Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly-ish post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. One of my 2024 resolutions is to be better about posting this weekly.
1) I thought I had missed my chance to see the Rockefeller Center tree this year, but I managed to get there on January 11th, two days before it came down. This year's tree was particularly beautiful, so full and bright, and there were no crowds of people on the night I was there.
2) The reason I got to see the tree was because I was on my way to see Broadway's Days of Wine and Roses. They turned the 1962 classic movie starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick into a musical starring two of Broadway's best performers- Brian d'Arcy James and Kelli O'Hara. It tells the story of a public relations executive in the late 1950s who meets and falls in love with a secretary. Joe often has to wine and dine people in his business, and he shares his love of alcohol with the teetotaler Kirsten. Kirsten begins to enjoy alcohol as much as Joe, and that love of alcohol causes problems for both of them. Even the birth of their daughter can't stop them from drinking. It's an emotional, powerful, and sad story. James and O'Hara are in fine form, their musical voices dominate this moving show. It's not a feel-good story, and I was suprised that they turned this into a musical rather than a dramatic play. It's a limited run show, 16 weeks only so if you are in NYC soon I recommend this show for the outstanding performances.
3) We found a fantastic little Italian restaurant in our neighborhood called Donna Margherita. I pass by it frequently on my journeys, and from the outside it looks rather nondescript. Then I looked up reviews for them and they were glowing. Everyone praised their authenticity, the delicious food and the attentive staff. We visited on a recent night with three other people and we were wowed by the food. Most of us had the Sunday Sauce pasta with short ribs that had simmered for seven hours. It was fabulous. The place is small inside, but very cozy and they have an outdoor seating area when it warms up. It will be on regular rotation and if you come to visit us, we'll probably take you there.
4) If you watched any of the film awards ceremonies in the past few weeks, you have seen Paul Giamatti winning Best Actor for his pitch-perfect performance as a lonely, irascible, tough, unliked by everyone boarding school ancient history professor in the movie The Holdovers. We watched it on the Peacock streaming service and it was wonderful. Da'Vine Joy Randolph also won for her magnificent performance as Mary, the head of the cafeteria, a Black woman who recently lost her son in the Vietnam War. The movie, set in 1970 over the holiday weekend where everyone has gone home for the holiday but one student, the professor who draws Holdover Duty and Mary. The three end up forming an unlikely bond. It's a rare movie that both my husband and I like, but we really enjoyed this one and recommend it to everyone. If you liked the movie Sideways from back in the early 2000s, director Alexander Payne and Giamatti reunited from that one here.
5) Speaking of the Vietnam War, I have two books with that setting for you this week. The first one is Tim O'Brien's classic war novel The Things We Carried, which is my January edition from my Banned Books gift my daughter-in-law gave me last year. I can't wait to read his powerful novel of men in war.
Kristin Hannah's upcoming novel The Women is also set during the Vietnam War. Frankie McGrath leaves her upper class home in Coronado, California to join her brother who left to fight in Vietnam. She becomes a nurse specifically to go to Vietnam and her eyes are opened to another world, one she couldn't have imagined. Frankie becomes friends with her roommates Ethel and Barb, and the although the three women couldn't be more different, they become lifelong friends. Hannah puts the reader right in Frankie's shoes as she quickly learns how to save the lives of young men blown apart in war. We also see the aftermath of Frankie's service, her return home where people spit on her, call her a baby killer and alternately disregard her service by saying "there were no women in Vietnam." I loved the TV show China Beach, and The Women mines that same territory as well as the TV show. I found one small plot point at the end a little disappointing, but The Women overall continues Hannah's streak of writing deeply moving historical fiction (The Nightingale, The Great Alone, The Four Winds). I highly recommend it.
Welcome to 2024 where winter has finally come to NYC. Stay safe and warm everyone, until next time.
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