"My Fair Lady" on Broadway at Lincoln Center

Last week TD and I went up to Lincoln Center to the Vivian Beaumont Theater to see My Fair Lady and it was a big treat. It runs almost three hours and I enjoyed every minute of it. My Fair Lady stars Lauren Ambrose (below) as the transformed flower girl Eliza Doolittle, Harry Hadden-Paton from Downton Abbey as Professor Higgins, Diana Rigg, who I remember as Emma Peal on The Avengers tv show (!) as Professor Higgins' mother, and Norbert Leo Butz as Eliza's father. 

(photos from the Lincoln Center website)
Lauren Ambrose, best known from Six Feet Under, was famously cast to star in Funny Girl on Broadway but that production was canceled for lack of funding. Now she has her chance on Broadway and she is wonderful. She is of course a great actor plus she can sing too!
     The real revelation was Norbert Leo Butz who is a two-time Tony Award winner, but I had not seen him on stage before. He is magnetic and you can't take your eyes off of him. The rip-roaring number "Get Me to the Church on Time" (below) had people clapping in their seats and stopped the show with thunderous applause.

Mr. Harry Hadden-Paton as Professor Higgins was a no-show which was initially disappointing but we saw a tall and handsome understudy named Tony Roach who did a great job and thoroughly inhabited the role. This production is elegantly directly by Bartlett Sher. We saw his production of The Light in the Piazza, also at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, and that too was a memorable play.
     My Fair Lady has the most wonderful set piece, which is Professor Higgins' Edwardian London house. On stage it dimly advances forward out of the darkness and lights up. Then it spins around to reveal different rooms - the library, the front hall, a bathroom or hall. Characters go through doors of the rooms as it spins and then it recedes back into the darkness at the end of a scene. It was beautiful how it was done, somehow evoking its own emotion.
     And of course there is the swelling Lerner & Loewe music thanks to a full orchestra playing away. It's one hit after another - "Wouldn't It be Loverly," "With a Little Bit of Luck," "The Rain in Spain," On the Street Where You Live."
    I was so happy to see this production because I have a long history with My Fair Lady. When I was young, the movie came out over Thanksgiving weekend, which is when my birthday falls so for my birthday I wanted to go see My Fair Lady. I was seven.
    We were visiting my grandparents in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and my mother and my grandmother and brother Thom and I took the "high speed" train into Philadelphia and saw the picture in a grand old theater that I'm sure is no longer there. I, of course, loved it all - directed by George Cukor, costume design and art direction by Cecil Beaton, and starring the stunning Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle. The movie images have become iconic.
Eliza at Ascot –

Eliza at the Embassy Ball –

After seeing the movie we got the soundtrack record and I listened to it at home every day after school, oh yes I did.

When my family moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, while I was in college, I was home working one summer and volunteered to do props for a production of My Fair Lady presented at the Fort Wayne Civic Theater. There were some cast parties and it was a fun way to make some friends, and after hearing the show every night I grew to know it by heart. For me My Fair Lady is a beautiful, lyrical Edwardian dream. What a long-lasting gift its creators gave.

A Night at the Opera

The cast of La Bohème takes a bow in front of the golden curtain.
The other night TD and I went to the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center to see La Bohème. I always love going to the Metropolitan Opera. Everything is dark red velvet - the seats, the carpeting, the walls - it's like being inside a jewel box. Also people really do dress up to go to the opera so it's good people-watching and you don't see the casual, sloppy clothes worn to Broadway theaters. I've always wanted to see La Bohème, which is the Met's most performed opera. There is that great scene in the movie Moonstruck where Cher and Nicholas Cage attend a performance of La Bohème at the Met. And of course it's fun to go at Christmastime as there is a beautiful snowy scene. You can read all about the production here.
Operas are interesting for me too because they are like art history come to life. La Bohème debuted in Italy in 1906, though it is set in Paris in 1830. It was written by Giacomo Puccini, who lived from 1858 to 1924. Here is Mr. Puccini, a dapper fellow -

I like his double-breasted coat and bowler hat.
La Bohème is of course the story of a group of artists, or bohemians, in the Latin Quarter in Paris, and a love affair between two of them. The arias in this opera are some of the best known in the classical world - it's one hit after another!
The Met's production, designed by Franco Zeffirelli in the 80s, is a splendor. It starts out in an intimate garret in Paris and then moves to a joyous parade in the street with a cast of seemingly thousands (photos from the Met web site) –

Act 3 is the snowy scene. It is set outside a small inn where the lovers meet. Snow falls and darkened figures travel along a road in the background. It really is like a painting.

Act 4 finds us back in the Parisian garret. I won't tell you how it ends.

The music is glorious and the visuals divine. It was such a holiday treat here is New York City.
Blog bonus - an excerpt from Act 1 -


I am wishing you dear reader a holiday season of beauty and love –

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season. I have had an unusual season this year – super busy at my new job at Ralph Lauren, and also very preoccupied with getting my father ready to move to Colorado, which I wrote about on the blog previously. So my attention has been elsewhere and the holiday season has literally flown by, but TD and I have enjoyed some wonderful parties and entertainments here in New York City.
Last weekend we at last got our Christmas tree up (above). We got it from our friend Billy Romp on Jane Street who has supplied our tree since 1988.
For my birthday, which is at the end of November, we went to see Pippin on Broadway!
(photo from Pippin web site)

When I was in high school, I went to see the traveling version of Pippin in Utica at the Stanley Theater. I took a girl. Later we went to the junior prom. Let's just say I enjoyed Pippin more! This production on Broadway is directed by Diane Paulus, who was the genius behind the recent Broadway production of Hair, and it features gymnasts and acrobats in a circus setting. It was so colorful and entertaining. We sat in the first row in the balcony. I had great time.
My photo of the curtain call –

On TD's birthday, which comes one week later, we had a delicious lunch at Union Square Cafe –

Up at Bergdorf Goodman, the theme of the holiday windows is the arts. This glittering one is based on music –

They do such a fantastic job with their windows. This one is inspired by film. It looks like a Greta Garbo silent movie –

Down Fifth Avenue, TD enjoyed viewing the big tree at Rockefeller Center –

We went to see the Matisse cut-outs at the Museum of Modern Art. I love these Christmas colors –

My mother had a cousin named Bondie O'Donnell, and he has a daughter named Julia who has a daughter Uma who is 14 years old and is studying here in New York City at the School of American Ballet. She's a real ballerina! I think Uma and I are second cousins once removed. Anyway, TD and I took Uma to see George Balanchine's The Nutcracker at the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. (photos from the web site)

It was so beautiful. I had seen it years ago but really had not remembered how ornate and gorgeous it is.

Here we are at intermission, O'Donnell second cousins once removed.

Today is Christmas Eve. We are going tonight to my brother Eric's in Montclair for a family dinner. There we will say good-bye to my father who is moving to Colorado on Friday.
This is a picture of the two of us a few years ago at a wedding –

I will miss him a lot.
And I am wishing you all the best for the holidays and the new year, dear reader. 

Fashion, Art and Culture Meet

With jewelry designer extraordinaire and cultural philanthropist Ann Ziff. 
I was very happy recently to go with my nephew Aaron to Ann Ziff's jewelry store on Madison Avenue for a party celebrating a new book – Diller, Scofidio + Renfro: Lincoln Center Inside Out. You may remember Ann Ziff on the blog - she is a wonderful jewelry designer and was in the news when she donated $30 million to the Metropolitan Opera.

Ann's jewelry collection is called Tamsen Z, and her Tamsen Z store on Madison is a polished jewel box where Ann offers her beautiful, artistic designs which combine unusual colors and textures and gems. "I make every piece myself by hand," she told me. "It's my own little sweat shop." At the party, she was wearing glittery platform shoes, a hot pink silk blouse, and layers of her own golden necklaces inspired by faraway places. On her wrist twinkled a stack of thin jeweled bracelets. "If one is good, twenty one is better," she cracked.

As a major supporter of the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center, Ann was celebrating the new book by the design firm Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, who rose to renown when they created the wonderful High Line park. Now they have breathed new life into Lincoln Center with a ten year renovation which has greatly improved the campus which many saw as an unsuccessful example of brutalist 60's architecture. Coincidentally, TD and I had just seen a very interesting documentary on PBS about how Diller, Scofidio + Renfro merge art and architecture.  "They have changed the mood of Lincoln Center," Ann Ziff said to me. "They have made it very inviting and turned it into something beautiful. It's just genius what they did. I don't know anyone else who could have done it."

In the back of the store, Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio and Charles Renfro where greeting friends and signing their book about Lincoln Center. I had the chance to meet and talk with Elizabeth. "At Lincoln Center, we wanted to bring the vitality of the concert halls out into the public, and turn it inside out," she told me. They certainly successfully did that by designing a new plaza, refurbishing Alice Tully Hall,  transforming the West 65th Street block, and more (don't miss the new restaurant with the green grass lawn on top of it).

Elizabeth told me that one of the most sensitive and controversial aspects of the project was renovating the iconic fountain at the center of the plaza. But her firm did a beautiful job, installing new nozzles and lighting, and replacing the circular perimeter with a polished granite surface that seems to float in the air. I took this picture of the fountain when we went to the Metropolitan Opera in January.

On the way out of Tamsen Z, I looked up and noticed the store's light fixtures. They are miniature versions of the huge crystal chandeliers at the Metropolitan Opera house which famously ascend before a performance begins. I love a New York City party that rolls up style, art, and culture in one event.