended up returning at. Oh well, North Jersey roads are seriously the spawn of Satan, so... yeah. I seriously almost fell asleep at the wheel during the last hour of the drive, from turning onto I-78 through the whole way down Route 222 to 422 to my house. I seriously stopped to get gas, not because I particularly needed to fuel up, but because I figured a blast of cold air and getting out of the car would wake me up. It helped, as did getting some munchies and eating the rest of the way home. XD Happy thoughts of Aaron and frenchboys helped a little, but not nearly enough.

And then I got home and collapsed, and damn it felt good to just fall in bed.


So that, my friends, was New York. Can't wait to go again. I'm hoping to go at least twice in March. :D