Friday 5ive- January 19, 2024

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.

On Broadway- The Ferryman

A few years ago I saw a production of Jez Butterworth's Jersusalem, starring perhaps the best stage actor on the planet, Mark Rylance. It was amazing. This past October, I got to chat with actor Brian d'Arcy James, a three-time Tony nominee, and we both confessed to our admiration for Rylance. (I recounted that I met Rylance walking his dog outside the theater and almost passed out with excitement). Brian told me I should go see The Ferryman, Butterworth's brilliant new play that just opened on Broadway.

The Ferryman

Other people I respect had also told me to go see it, but I never got around to it. Then I heard that Brian d'Arcy James was going to be in the cast of The Ferryman starting in February and that sealed the deal for me.

The Ferryman tells the story of a  Northern Irish farming family in 1981, right around the time when Irish prisoners (including Bobby Sands) were on a hunger strike, asking to be recognized as political prisoners, something Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was unwilling to do. There was a lot of violence between the IRA and the British forces.

The Carney family is preparing for the harvest, and the annual celebration that goes along with that. The huge household consists of Quinn and his wife Mary, their seven children, two aunts, an uncle, a sister-in-law and nephew. There is much joy and merriment, singing and dancing, until the local priest shows up.

Father Horrigan (a great performance from Charles Dale) has some troubling news for Quinn, news that once it gets out turns everything in the household upside down.

The Ferryman has 21 speaking parts (and a baby!) and Butterworth manages to make each character distinct, a remarkable feat. Quinn holds his boisterous family together, with the help of his brother's wife Caitlin, who cooks and cleans, as Quinn's wife Mary appears to be fragile. She spends much of her time in her room. (To be fair, she has seven children.)

Uncle Pat recounts humorous stories to the children, while his serious sister Aunt Pat monitors the hunger strike situation on the radio. Aunt Maggie gets wheeled in to sit fairly motionless in the corner, waking occasionally to speak to the children, telling them of the futures she sees for them.

Neighbor Tom Kettle (wonderfully portrayed by Shuler Hensley) is a large man who lives nearby and spends time with the family. Because he is English, some people are suspicious of him. But he is gentle giant, prone to pulling a stray rabbit of his pocket as a gift to people.

As the harvest continues, the Carneys' young cousins come to help, and as young men sometimes do,  get caught up in the situations over their head. When the local IRA boss comes to visit, things begin to unravel.

As I sat in the audience, I was wondering how this play was going to end. I truly had no idea, and when the end came, the shock of it deeply affected the audience, their gasps proof of that. (That being said, there is one plot point that pretty much everyone can guess at.)

Normally I would be wary of going to a play with a running time of three hours and fifteen minutes, but Butterworth has packed so much into this production I never once checked my watch. This is a show that I could imagine seeing more than once to go back and try and absorb things you missed the first time.

Brian d'Arcy James is perfection in the role of Quinn. He is a proud man, trying to keep all the balls in the air, keep everything together, all the while hinting at something simmering under the surface.

It is truly an ensemble production, and the young children in the cast are wonderful. They seem like young children, not actorly in any way. Emily Bergl (Mary), Holly Fain (Caitlin) and Fionnula Flanagan ( Aunt Maggie, who I fondly remember from TV's Rich Man, Poor Man) are particularly strong in their roles.

I think I would like to find the book of The Ferryman to truly get everything I can from this stunning play. It has rightly been lauded as one of the best plays of the year, and it will surely be up for many Tony awards in June, including for the brilliant direction of Sam Mendes. There are discount tickets available for this, including rush tickets. Go see it, this is a don't-miss play.

Broadway's Something Rotten at Barnes & Noble

The cast of the fabulous Broadway show, Something Rotten, made an appearance at Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side in NYC to promote the CD release of the cast recording of the show. They sang three fantastic songs from this amazing show, and then signed CDs.

The cast of Something Rotten

I saw the show last month and it is the one show I would recommend to everyone. The premise is that Nigel (John Cariani) and Nick (Brian d'Arcy James) Bottom are brothers who are playwrights in England at the same time as Shakespeare. Nick doesn't understand why everyone thinks Shakespeare is so great, and Nigel worships the man.

The Bottom brothers need a hit, and Nick goes to visit Nostradamus (the fabulous Tony-nominated Brad Oscar) to see if he can find out what kind of show he needs to write to have a hit show. This results in the show-stopping tune A Musical that contains snippets of songs from some of the most iconic Broadway musicals of all time (Annie, Rent, Sweet Charity, Chicago, Phantom of the Opera-you get the idea). The audience gave this number a middle-of-the-show standing ovation, something I've only seen once, for the Genie in Aladdin, played by Tony winner James Monroe Iglehart.

Shakespeare in the show is portrayed by the brilliant Christian Borle, who won the Tony for his portrayal of Shakespeare as a combination of Prince/James Brown/Mick Jagger. He was born to play this role, similar to his other Tony-winning performance as Black Stache in Peter and the Star Catcher. (He's  a nice guy too. And Brian d'Arcy James has the most beautiful eyes and the kindest smile.)


Other standouts in the cast include Heidi Blickenstaff as Nick's wife Bea, Michael James Scott as Minstrel and Brooks Ashmanskas as Brother Jeremiah.

At Barnes and Noble, they opened with another great number, God, I Hate Shakespeare, which highlights the terrific talents of Brian d'Arcy James (Nick) and John Cariani (Nigel). These guys have a great brotherly chemistry.


Cariani and Kate Reinders sang the next song, the sweetly comedic I Love the Way.


Christian Borle finished the performances with the Queen-sounding Hard to Be the Bard, which is also a favorite from the show.


This is the perfect show- funny, great songs, and a fantastic cast- and it is a must-see even at full price.
The Something Rotten website is here.