We're Doing This November Theater Trip
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Happy Monday, y’all. Now that the Helen Hayes Awards — and that other annual theater-awards shindig — are safely behind us, I’ve turned my energies to something I’ve been cooking up behind the scenes.
I mentioned a while back that I’d been thinking about some organized trips, offered as part of what I do here. The idea was that they’d be a perk of membership, open first to paying subscribers — including those of you who have a comp subscription because you supported me financially when I moved to Florida to try being a flight attendant, right before COVID wrecked everything.
The time, he has come. The idea, she has matured. And the spots, they are 16.
That’s it.
Our itinerary — though there’s room for a bit of change, considering how little of the fall Off Broadway season has actually been written in stone — has been mapped out. It’s November 12–15, three nights in Manhattan, and we’re not going to be roughing it.
We’re staying at the Algonquin, because of course we are. (The hotel cat is named Hamlet, and he is the Eighth of His Name, which was given to the original by John Barrymore. There have also been three Matildas.)
And we’re brunching that Sunday at Chez Josephine on 42nd Street, also a historic venue … because there may once, for instance upon the occasion of the opening night of The Lion King, have been a shenanigan involving a devastatingly handsome gentleman who lived upstairs. An incident that irrevocably alienated the drama critic of the Associated Press. But I digress.
There’s plenty of other goodness (and gossip) built into the trip, too: train fare from Union Station, discounts on your stay at the Gonk (including breakfasts!), four other meals with the group, and group prices on the shows1. I’m even working on a surprise guest or two from the worlds of theater and/or journalism — more on that soon.
Pricing: starting at $2,200 per person, depending on whether you’re sharing a room. Traveling with your sweetheart is encouraged! There is also a budget-conscious track available with a slightly less glamorous but still central hotel option, if that’s helpful for fence-sitters. Feel free to inquire. A 20-percent deposit holds your spot.
To repeat: At the moment, this trip is open only to paid subscribers, including founding supporters who have comp subscriptions.
But in two weeks, on Monday June 29, slots will open up to any subscribers — actively paying, currently comp’d, or at the free-forever level.
And two weeks after that, slots will become open to anyone at all.
Sixteen people.2 Two weeks’ head start. The full itinerary is here. I’ll wait.
South Carolina Rescues a Trump-Kennedy Refugee
Sometimes my SC homies do me proud, y’know. And I love that one of our DC peeps is out there spreading the good theater gospel in my home state.
Three reading recommendations, while I have you:
Helen Shaw continues to try to convert me to the practice of hero-worship, though most recently she’s done it in the most agreeable way: with a musically literate(!) critical essay about one of the most sophisticated and emotionally plangent works in the musical-theater canon. I got misty reading the piece itself — and then I clicked through to the video of St. Bernadette et al. singing “Sunday” on the TKTS steps and lost my shit entirely. Best happy cry I’ve had in a while.
Also I must report that this bee-alchemy essay, which manages to name-check both Seneca and Montaigne — and which I believe I discovered via ArtsJournal, my current at-launch browser homepage — was unexpectedly moving. Also, the author’s surname is “Pollen,” which is almost too perfect.
And please (hello!) enjoy this, which is charming and perceptive, especially with regard to the singularly Gallic smoothness of the French Admiral’s approach: The Sondheim Hub: Please Hello: Oui, Détente!
FYI: The Northern Virginia–born Mason Alexander Park makes their Broadway debut in this production. You’ve traced their rise from Olney Theatre Center (Cabaret, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) through Netflix cult favorites (Cowboy Bebop and The Sandman) to splashy appearances in the West End (as the title character in Oh, Mary!, Ariel in Jamie Lloyd’s The Tempest, and this same staging of Much Ado.) Now one of the most magnetic young presences in pop culture is about to do Shakespeare on Broadway for the first time. And we'll be in the room.
You know what? I almost forgot. Four of the 16 slots are already filled. So only 12 are open. Maybe rethink that decision to take your time mulling it over. Because this is going to be a hoot.