A Magical Evening!

Yesterday I wrote about my excitement and anticipation going into the city to see King Lear with my friend Vanessa.  So today I can report that it was a magical evening!

 We had an early dinner at a tapas place between Penn Station and the Cort Theatre.  Vanessa and I share a love of anchovies that most people I’m acquainted with don’t share.  This includes my husband and two daughters.  But Vanessa and I frequently wind up discussing and ordering anchovies.  Anyway, we had a few tapas consisting of Caesar salad and roasted eggplant and those aforementioned anchovies.  Vanessa also had grilled octopus which I can’t even seem to taste, since it’s, well, octopus.  I don’t have too refined a palette. Then we walked to the Cort Theatre.

Three and a half hours of King Lear made me a little nervous, but if Glenda Jackson who is 82 can get up there and be King Lear, then I can be an audience member.  It was sensational!  She is the consummate actress, and it was a heart-wrenching role. Another prominent actress, Jayne Houdyshell, played another male role, that of Earl of Gloucester. Ruth Wilson, who I love in “The Affair,” played Cordelia, Lear’s youngest and most truth-telling daughter, as well as the Fool.  The role of the Fool showed what a range Ruth Wilson has. She was singing and prancing about onstage, and she was fabulous.  This production had such interesting and unusual touches – such as a deaf Duke of Cornwall who had a person signing up there with him.  The cast members were also quite diverse. There was haunting original music by Philip Glass, performed by an exquisite string quartet.  I didn’t mean to go into such detail about the play, only to share that it was quite compelling.

While the play itself had horrendous storms at some point in the action, New York City was also experiencing thunderstorms, unusual for a March night.  But when we exited the theatre, the storms had subsided.  And although we trudged around a bunch of puddles around Times Square on our way back to the train, the rain had completely stopped and it was unusually warm, adding to the magic of the evening.  Vanessa and I added another memorable adventure to our growing repertoire.