At last, the long awaited update about what I did last weekend. Let's see if I can remember.
Saturday I saw War Horse, which is playing at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at the Lincoln Center. Had never had a reason to go to the Lincoln Center, so it was a nice two-for-one culture + famous landmark outing in the city. The Lincoln Center is pretty impressive: home to several theatres, the Metropolitan Opera, and somewhat randomly, the Juilliard School. So, there was that. One disappointing thing about the Lincoln Center, though: the complex is done up in that pre-stressed concrete cinderblock architecture that-- for some reason-- was thought to be a good aesthetic idea. It's just sad when bad taste happens.
Anyway, War Horse did not disappoint. I was curious to see how all the battle scenes were going to get translated to the stage from the screen (I had seen the movie when it came out in movie theatres last December), as in the movie they were very intense and very true-to-life. Obviously, you can't really get that kind of realism on a stage. But wow. The battle scenes on stage were just as bit as affecting as the scenes on the screen. Because of the limitations of the stage, they had to do a lot more with less. So whereas a lot of the wrenching scenes and emotion of the battles came from just the intensity of the fighting and the carnage, here the same intensity came through by really focusing on the characters, on their relationships with each other (both man and beast) and having the emotion of the entire battle come through in the emotion between the characters. That, and some well-played pyrotechnics and sound design, which made it sound like you were surrounded by canon fire.
All of the characters were very well developed, and the actors did a phenomenal job of pulling the audience into the scene, into the world on the stage, and actually caring about everyone who was up there. For it being a "war" story, there was no enemy, no hero or "right" side. The Germans were every bit as sympathetic and their stories as heart-wrenching as the British. Which I think says a lot of good things about the story generally, but also about the production, that they were able to convey the humanity of both sides, equally. And man, I never thought I would be so emotionally invested in a puppet. The puppets and their masters who were playing Joey (the main horse) and Top Form (the other, ill-fated horse-pal of Joey)did a wonderful job of conveying a real character through the movements of the puppetry. This was all the more impressive as the horse roles, unsurprisingly, were silent (minus some neighing).
What was interesting about the production in relation to the film, is that while the overall arc of the story, and each mini-story within the store, are at a macro level the same (same idea, same general resolution. They even had the goose!), the minute details (such as the exact characters, their relations to each other, minor details about what happens when) were often different than that in the movie. Which I suppose is not surprising; someone I know who had read the book also said that the movie differed from the book and the stage play (both the play and movie were based off the book, so it wasn't like the movie was based off the play or anything). So that was interesting. Overall, a fabulous production that I would recommend to anyone who likes solidly good theatre.
Here are some photos from that day, around the Lincoln Center, and the Upper West Side just generally.
Anyway, if you are interested, here is the production information for War Horse:
Vivian Beaumont Theatre
Lincoln Center
150 West 65th Street
New York, New York
According to the website, the show scheduled to play for the next few months anyway. From the ticket schedule, it looks like it plays: Sundays at 3:00PM, Tuesdays at 7:00PM, Wednesdays at 2:00PM and 8:00PM, Thursdays and Fridays at 8:00PM, and Saturdays at 2:00PM and 8:00PM. More ticket information is available online at their website.
On Sunday, I had a bit of a calmer day. I decided it would be a nice day to do something chill... so I went to Chelsea Piers (which is also rumored to be a hangout of sorts for NYC-based celebs; alas, I did not see any) to go ice skating, which I don't think I had done since around Christmas of my senior year in college (mostly due to my screwed up toes...the last time I went I could only go for like 15 minutes before my feet were dying). But, now my feet are fixed, so I can enjoy it again! And it was a very nice way to spend an afternoon. It's calming, fun (and you get to listen to music), and apparently a pretty decent workout. I didn't realize it because it was cold on the ice, but I was actually breaking a sweat. I skated for about an hour; unfortunately the skate shoes were chaffing a lil on my ankles, so after the hour I decided to stop before it became a full-on blister. I was surprised how quickly skating came back to me. When I was really little, I used to take skating lessons, and actually was getting fairly decent (just starting jumps), but then I broke some bones (not from skating, but still) which took me out of lessons and I just never went back. I wish I had though. I think I might try to look into taking lessons when I get back to Chicago; it would be a good way to get some much-needed exercise, and a nice way to take myself away from all my law-related stuff, and actually have a life outside of school.
More information on Chelsea Piers (which is a massive sports complex with many different things going on in it) can be found here.
So that was pretty much that weekend. Finally got around to updating! Huzzah!
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