The Friday 5ive- June 14th Edition

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly recounting of things that caught my attention.

1) On my visit to the annual Book Expo, I found many treasures. I spent some time organizing my books and in keeping with the theme of Friday 5ive, I chose five books that I want to read first from the Expo.

• Angie Kim's debut novel Miracle Creek has been on many best of the summer lists, it's billed as a "literary courtroom thriller about an immigrant family and a young single mother accused of killing her autistic son." One of my favorites, Laura Lippman, blurbed it so I know I'll like it.
• Julie Satow's The Plaza is the history of NYC's iconic Plaza Hotel. I saw her on The Today Show this week with Jenna Bush Hager. We enjoy the Plaza's food hall, and I'm intrigued by the backstory of the hotel.
• Jeanine Cummins' novel American Dirt was the book everyone was talking about at the Book Expo. It's a story about a Mexican mother and her young son fleeing a drug cartel to make it to America. It's timely and Stephen King called it "an extraordinary piece of work". It publishes in January.
• I love everything Ann Patchett, from her brilliant novels to her essay collection to her marvelous Nashville bookstore, Parnassus, so it's a no-brainer that I will devour her newest novel The Dutch House, about a family and their house outside Philadelphia.
• Cara Wall's novel The Dearly Beloved tells the story of two pastors and their families in New York City. Enough said.

2) The Tony Awards were on Sunday night, and as you know, I'm a big Broadway fan. It's the one award show that is actually entertaining, where you get to see live performances from some of the most talented people working in the industry. The opening number with host James Corden and performers from the nominated shows was amazing. After seeing the performances, I put Choir Boy and winner for Best Musical Hadestown  on my list of must-sees. Oklahoma's performance was fabulous too, and I'm glad Ali Stroker won for her performance as Ado Annie- she is a knockout! 

3) On Tuesday evening I dodged the rain to go to Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side to hear Lauren Willig talk about her fabulous new historical novel The Summer Country with author and PopSugar book columnist Brenda Janowitz. The book is terrific, set in 1816 and 1854 Barbados, and Willig drops the reader right into the setting; you'll feel like you are there as you read it. It was an interesting discussion, Willig is so smart and so funny. I'll review her book on June 20th. (Spoiler alert- I loved it!)

Lauren Willig and me at Barnes & Noble

4) There are so many interesting sights in NYC, and this one in front of Mel's Burgers on First Ave. made me laugh.

5) In this week's reading, I finished Susan Lewis' One Minute Later, about a young woman who has everything going for her and then finds out she needs a heart transplant. It's a love story with a mystery inside, and you learn about the importance of organ donation. It's a powerful story. I'm just starting Laura Lippman's The Lady in the Lake, a mystery set in 1960s Baltimore about a middle-aged housewife who leaves her husband, goes to work at a newspaper, and tries to discover who murdered a young woman. Lippman's books are always page-turners.

Lady in the Lake

I hope you had a good week and Happy Father's Day to all the terrific dads out there!

Tony 2014 Nominees- Mothers and Sons

The Tonys will be awarded for the best in Broadway on June 8th, and I have been lucky enough to see several nominated shows and performers. In the coming days and weeks, I will review some of the contenders.

Terrence McNally's newest play, Mothers and Sons, stars the amazing Tyne Daly, whom I have seen in Master Class (Tony nominated) and the concert performance of Ragtime last year. She is a force to reckoned with no matter what role she plays, and she is nominated as Best Actress in a Play for her performance as Kathryn Gerard. The play is also nominated for Best Play.

Kathryn is visiting the apartment of Cal Porter, the man her son loved and lived with at the time of his death twenty years prior at the age of 29. She shows up unannounced, which surprises Cal, played wonderfully by Frederick Weller. His husband, the fifteen years younger Will, (Bobby Steggart) is annoyed. Their six-year-old son, Bud is delighted by the strange woman in their apartment.

We discover that Kathryn's husband died, and she is leaving her home in Dallas (which she hates) to travel to Europe. Kathryn was estranged from her son, an actor, and didn't come to visit even when he was dying from AIDS. This is something Cal can't forgive her for, and their confrontation over this is powerful and emotional.

Kathryn is all alone now, and she rages against whomever gave her son AIDS. She wants revenge, and can't understand how Cal has moved on and replaced her son with another lover, and made himself a new, happy life. She cannot replace her son, he is gone and she will never have another.

Daly is so spectacular in the role. We should despise Kathryn for leaving her son to die, for the mean things she says to Cal. But Daly makes you feel this woman's pain, her loneliness. She knows who she is, someone with no friends, no family, no one to care whether she lives or dies. We don't like Kathryn, and cringe at the things she says, but we still feel her mother's pain.

She mourns that her entire life her identity was as Andre's mother, that no one took the time to know her as Kathryn the woman. When she recounts a late night phone call she made to Andre when she nearly had a one night stand, the audience gasped at her inappropriateness.

Bud asks if Kathryn can be his grandmother since he doesn't have one. This softens her a bit and even though I sat in the rear mezzanine of the theater, you could see the almost minute changes in Daly's face as every emotion Kathryn is feeling crosses her face. It is a tour-de-force performance.

Watching this heartbreaking, powerful, emotional play reminded me of Larry Kramer's play, The Normal Heart.  The subject matter is similar, and the emotions it created in the audience were identical. It brought tears to my eyes, and you could hear several audience members sniffling throughout.

Daly is always a contender, and even in a tough field this year, she could definitely win. A win for Mothers and Sons looks good as well.

If you are coming to NYC, I highly recommend Mothers and Sons. There are discount tickets available, but I would pay full price for this one. And if you have HBO, watch The Normal Heart on Sunday, May 25th; it is an experience not to be forgotten.

The website for Mothers and Sons is here.