#21, 19 May 2007 (and Phantom, too!)

[originally written 20 May 2007, with a few edits]

So, yes, another day in New York.

Left around 9:30, and I made pretty good time so I got into my parking garage around 12:45. When I left home, it was the most perfect day: a few wispy clouds and nice warm sunshine. As I drove to New York, the cloud cover increased, and about fifteen minutes from Newark, the sky opened up. The rain just didn't stop all day. Granted, it was varying degrees of drizzle the whole time I was in NYC, but it was pretty much non-stop up until about 11:10pm or so. So not fun, let me tell you.

I went to see Phantom for the matinee show. Phantom was practically sold out. I decided to go cheap, so I got Rear Mezzanine row E. Up two flights of stairs and while you could see everything, you just sort of got the bird's eye view of everything (except the chandelier which I saw pretty damn well). So I don't think I'll be seeing Phantom any time soon, unless I can get a discount off broadwaybox.com or some such place. Gary Mauer was great; Jennifer Hope Wills is the best American Christine I've ever heard, her voice was lovely and clear and nice to listen to; and Michael Shawn Lewis was just adorable. I was sad, since apparently Anne Runolfsson has just left the cast -- her replacement is Kris Koop, and she got a full-page playbill insert indicating that she was taking over as Carlotta. I really wanted to see Anne so I could sort of get a preview of the concert in July, y'know? Kris wasn't bad: her voice was a little soft and thin at times, like she still hadn't quite got Carlotta down, and she missed a few notes here and there. I don't blame her, Carlotta is a really difficult part to sing, and this may have been one of her first shows as principal, so no real complaints here. Understudies also for Firmin and Lefevre. The show itself was largely uneventful, although many people around me were whispering, a bunch of people kept getting up and leaving to use the restroom or something during the performance, and the guy in front of me was on his Blackberry for half the show -- in the first act an usher even came by and admonished him loudly that recording wasn't allowed. Geez. If I go to Phantom again, I'm going to go to a Saturday evening show, because matinee theatregoers are just more obnoxious as a whole.

Walked around the block twice after the show, which let out almost exactly at 4:30pm, and finally located the stage door around 4:50 or so when I caught sight of fans clutching playbills. I waited there with a few other fans in the drizzle for the actors to come out. Absolutely no one showed. At all. I struck up a conversation with this middle-aged guy standing there, and he said that it was Gary Mauer's last show so the cast probably was doing something special for him backstage. ... Firstly, why the hell do you have a cast party after a Saturday matinee?! and secondly, if Howard was just on vacation for a month or so, why are all the pictures and posters on the front of the theatre changed to have Gary Mauer's name instead of Howard?! I mean, Simon Bailey's mug is still plastered all over the Broadhurst and he's not even in this production of Les Mis, yet the Phantom posters change when the principal goes on vacation? Totally weird. In any case, this guy I talked to was apparently a Phan, because I mentioned seeing LM for the 21st time that day and he said, "oh, you're like me and Phantom then!" 'cause I mentioned to him that this was my only chance to see Gary and MSL because LM was my plans for the evening. He also informed me that Phantom doesn't do Sunday matinees, which is weird. So by 5:20pm I'd left the Phantom stage door and then it was time for dinner.

One thing of note: you know you've seen Les Mis and stagedoored way too many times when Nehal Joshi stops you in the line for Phantom to say hi. Not that I am complaining, since I ♥ Nehal, but... yeah. XD That definitely says something about my habits.

I went to Virgin Megastore to kill half an hour before going back to the Broadhurst, and found they were having a big old sale: $10 DVDs and CDs. So I got the director's cut of Alexander and the Jersey Boys OBC for $10 each, then I picked up a 3-CD set of opera music for $14.99, and then I found that shiny recording of the Messiah I'd had my eye on for $24.99. Er. Oops. I don't think I was supposed to spend money. But yay actually buying music now and then. I listened to some of that Messiah on the way home and have concluded that it is definitely as shiny as it looked. :D

So then I met Jess and Kristin at the Broadhurst, and we chatted to Drew and Ben Davis before the show. Ben is rather fun. :D We got in the line early, 'cause of standing by the stage door under the awning so we didn't get rained on. I had managed to get Box D for this show -- yes, the front box on the right side, the most limited view in the theatre XD -- so I was all excited. I got to my seat to find a very friendly German girl sitting next to me. We chatted before the show about Broadway and New York City. She had come to the US for several weeks, was in NYC this week and then was heading off to Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and LA afterwards, and just trying to fit in as much as possible since she wasn't sure when she would come back here. She had never seen Les Mis before so it was definitely fun to tell her about it. At intermission I mentioned to her Max's wig (which, by the way, will come up again later), which was the cause of my groaning several times through the second half of Act One. Because that wig is just awful. Haha.

Performance notes:
- Ben Davis is just utterly fantastic and I love his Javert so very much. He is just so Javert and ♥. I love his vowels and I love his baritone and I love his acting and I love just everything and he is so amazing and YES. LOVE. Not since Quast has there been such an awesome Javert. For seriously.
- Lea Salonga was out sick, according to Doug Kreeger (okay, he didn't tell me, I eavesdropped on his conversation with another fan after the matinee), so we got Nikki on. I like Nikki's voice much better than Lea's, even if Lea's the better actress.
- Several of the boys were out -- Ben Crawford, Blake Ginther, and Justin Bohon -- so there was some changing up of the lines. Matt Clemens was on for Ben Crawford and ... dammit, I love Matt more every time I see him. He's fantastic as R, and he was great as the Foreman, and he was great as Courfeyrac. Stephen Trafton covered both Blake's and Justin's bits, and I have to say I like Stephen Trafton's Feuilly much better than Blake's. His "Let them come if they dare / We'll be there!" didn't sound as ... forced as Blake's usually does.
- Max... was really great for that show. Yes, that's right. He really was. This may partially be due to the fact I didn't see him half the time so I couldn't be distracted by the Wig or by his lack of charisma, but he was great. He didn't take that horrible breath in "Before we cut the fat ones down to size!" like he did two weeks ago, and his voice was definitely stronger than two weeks ago, so he is apparently over that illness he had. He seems to be warming up to the role of Enjolras, but he is still not Aaron. (Although he still does the Dawn of Anguish scene MUCH better than Aaron did, and I still like his take on "Certain as the eagle flies / The people too must rise.") However, he, er, forgot to come back on "Do we have the guns we need?" during the café scene, I'm not sure why. And, I guess because of the shortage of barricade boys, it was, "Combeferre, you take the watch..." during the barricade scenes. I don't like the way he pronounced Combeferre. Of course, it sounded like he started out with "Courfeyrac" and ended up with "Combeferre", so maybe he just forgot who he was talking to.
- DREW. Max doesn't seem to be as enthusiastic to the slashiness bit as Aaron was, but Drew tries anyway: for that show he put his hands on Max's face during, "Our little lives don't count at all!" in Red and Black. (The German girl stared at me for giggling hysterically at that) And they still nuzzle during Drink With Me (German girl gave me another stare then. XD) although it's very short, it's still adorable.
- I wasn't as bothered by Mandy today. Still do not like her, but not actively offended by her voice. She was definitely less annoying.


Stage door afterwards was fun. Briefly said hi to Nehal, he was with his significant other so I didn't bother him much. I got to meet Leanna and Shelley then, and most of the rest of the time at the stage door was spent chatting with Dan, Ben, and Matt. Okay, so I didn't really do much chatting. BUT! I did get to tell Matt how much I heart his R, and I got a photo. :D I tried to remove the red-eye, but it didn't work out so well, so I just left it as is. Normally I don't have a problem with it, so I wonder what was up with my camera that night. Oh, well.

Oh, and I said Max's wig featured. He came out early, before Ben and Dan and Matt, and before I met Leanna and Shelley. He definitely recognises me right away, haha. So ...

Me: Max, Max, I gotta ask you a question.
Max: Oh yeah, what's that?
Me: Whose idea was the wig?
Max: *cringe* It's awful, isn't it?
Me: Er, well...
Max: It's okay, you can say you hate it, I hate it too.

Cue a five minute discussion on how he absolutely hates the wig, and he doesn't get it either that they made him wear one when Aaron's hair wasn't much longer at all, and that he will probably only have to wear the wig for another month yet, and we told him just what is wrong with the wig, why we don't like it. He seemed really... not happy about the wig. I kinda felt bad afterwards about bringing it up, you know, because he really doesn't like the wig. I did tell him, though, that he was really great -- 'cause, y'know, he definitely was that day. I mean. I can definitely get used to Max being on, even if I do want to see Nehal really damn bad. And even if I do miss Aaron a lot.


We all decided to hang out afterwards. We brought up Starbucks on 8th, but I pointed out that that Starbucks rarely has seats, so we tried going to the Euro Diner instead. This didn't work out, because that whole block of 8th was cordoned off - POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS - and the cop standing there said he couldn't let anyone get past. Well, bugger. (I've noticed that just about every Saturday I'm in NYC there're five alarm fires or long lines of screaminng police sirens heading somewhere, and I've pretty much figured that this has to be a normal occurrence -- either that or I'm the new Harbinger of Doom.) Well, we went back to the Starbucks, and lo! found an empty table. Whereupon we sat down for an hour and told fun stories and had Starbucks beverages and giggled a lot until 12:30am when we decided that it was time to drive ourselves home before we fell asleep. XD

Anyway, by the end of this whole day, I pretty much decided that I had to go up again to see Coram Boy for matinee and then run across 45th to stagedoor Phantom, and then see Les Mis in the evening. Because I absolutely have to see Coram Boy and I really want to meet Michael Shawn Lewis.

Photos from the day:
Me and Matt Clemens.