there's nothing like a show on broadway

15 June 2007:
There are several things that are considered a must when one comes to New York. Take a stroll in Central Park. See the Statue of Liberty. Go to the observatory deck of the Empire State Building.

See a Broadway musical.

Which I am so deliriously proud to say I did today! Hah.

We watched Boubil & Schonberg’s newest musical, The Pirate Queen, which combined the typical epic-scale musical of B&S with amazing tapping from the people of Riverdance. I’ll talk a little bit more about the musical later.

But first. Let us hear the tale of woe that three strangers in a foreign land had to endure. It is one of excitement and intrigue, filled with suspension and tension that leaves you exhausted yet exhilarated.

Okay. So that may be a slight exaggeration. But really, only very slight. Because let me tell you, buying tickets to a Broadway show is rather stressful. It should come with a warning that says “only the die-hards like xun need apply.”

Unlike the dignified air of the West End, queuing for half-priced tickets on Broadway is an excruciating business. We had to queue up at the TKTS booth just next to the Marriott Hotel lobby for a good hour that snaked up and down the side of the lobby. Orchestra seat tickets are sold at half-priced here, which approximately comes to about sixty bucks for a ticket. Musicals here really are quite on the expensive side. Converting back to Singapore dollar, I paid much less for a fabulous seat in the West End than I did for a so-so seat on Broadway. Blah.

Plus the half-priced tickets weren’t available for the shows we really wanted to see, such as The Lion King and Wicked. So we ended up in a debate over whether to watch Beauty and the Beast (which I vetoed) or Altar Boys (which was selling pretty cheaply, but we weren’t sure about it) and The Pirate Queen. As aforementioned, we went with The Pirate Queen.

But the decision-making was the least of it all. We were hurrying up and down the entire Times Square district, going ten streets away and back in like 15 minutes, or running eight floors down the Marriott Hotel. All in desperate attempts to get cheaper tickets. Not like there was much discount. Sighs. Still, it was a pretty interesting experience.

Considering PQ was written by the great talents that delivered Les Miserables, I expected it to be an ab-fab musical. Unfortunately, it only had an average storyline. The singing was quite decent, although there was once where I thought the actor playing Tiernan looked like he was seizing while singing. Oh, and Donald looked uncannily like Legolas and Aragorn’s elven general war buddy in The Two Towers. Har. But it was quite an unsatisfactory musical experience overall. Maybe London’s West End has totally spoilt me. Oh dear.

Anyways. That was the end of the day. To rewind time, we started our day by wandering about Greenwich Village, which has pretty funky stuff. Oh, the Forbes office is here too and it had a really cool display of antique toy boats, every edition imaginable of Monopoly, and a bunch of other toy collections from Malcolm Forbes’s childhood.

After that, we went to the Strand bookstore which sells books outside for a dollar each, but requires impressive scrounging (which I’m apparently quite incapable of). I spent more time at Forbidden Planet though, which is the coolest comic store I’ve ever seen. I’m so in love with it. I was reading the first issue of Neil Gaiman’s Eternals inside and the latest Exiles issue (which, thanks to a pathetic comic collection in Singapore, I’m like 50 issues behind). It is an amazing shop. So desperately wanted to buy everything there, like the Eternals and the Buffy spin-off comic that is supposed to be “season eight”. However, the prices of a lot of the books made that quite on the side of impossible.

From Greenwich, we headed over to Times Square, which is currently my official favorite place ever in New York City. It is so frickin’ cool. It has a massive M&M’s shop that has the funkiest stuff, and a really excellent music store called Colony. Ooh and yummy ice cream from Coldstone’s. By the way, neon lights? So passé. The in-thing now is brightly lit digital screens. Utterly pretty. I doubt any of my photos would do Times Square justice. And the excitement from the people all around you makes you feel so excited too.

I am in love with Times Square. It is so cool. I’ll probably head down again tomorrow or the day after so I can get my “I Heart New York” t-shirt. Whee! Okay. Off to bed now. Too tired to keep my eyes open. Ciao!