NYC whirlwind trip - Allegiance, Fun Home, and the Fest begins

[rmd]

We did a whirlwind trip to NYC this weekend. We wanted to see Allegiance before it closes next weekend, and since we were down there, we also saw Fun Home.

We tool the Acela down Saturday morning, walked down to the Hotel Edison, checked in and dropped our bags, and then went up to the matinee of Allegiance. It's well-performed - the cast is solid, and Takei gave himself the most fun role of the show. In the framing sequence, he plays the main character as an old man, but for most of the show he plays the grandfather of the family and it's a fun role. The musical part of the musical is a bit rough. The songs are more narrative than I expect in a show that's not fully sung-through, and some of the rhymes are a bit clunky. Also, there's a bit of "this character falls for that one because the plot requires it". But overall an enjoyable experience and as one of the kickstarter backers, I'm really glad I got to see the show before it closed up.

We grabbed dinner nearby and hung out in the room for a bit and then walked up to Circle in the Square for Fun Home. I've been reading Bechdel's stuff since the mid 80's when it was in the gay newspapers, and I had read the graphic novel when it first came out, so I've been eager to see this for a while. The performance is done in the round, and Circle in the Square is a fairly small space, so the show is really quite intimate. There are enough hydraulics that things were able to move in and out of the space easily as needed, which is otherwise a challenge in a space that small. There are three Alisons - the adult Alison, who's looking back at all this, college aged Alison, and young Alison. All three were great; the young Alison had previously been one of the flock of titular Matildas in that show. The show was as good as I'd hoped, and the performances were great. We had an understudy for Alison's mother, and she was solid, and Michael Cerveris was phenomenal as her father.

We took the train back on Sunday and headed right over to start watching movies for the Fest, where we saw Polder for a non-zombie, non-nuclear-war dystopia, and the tail end of the shorts program.

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing the experiences with us! *reads delightedly*

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Your assessment of both musicals about matches mine. Regarding Allegiance, I also think that, musically, it was stylistically all over the place. The individual songs were mostly quite good, I thought, but didn't necessarily cohere to one musical vision when taken as a whole. I still bought the CD. :-} On the plus side, I found the story moving and important, and I do love to see a cast that's almost entirely not white.

Fun Home was just fantastic all around. I think we saw the same cast you did (ex-Matilda and understudy).