For a birthday present, Dominica got me tickets to go and see “Into the Woods” on Broadway and we are going today.
We made it to NYC plenty early and went out for dinner and some shopping before the show. I am terrible at dealing with the big in-store crowds in the city. Everyone is so packed in like sardines that it drives me crazy. I did manage to find a nice Tag-Heuer knock off on the street for $30. I know that that is a bit pricey, but I seldomly have the chance to get one and I sure didn’t have the time to head down to Chinatown to get a good deal on one. So I picked it up on Times Square.
We looked around a bit but couldn’t find anyplace that we wanted to eat for the longest time. We finally settled on Sardis, right across from the theatre. The menu had some pretty tempting vegetarian entrees that we wanted to try out. It took Min a little while to figure out that we were in the same restaurant as was seen in “The Muppets Take Manhattan.” Sardis is the restaurant where Kermit the Frog takes Liza Minelli’s (you know, Princess Leia’s mom) picture off of the wall and replaces it with his own. The picture was still there. Our waitress came up to us and pointed out that Vanessa Williams (who was staring as the witch in “Into the Woods” was eating just three tables down from us. It was nice to know that we picked a restaurant that the locals ate at too.
The show was good. Vanessa Williams makes for an interesting witch. Very different from Bernadette Peter’s portrayal. The show was altered a little bit from the original which helped lend itself to the new cast. The addition of a live Milky White really changed the flavor of the show and made it a lot lighter. I think that the show is easier now for children than it was before. It used to be pretty dark. It is still dark but nearly so. The cast was good in general, the children – Jack and Little Red Riding Hood where very good, LRRH was even better than the original. The baker’s wife was very good and Cinderella was good. The baker was flat, though. A couple of the characters we were able to recognize from television. The narrator was very different. Min liked him a lot but I liked the original a lot more.