The rest of the week

Well it's Sunday night (no, it's Monday morning, actually), and I've only blogged about what I did through Tuesday. So here's the rest of my week, briefly:

WEDNESDAY: To mark the longest day of the year, we went out to Port Washington for dinner with friends. We had mediocre seafood at a dockside restaurant while watching the sunset.

The best thing about Port Washington was the treasure-trove of vanity plates. Unfortunately, I couldn't photograph them from a moving car. I did get one in the restaurant parking lot. My favorite: HEMATOMA.

THURSDAY: "Reception and Cocktail Party Celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Week 2006" This was co-sponsored by the LGBT Rights Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (City Bar), as well as their Sex and Law Committee, and the LGBT Law Assn. I volunteered to make some brief remarks on behalf of the latter--despite the fact I hate public speaking. It's even worse when I try to maintain some semblance of a woman's voice. But I did manage to get through it--though despite my notes I still forgot one thing I wanted to say.

Otherwise it was a very nice affair. I've gone to this event the last four or five years, and this was probably the best. The turnout was quite good, much more than last year. And this year there was a pianist to serenade us (nice touch when he played the theme from Brokeback Mountain).

I got to talk with my friend Donna, who's on the City Bar LGBT Committee, though she had to leave before my speech. Tom Hickey and I also continued our conversation from Tuesday. After my speech I had a nice chat with Lisa Badner, the co-chair of the City Bar Committee--we found out we both went to the University of Wisconsin--though I attended a number of years before she did.

The reception lasted a couple hours. Then I went down to Lips to finish the evening. I had a little dinner at the bar, as the place went from nearly full to very crowded. I saw Jesse Volt's Show (she did Joan Rivers and Cher, while Frankie Cocktail did her usual Dolly Parton, Madiva did her usual Madonna, and Jason Cosmo did Liza Minelli. But the big surprise was Ginger, who usually has Thursdays off--she did Bette Midler).

FRIDAY: It was an unusual event, but my wife wanted to do something without me (normally we do things together on the weekends). Left to my own devices, I arranged to see The Threepenny Opera with my friend Rochelle, the president of CDI. We missed out seeing it in April, and I really wanted to see it before it closed Sunday. I know a couple of the cast members, at least slightly: drag performers Edie and Flotilla DeBarge. Edie wanted to perform on Broadway since she was a child, and she had finally made it--curiously not based on her dancing talent.

I e-mailed Edie to tell her we'd be coming. She said she'd see us before the performance, as some of the cast members would be out in the audience then. Unfortunately we arrived a bit late, and went directly up to our seats in the mezzanine. Rochelle told me later that she had seen Edie standing behind the orchestra section, but hadn't recognized her in her costume. Oh, well.

The production did not get very good reviews, and I could see why. It sort of wandered from song to song, with a very explicit new translation--sometimes I thought the idea was simply to shock the audience. The performances I liked, though I was underwhelmed by the biggest name in the cast, Cyndi Lauper. The rest of the cast was at least adequate, with Jim Dale nearly stealing the show. (He was the star of one of the first shows I saw on Broadway, Scapino!, back in 1974! I also saw his Tony-winning performance in Barnum, opposite Glenn Close, a few years later.) I also really enjoyed the amazing Brian Charles Rooney as Lucy Brown. His soprano had no touch of falsetto whatsoever. This was the role Edie was supposed to have, until they added "Lucy's Aria" to the show, which was way too high for her to sing. (I love the cartoon of him as Lucy on his site.)

After the show we went down to the Brazil Grill for a late dinner.

SATURDAY: After seeing a pair of Sarah Bernhardt's films, and an exhibition about her at the Jewish Museum, we followed that up with I, Sarah, a one-woman play in town for three performances from Eugene, Oregon. This was in one of the smallest theatres I've ever been in--31 seats, if I counted correctly, though these were comfortable armchairs.

Mindy Nirenstein portrayed the world's first international superstar actress rising from her deathbed to describe her life, with a few monologues from her plays thrown in. Her acting was quite good, though the writing left a little to be desired. At one point Bernhardt says that she had no trouble crying on stage, but could not in her real life--after saying that she wore a veil at Molière's funeral to hide her tears. The monologue from Phaedra went way too long.

Afterwards we went around the block to Caminosur for a couple of pisco sours and some plaintain chips.