Last week my best friend was in town visiting so I got to
take in some culture. Including:
1. Teresa, Rosemary and I saw the play Venus in Fur, written
by David Ives and starring the extraordinary Nina Arianda. Amazing. This is one
of those rare instances when I agree with all the raves even though they
emanate from bourgeois sources. Well, not quite, for I've discovered, since
seeing it and upon delving further into the critical commentary, that while the
adoration of Arianda is unanimous opinion is more divided on the play itself,
and furthermore that there are, it seems, varied interpretations of what it all
means, what it's about, most of all what's up with that ending. Hmm. So
methinks the bourgeois sources have screwed up here after all. Arianda in all
her glory aside, the play itself is, yuk yuk inside joke you'll only get if
you've seen it, divine. Brilliant writing that had me on the edge of my seat
straining to catch every word only to be whipsawed about this way and that by
them up to the very last moment, and that moment is breathtakingly perfect. Hilarious
too, as well as discomfiting in a good way.
Playwriting strikes me, every time I get to see a production,
as a mysterious art. I always come out wishing I could do it but convinced that
I haven't a clue about how to try. Bravo to David Ives and, yes, to the mighty
Aphrodite herself, Nina Arianda.
2. Spent an hour or so later that evening at a grand old
Village gay dive piano bar with a grand old name, Marie's Crisis Café. Fun,
except for our chagrin at the group of young men who seemed to know only tunes
from Disney musicals. Egads! This was the first time I've ever been there when
I couldn't join in on the singing, for Rodgers, Hart, Hammerstein, Sondheim,
Bernstein, Gershwin, Porter and all that lot were, sadly, not in the house.
3. I took Rosemary to the Queens Museum for a perambulation
around the Panorama of the City of New York. It is a glorious thing. And she
permitted me to be in my glory, pointing here and there orienting her, showing
off my fabulous town.
4. We went to the Brooklyn Museum, where we were very
satisfied with the new exhibit Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American
Portraiture. AKA The Gay Show. Really interesting on many levels.
Now my sister- and brother-in-law are in town from Texas and
after they come from Radio City Musical Hall where they're seeing the Rockettes
do their holiday thing, we're meeting for a sushi dinner at one of the best
Japanese restaurants in the city. Phew! Ain't I got fun?
