TODAY TIX

I saw 7 shows in 12 days using Today Tix exclusively and was quite satisfied with the outcome. I like Today Tix because you don’t have to stand in line like you do with TKTS - you just use the app. I also like that, while you can pick which section you want to sit in, you don’t have to choose the exact seats. I have an affliction when it comes to travel planning, which includes an incapacitating anxiety around choosing dates, times and seat locations on planes, at sports events and performances. I worry about choosing something, then regretting it. What if I have something else going on that night that I have forgotten? What if something else comes up that I would rather do? What if I screw up and choose the wrong month or day or year? If I choose Balcony, will I wish I had chosen Orchestra? Should I choose aisle seats, or try to be in the center? Is this the sunny side of the stadium? Will I get hot and sunburned? What if it rains? The list goes on an on, so I hope you have an inkling of how disabling this affliction is. It ultimately results in procrastination and inaction, so I arrived in New York City without a single Broadway ticket. It was a plan-as-you-go experience, which I heartily recommend unless you want to see shows like Hamilton or Dear Evan Hansen that you need to book a year in advance.

To use Today Tix you just download the app. If you use my referral code (GEYUJ) you will get $10 off your first order and I'll get $10 too, but that's not why I'm telling you about the app. I'm telling you about it because I like it and I used it a lot. There are filters for plays, musicals, matinees, evening, Broadway, Lincoln Center, etc., and you can also look for lottery tickets. I did enter a few lotteries for shows but didn’t win any of them, so I think it's a low percentage shot, like playing Mega Millions. To buy tickets, you just pick a show, pick the number of tickets you want and the section you want to sit in. Once you have entered your credit card information, it is appallingly easy to drop an astonishing amount of money with just a few taps. You go to the theater up to 30 minutes in advance and a concierge wearing a red Today Tix vest is standing outside the theater to hand you your tickets, so there is no standing in a Will Call line. The first time I used Today Tix I thought this concierge business was a little dodgy, but my daughter/blog coach assured me it was legit, and I can now assure you the same. I have used Today Tix 8 times and they were all good experiences.

Here are my totally objective and unbiased reviews of everything I saw, from best to worst:

COME FROM AWAY

When I watched the Tony Awards back in June, I was not impressed with the description of Come From Away: “The remarkable true story of 7,000 stranded passengers and the small town in Newfoundland that welcomed them.” Really? What will they make a musical about next? Ryan Lochte's Amazing Olympic Experience? It sounded like such a stretch to me that I really wasn’t very interested in seeing this show. But my daughter Lawler’s friend Bridget sees everything on Broadway and she said we should see it, so we went. It was fantastic. It was moving yet funny. The music and dancing were good and the actors were excellent. I don’t always love shows with minimalist set decorations, but I loved how they did this one. The staging revolved around the use of 12 chairs that would first be bar chairs, then seats on a bus, then plane seats, depending on how they were arranged. Each actor played several roles but it wasn’t confusing because of the artful and quick costume adjustments they made. And you just gotta love those Newfoundlander accents, with the yas, and the you betchas. Lawler and I recently discovered we share an annoyance with the fact that so many people automatically offer gratuitous standing ovations for mediocre Broadway shows these days. We only want to stand if the show is truly stand-worthy, but the fact that everyone else stands up makes us have to stand too. So we sit until we can’t see anything but the asses of the people in front of us, then begrudgingly stand up. When Come From Away was over we could hardly wait to spring to our feet. So that’s my new acid test: Was it truly stand-worthy, or did I have to stand up, just to see? Come From Away was stand-worthy to the max. See it if you possibly can. (Side Mezzanine - $89.00)

L-R: Broadway Bridget, Blog Coach Lawler, Liv the Newlywed

SPAMILTON

If you can’t get tickets to Hamilton, Spamilton is the next best thing. Spamilton is a parody of Hamilton, and it has recently moved to the tiny Puerto Rican Traveling Theater on W. 47th St., where there is no such thing as a bad seat. If you don’t know the Hamilton music well, I doubt if you would enjoy Spamilton, but if you know the music and have seen a lot of Broadway shows you will love it. Because they don’t just parody Hamilton, they also pick on other shows like Sweeney Todd, The Book of Mormon, Camelot and the King and I. There are just five actors and some puppets and I thought it was just as clever as can be. I loved that it is open on Monday evenings, when most of Broadway is dark, so that’s when I went. It is right across the street from Dutch Fred’s, where Lawler and I had drinks and a great dinner and I was, as always, the oldest person there. It seems I’m always the oldest person at the restaurants Lawler takes me to which makes me wonder where all the old people in New York City are hanging out. (Orchestra - $51.00)

WAR PAINT

One of the biggest attractions of War Paint, for me, was the fact that Patti Lupone is in it. In reality, she was a bit of a disappointment. Can Patti Lupone be starting to lose it, or is it my hearing? All too often she sounded just slightly below the pitch until eventually her vibrato would kick in and it would resolve - sort of. Christine Ebersole, on the other hand, was awesome. They play Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden, respectively, in a story that spans several decades about the cosmetic entrepreneurs’ rivalry. It was a good story and the music was good enough, but what I really loved were the costumes and the sets. The Nederlander Theatre is a big theater and it was absolutely packed. The line to get in went around the corner, then all the way from 41st St. down to 40th St. along 7th Avenue. In spite of that apparent popularity, War Paint is closing at the end of the year. While it’s not worth a special trip to NYC just to see it, it’s worth a look if you happen to be in town between now and the holidays. (Mezzanine Rows J-M - $57.00, freezing)

GROUNDHOG DAY

In the first 15 minutes of Groundhog Day I started to feel like I had made a mistake in seeing it because I know the story so well from the movie. But just as it started to get tedious, with the reenactment of the same morning, over and over again, they fast tracked through those parts and kept it interesting. Broadway Bridget had said that the best thing about Groundhog Day was the staging and she was right. There was a little bit of magic in the way they tricked us into thinking we were seeing the lead actor leave the stage, only to immediately see him pop out of his bed again. Hard as I tried to figure out how they did it, I never caught them in the act. And it had one of the most clever car chase scenes I have ever seen. I would try to describe it for you but I can’t get my sister Norah’s voice out of my head, chastising me for my tedious retelling of movie scenes when we were little. I would tell you to go see it for yourself but it closed on September 17th. However, they are launching a national tour in 2018, so if you get the chance to see one of those performances I would recommend it. But Andy Karl, who played the lead, was so good it's kind of difficult to imagine anyone else doing the role justice. (Mezzanine - $90.00, freezing)

WAITRESS

“WAITRESS tells the story of Jenna, a waitress and expert pie maker who dreams of a way out of her small town and loveless marriage.” (waitressthemusical.com) The music and lyrics are by Sara Bareilles and she also starred in it for a while, which was apparently the best time to have seen it, but all of our female vocalists were really good. I see that Jason Mraz is making his Broadway debut in it this November, which could be pretty interesting. You could smell the pies the minute you walked in the theater, which was a nice sensorial touch. Apparently they were selling little mini pie desserts during the intermission, but we were literally in the last row of the mezzanine so they never made it up to us. That was my only meh experience, seat-wise, because I must have accidentally chosen rear mezzanine K-M when I meant to choose A-J. But I got over it without suffering too much anxiety. It was actually nice to be up high, because you could see all the pie-making kitchen scenes better from above and it was cool seeing the flour flying through the air in the lights. But it took a really long time to get out of the theater from up there. (Rear Mezzanine K-M - $48.00)

MISS SAIGON (Closing Jan. 14, 2018)

I had never seen Miss Saigon, back during its original run, so I was game to see it this time. It is a good old heart-breaker of a tragic tale, based on Madame Butterfly. Eva Noblezada, who played the role of Kim, was fantastic. The sets were good and the cast was large with big dance scenes. But it was still what I call a “popera.” Now, I love real opera, like those by Puccini, or Verdi or Bizet. Anything but Mozart, because I find Mozart quite tedious. But I start to get a little stir-crazy when Broadway does it. I find myself longing to hear the spoken word to the point where it becomes really distracting. I start to listen so carefully to identify the occurrence of speaking that I can’t think of anything else.

There was a Broadway musical a few years ago called Something Rotten which was a spoof about the invention of the musical, back in the time of Shakespeare. There is a song in the show in which Nostradamus is trying to explain what this new thing called a musical is. He sings these lines all on the same note:

There's no talking
And they often stay on one note for a very long time
So when they change to a different note, you notice
And it's supposed to create a dramatic effect
But mostly you just sit there asking yourself
"Why aren't they talking?"

Nick (Spoken): That sounds miserable

Nostradamus: I believe it's pronounced Misérable

I think that’s hysterical, and if you do too you should listen to the song on YouTube and try to see Something Rotten if you ever get the chance, because it is on tour. If you dig Broadway poperas you will love Miss Saigon, but you had better hurry up if you want to see it because it is closing on January 14th. I’m glad I saw it because I like knowing what everyone is talking about, but it only had about 7 spoken words in it, at the very end. So I sat in distracted anticipation for a really long time. (Rear Orchestra - $51.00, freezing)

A BRONX TALE

The view from my seat in the meat freezer.

I don’t get why Groundhog Day closed and War Paint is closing, but A Bronx Tale isn’t. For the record, this is the one show that Broadway Bridget hasn't seen, so I did not go on her recommendation. I got taken in by the sound-bite reviews: “Entertaining, Authentic & Terrific.” “A combination of Jersey Boys and West Side Story.” I thought it was more like a combination of The Sopranos and Grease. It was just a simplistic and, frankly, unbelievable telling of the Romeo and Juliet story. They didn’t take the time to develop the two main characters in a way that made it possible to believe that they could fall in love. The leading man wasn’t very charismatic, and you don’t realize how much that matters until you go to a show that has an uncharismatic leading man. I actually considered leaving at the intermission but then was glad I didn’t, given that the first number in the second half was the best of the whole show. I probably thought about leaving at intermission because the theater was as cold as a meat freezer - the kind that Tony Soprano would store a body in - so that was kind of ironic. I always wear long pants to the theater and always take a jacket or sweater. But I nearly froze in 4 out of 7 of the shows I saw on this trip and I think that is just plain stupid. So if you're going to Broadway, be sure to pack your long johns. (Side Mezzanine - $89.00, freezing)

If you have any recommendations to share, please do so in the comments below. And if you have any questions for Broadway Bridget, I'll be happy to pass them on.

12 Days - 7 Shows