Broadway!

Holly was soon calling to say that they had arrived at the hotel and were ready to explore. 710_2593 Hannah was excited to discover Broadway was so near the hotel, so that’s where we went and before long, after stopping to watch the street artists who reminded us of Chinese skills Hannah's purchase and doing a painting specially for Hannah – who became the first of us to actually buy anything other thanfood!! – we had identified the right street for the Indian restaurant we’d spotted on our earlier jaunt into the area, having known that would be a welcome change that we all enjoy. Although externally uninspiring, the restaurant claiming to be NYC’s longest established Indian eatery produced good tasting food – and taught me that soda water is known as ‘seltzer’ water in this part of the US. Keen to be sure that the theatres were as near as we thought and that there were deals to be had we were soon looking at the Times Square ball again and investigating tkts, the place to buy discounted theatre tickets in the north corner of the square that is not a square. Apparently the area is named after the New York Times which used to be printed in the building which is topped by the ball though it has long since moved. For a while before making our way back to collapse we wandered around the theatres asking about prices, checking locations and seeing what was on. It was fun to be with someone so excited to be surrounded by the performing arts she lives so much. Skip ahead twenty-four hours and the excitement was even greater as we actually had tickets to see ‘The Lion King’ and for all if us, thus was the first visit to a Broadway musical. Although we’ve all experienced spectacular theatrical performances in other places we were all absolutely bowled over by the first scene of the show as all the animals gather to see the new lion cub – heir to his father’s kingdom- presented to them. The movement was balletic- reminiscent of ‘Cats’ while the costumes had the drama of ‘War Horse’. Interestingly, found the fact that each animal was portrayed by one person much less distracting than the group puppetry of ‘War Horse’. What an experience! And what fun to share it with friends from the other side of the world! Fighting for a taxi after was a farce so we decided to go with the cyclerickshawman . ‘All part of the fun of the experience’ we declared- though the cost was silly. Nonetheless the experience was memorable. How could ‘The Lion King’ be bettered? Maybe it couldn’t here, but the next evening saw us all giving in to the opportunity of reduced price tickets to see ‘Newsies’- a show I’d never heard of, but which I loved. In dance, song and dialogue a cast of mainly young men recently graduated from Drama School, tells the story of Jack Kelly leading the newsboys against the publishing mogul, Pulitzer. His name had come up frequently on our sightseeing tours as a philanthropist and supporter of good causes, using his newspaper to raise readers’ awareness of needs such as the funding of the base needed to support France’s gift of the Statue of Liberty, so it was fascinating to see also his selfishness portrayed such that even his daughter used her journalistic skill to support the newsboys in the battle against his changes. The show was superb and had us all recognising that different productions encourage different responses in an audience. After the performance we were able to join the hoardes outside the theatre waiting for the cast to emerge and sign autographs: Hannah got a fair few.