We did not go see Daniel Craig in Macbeth. When I had initially planned (hahaha) this first stage of the trip months ago, I had thought…Wow…we can see Hugh Jackman in the Music Man and Daniel Craig in Macbeth!!! In 24 hours!
Well, er, then Macbeth actually began previews and then performances and the reviews were pretty uniformly either skeptical or downright hostile. The gist being that avant-garde director Sam Gold’s production was like a college dress rehearsal that a movie star had wandered into.
And frenz, I am not paying $600 for that.
So we opted to stage door it, timing it just right, and here’s James Bond for ya.
(Clarify – I am totally up for creative and deconstructed productions of Shakespeare. But again – with three of us, and this being Broadway, at those prices….nah.)
Oh, but we still have Hugh!
Or do we?
Yes, I got tickets way back for this production that Covid delayed by something like a year, and oh boy, we were all set then the day before we left (aka the day before we were to see it)…an email. “Hugh Jackman will not be performing in the Music Man this week.” Covid-positive for the second time.
So…the option was given. We could just go ahead and go, and sure Sutton Foster is great and I’m sure the understudy would be great – or exchange them for another date (not doable) or get a refund. Again, given the fact that we are not exactly unfamiliar with The Music Man and the draw here was Jackman and it was…a lot of money…we opted for the refund.
(Lots of disappointed folks out there. Waiting…and waiting…in Birmingham, there was an older couple in pretty much the same situation. They were heading up to celebrate the husband’s birthday, had Music Man tix for Wednesday, as well as Plaza Suite (Sara Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick) for Thursday. They opted to stick with the show.)
As it turned out, our Birmingham-DC flight was delayed so much that we would have missed our first connection. Our rebooked flight got us to NYC by a bit after 5, which would have been time enough to get to the theatre directly from the airport and causing me untold stress along the way. So it’s all good. And I have a few hundred bucks back in my bank account.
Anyway, Daniel Craig was not the only celebrity we saw yesterday. My son came back from snack-hunting in the DC airport and said, “Chris Christie’s here.” And indeed he was. Turned out, on our flight. I heard a bit of his phone conversation as he was sitting in first class and we were boarding. It was interesting, but nothing I could actually connect dots on, just hearing his end….
We got here, checked into our hotel, headed back up to the Museum Mile festival, and then over to Empanada Mama’s for dinner, then meeting up with Dan Craig, then back down
This morning, I took an early walk, seeing some lower Manhattan sites, notable the exterior of the Mother Seton shrine. Catching an actual play today, then who knows?
Charlotte was Both 