(no subject)

First THANK YOU to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. It was a good one. The reason you didn't hear from me is because I was in the city and I saw a show for my birthday and didn't get back to Stony Brook until 1:30ish. At that point, critical thinking wasn't really my strong point.

Well my classmates got me a birthday cake and cupcakes (communication? Not a priority. XD) and we had both. They were both delicious. I went into a sugar coma for class, and then I hopped down to TKTS to see what I could get. Even though I really wanted to see Shrek (Brian D'Arcy James? Sutton Foster? Fuck yes I am there) they were dark so I had to find something else. I ended up seeing West Side Story from row R, off to one side, but I had a decent view.

Okay I have never seen WSS on stage, only the movie eighty zillion times, and I have to say one thing before I can gush about it further. I know that "Cool" and "Gee Officer Krupke" were switched for the movie, I guess because they didn't want to lose Russ Tamblyn for it, but I never understood "Cool". Like honestly if I had to cut one song from the show it would have been the first to go. Even thinking of it in GOK's place I never really understood. But then last night I saw it in context, with where it is in the show, and I got it. It totally just clicked for me. It honestly loses all its dramatic significance in the show without the preceding scene.

So yes. I got to see the original cast, nobody's left yet. I saw Matt Cavenaugh who was a great Tony (was I swooning? Maybe a little), and George Akram as Bernardo. Man. I don't know what it is about the actors who play Bernardo, but from this guy to George Chakiris, Bernardo makes me want to drop my knickers. He could be in my America any time, if you know what I'm saying. Karen Olivo as Anita was fucking fantastic, I was just in awe of her. She was on fire all night -- but she did it without upstaging Maria. Holy fucking Jesus, like. Seriously. And Josefina Scaglione was beautiful and brilliant. She just opened her mouth and those notes came out like they were nothing for her. I liked her voice because it was somehow small without being young and quivery -- it was very well trained, is what it was. And she is fucking gorgeous. Like, you can tell from way back that she's beautiful but I saw her at the stage door and I was speechless. The guy who plays Action also gets a nod -- Eric Hatch, thank you Playbill -- he was great. He was very intense and in the second act after Riff is dead (OH SHIT RIFF we'll talk about him next) he stepped up and looking back, you can see that he was eyeing that leadership place all along. It was brilliant, in short. And John Arthur Greene was great.

In general, it was a beautiful production. It was updated without being modern, which is I think something a lot of revivals struggle with. My favorite part was easily the dance at the gym, but then, it always has been. The dancing was just great, I wish I could do that. The lighting too, which I only started noticing in productions when I went to London, was great. A lot of blues and greens with Tony and Maria, and reds and warms with everyone else. The color palette was sensational. The Spanish dialogue wasn't as distracting as I thought it would be (although I really had to hold my tongue at intermission whent he guy in front of me turned to his wife and said, "I can't understand what they're fucking saying. Way to skip the point). It was wonderful, and I think I read that all the actors are fluent in that language, so it was extremely natural. It wasn't Americans who had learned the dialogue phonetically for the role or anything. Nobody overacted, and... well, what I loved is that every time I hear "Tonight" I used to think of the movie where it's just really kind of ridiculous with the soft focus close ups and the presentationalness of it all (not a word, I know, but keep with me here) but this staging was all very intimate, and we still managing to see and understand everything. They were singing to each other rather than to the audience which I think is a big thing in a musical.

I'll get off my soapbox now... I went to the stage door because the show got out at 10:30 and there was no way I was going to make my 10:40-something train back to Stony Brook, so I stuck around for awhile. People signed my Playbilll and I took a picture with John Arthur Greene (Riff) because he volunteered (I laughed XD) but it's hard to stagedoor alone because then you have to depend on the kindness of strangers to take pictures. I'll upload the photo when my real computer is fixed (next paragraph I'll tell you about that I promise). But they were all very gracious, and honestly, I just like telling them good work and thanking them for an extraordinary performance. It's probably unprofessional to fangirl but I'm not sure I can make myself care. If we don't all love each other's work and let them know it, how else are we going to keep doing what we're doing?

So outside of the birthday shit, my monitor is pretty much dead. I was going to take it to this place in the city but I was banking on being able to get there before they closed, but I didn't. So I think I'm going to make a quick trip tomorrow back into the city to take it to them and maybe it can be repaired by Wednesday. I really wish I didn't have to go to the city, but it'll probably end up being cheaper than what Dell wants to charge me, there really isn't anything around here in Stony Brook that will repair it, and I'm not going to faff around with the people here at the school. I'm just not going to do that.

Other than that it remains drama as usual in the program, and I am baking my own bread. I hope. >_>