Angels in America in NYC

[raven]

Hullo, hullo. I am so tired that once I've finished posting this I'm going to take a bath and then I'm going to go to bed. At 9pm. On a Saturday night. I am the coolest person you know, admit it. But I just got back from New York! And it was amazing, and totally worth how rotten I feel now, because, omg, so amazing.

The five-hour bus-ride down was not quite so amazing - I got up at the crack of dawn and realised I had the wrong ticket, which was incredibly soothing to discover ten minutes before the bus left, yes - but I got there in the end and washed up at Port Authority feeling like a line from a Pogues song, you know, hand in hand on Broadway like the first men on the moon. I am such a tourist. I try not to look up at the buildings in case I get pickpocketed or whatever, but I want to. I wandered uptown and met the_acrobat and macadamanaity, and it was a lovely warm afternoon, so we wandered. We wandered past people dressed as Elmo and the Cookie Monster - and took pictures with them, because again, so cool - and past lots of people dressed as footballers handing out chocolate. And eventually we wandered to a small Italian place, sat on the terrace amidst hanging baskets and drank wine and talked about Paul Gross and William Shatner. And climatic culture shock, and Doctor Who, and quite a few other things. Look, there was wine. This is a pertinent fact.

And then gamesiplay arrived, and we drank quite a bit more wine - these things are not related - and when everything was starting to get dark and well-mellowed, set off to the theatre.

Okay, Angels In America. I love this play. I really love it. Back in 2007 ou3fs went to see it collectively at the Oxford Union and I think most of us sort of fell for it - gavagai and I got our habit of signing off with "Je t'aime" round about that time - and, well, even if this had been a crappy production, it was Angels in America, seriously, in New York City with some of my absolute favourite people and Zachary Quinto!

But it wasn't a crappy production. It had a particular tone to it - a campy theatricality, all elaborate sets and shining wires holding the angels up - and it was careful to keep the humour and general weirdness of the play on the surface, and, oh, it really, really worked. The cast was lovely. Zachary Quinto was very good as Louis - and as macadamanaity was very keen to emphasise, we've seen his nipples, also we were in the second row, how amazing is that - and I really liked Christian Borle as Prior. He's my favourite character in the play: the unwilling prophet, the unwilling symbol for the whole stinking zeitgeist - it's Louis who gets off on profundity, not him - and the portrayal really, really got that. (Quoth Leigh on Christian Borle: "He's kind of secretly my boyfriend.")

Initially I was a little disappointed we couldn't get tickets for Millennium Approaches, and started in the middle, so to speak - but in the end, I think it worked out for the better. My favourite scene in both parts is where Belize steals the AZT, but before he can, gets Louis in to say kaddish for Roy Cohn. Louis doesn't know it - "I'm an intensely secular Jew!" - but Belize says, "It doesn't count if it's easy", and so behind him Ethel Rosenberg stands up and says it into his ears for him. And the moment is so perfectly pitched: the melody of it fills the space, and it's touching and awful and ruthless, all at once, and I drew in a sharp breath at the end. So good. (Here it is in the HBO version. Good, but not like having it six feet in front of you.)

And then at the very, very end: I held my breath at "The great work begins". I love this play. I really, really do. I can count on my fingers the times I've been to a play and had the suspension of disbelief you're supposed to have - that kind of feeling that nothing else matters, you're being swept up in it - and this was like that, oh yes.

Afterwards we wandered into the night and into a cocktail bar, which was rosy-red and surprisingly comfortable - and may I say, yet again, how nice it is not to have to go to the bar for drinks! - and Leigh had her very first martini, and Sara and I drank the strongest-ever gin & tonics, and then we kind of sort of retreated into a vague drunken haze for the rest of the evening. (Meredith had been, by this point, awake for twenty-four hours. I was seriously impressed that she was still standing up.) This after realising with great and epic profundity that we've known each other nearly nine years, what is that about, and now I am sober and thinking about it, have done OMG in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Oxford, Berlin and now New York again. (This one's the Visit of ZOMG. No points for guessing why.)

I ended up sprawled on Sara's couch watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and drinking more gin (me) rum (Sara) and gin & rum (Leigh), and also Leigh had lent me The Invention of Love, warning me that a) it would make me homesick and b) it has a CORE OF UNSPOKEN ANGUISH, and I was in the sort of mood where reading said anguish out loud seems like a very good idea. (She also noted that she and Sara are the only two people in the world to have written The Invention of Love-derived fanfiction; my response was, "Why do I know both of you?") So I lay there and read aloud, and drank gin and ginger ale, and quite honestly that's the happiest I've been since I came to this country.

It may as well be noted that the main reason there is a collective memory of this is because Leigh wrote an LJ entry about it. It ends, literary-like, and entirely uncharacteristically, with me saying "nox est perpetua", and the party presumably retreating to find their better selves in bed. I really, really wish my brain would provide an explanation for this.

Nox non est perpetua, ohmygod. I mean, the sun came out. It was morning. Sara is a good human being and poured coffee in my general direction; I teased the cat until I was awake. And then we all woke up properly at the prospect of brunch, in a cute little place somewhere near Columbia, that did eggs benedict and vast quantities of chips before lunchtime. And then I had to go, and for all the five hours back alternately napped and read The Invention of Love and - Leigh, you were right - was entirely too delighted by jokes about Jowett, and changing trains at Didcot, and wait in delicious anticipation for the CORE OF UNSPOKEN ANGUISH.

I am so tired. I had a lovely time! Long past time for bed.

Comments

Re: I used to have an Angels icon but now I don't.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Re: the napkin on the head: YES. We clearly have a brain connection on this. Initially I was kind of disappointed that Quinto didn't do it, but then I thought, Well, it isn't actually in the text, so it's really Ben Shenkman's bit of business, and it should stay that way.

Have I mentioned recently that I SHOULD MARRY BEN SHENKMAN?

It will most certainly not be three years till next time. It will be soon.

Re: I used to have an Angels icon but now I don't.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I thought it was another instance of the miniseries running in my head concurrently with the play, but, actually, I really do love Ben Shenkman (and kind of see what you see in Louis, ohgod).

(Soon! Well, at your wedding, obv. Your epic and somewhat polygamous wedding.)