Romeo and Juliet and Becco

Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad are the sweetest Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is the first Shakespeare taught in school. We saw this black and white R&J, David Leveaux’s gorgeous production, at a Wednesday matinee full of school groups. You could hear a pin drop when Condola Rashad (Juliet) and Orlando Bloom (Romeo) kiss. They seem to be truly in love.

Jensen and Tracy Sallows after the show

Jesse Poleshuck’s contemporary set reflects their star-crossed passion and creates beautiful moving pictures — accented with a graffiti-tagged Fra Angelico painting, a screen of jumping flames, big balloons for a banquet, and touches of red (Romeo’s socks and shoes). The lovers are on fire, myopic and indulgent. We almost forget what’s to come: Juliet on a floating bed perched between life and death.

The audience was enraptured with Mercutio, Christian Camargo, a mesmerizing actor like a young Bill Nighy. Jayne Houdyshell adds welcome ballast and laughs as the Nurse, with a red handbag and a bicycle. (A lot has been written about Orlando Bloom’s entrance on a motorcycle, in a helmet.) Tracy Sallows as Lady Montague and Roslyn Ruff as Lady Capulet do so much with their parts. It’s hard not to fall in love with the entire cast.

An all-female Julius Caesar from London, presented at Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn is another stunner in this Shakespeare-heavy season, directed by Phyllida Lloyd as a comment on male behavior.

Clam linguini at the Becco bar

You might want to book if you plan to go to Becco pre-matinee, but last-minute seats at the bar are comfortable. A prix fixe with three pastas, appetizer and dessert makes this friendly Italian restaurant very popular, with a selection of wine at $25 a bottle. Handsome, theatrical waiters appear with platters, offering second helpings (which can be wrapped up to go). Since we were here a year ago, the prices have gone up slightly, but Becco remains a fun place to eat and one of the best deals on Theatre Row.

James Brown: Get On the Good Foot and Chez Lucienne

James Brown performed two hundred times at the Apollo Theatre and when he died, his body lay in state on its stage. It’s only fitting that James Brown: Get on the Good Foot premiered here. The Rev. Al Sharpton, who knew James Brown, introducing the show said classical music is all about “the four B’s”: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Brown.

A huge dance company and various choreographers give expression to every facet of James Brown, from the romantic, to the political, to the humorous.  “I Got You (I Feel Good)” is a dance party in platform shoes, bell bottoms, and big afros. It’s absolutely delightful. One of the dancers portrays a sharply-dressed geezer on a cane, carrying and drinking from a “big cup”— something Mayor Bloomberg has tried to ban. 

“It’s a Man’s World” was so unexpected danced by a white, female, hip-hop artist, Ephrat Asherie. The political James Brown was there in another strong dance, choreographed by Abdel Salaam, to "Payback," which segued into "Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud."

Few of the dances used James Brown dance steps as he danced them. Balletic twirls and lifts are substituted when we would sometimes rather be watching a man in a bespoke suit. Considering how many strippers have performed to James Brown, it might not be inappropriate to have one dance kind of like that. Yet, if James Brown: On the Good Foot were to travel the country, the Tea Party would probably be converted to the notion of democracy.

It is doubtful that any theatre would have the impact and impressive acoustics that the Apollo has. Entering the Apollo beneath the brilliant marquee, to the sound of James Brown’s music, the audience was dancing in the aisles and in their seats. The Apollo has announced that there will be many more commemorative solo shows about musicians in its amazing history that transformed the world.   

Chez Lucienne vol-au-vent (or chicken pot pie)

Are we in Harlem – or are we in Paris? Bistro Chez Lucienne’s menus are really French: croque monsieur on the prix fixe lunch and croque madame for brunch. Mussels and frittes are served three ways. Vol-au-vent in wine sauce (pictured) is as tasty as it looks. It’s a well-managed restaurant with first-rate French chefs creating classic dishes. The owner named the restaurant after his mother in France. On Friday and Saturday if you order between midnight and 2 a.m. there’s 50% off. Jazz and R&B greats are regulars. Wearing G-clef earrings, Bobbi Humphrey was there when we were one evening.

The Glass Menagerie and Má Pêche

This dreamy revival of the almost seventy-year-old The Glass Menagerie starts sad and stays sad, yet manages a sense of catharsis. Most of us know the Tennessee Williams play, but never have we felt so much for all four of the characters: Tom, Laura, Amanda and Jim.

Amanda Wingfield played by the beautiful Cherry Jones

Tom, the reluctant breadwinner for his mother and handicapped sister, dreams of running off to become a writer. Zachary Quinto plays him as a slacker. He hasn’t paid the electric bill, forcing them at one point to use candles. Amanda places her hopes on a gentleman caller for Laura and their eventual marriage. Laura wants only to please her mother. The set of their shabby apartment attached to an accordion of a fire escape is haunting. Sparkly, surreal touches by director John Tiffany and movement director Steven Hoggett heighten the moment.

We’re angry with Tom for abandoning his family, but somehow relieved that he has escaped this desperate situation. Perhaps an autobiographical story, Williams also worked at a dead-end job in St. Louis and left behind an unstable sister and a histrionic mother who lived in the past. 

Jim the gentleman caller, Brian J. Smith, expertly balances boy tenderness and masculine bravado. Cherry Jones as Amanda will not be defeated. Even though the closing lines are so familiar, by Quinto’s Tom, this time caused sobs in the audience.

Momofuku pork bun, you blow my mind

Dishes are simple and on the sparse side at Momofuku Má Pêche. Stick with noodles, pork buns, and soft drinks. A cocktail or glass of wine will set you back $15. David Chang’s cutting-edge restaurants compete in price with restaurants right up there; lunch cost $120 with tip.

Grilled trout, duck ramen, and the sweet corn salad were perf. The famous pork bun, like his Momofuku cookbook, was so good that we had to deconstruct it to try to figure out why. Hoisin sauce? Swear words? (Momofuku, a made-up Japanese name, was chosen because it sounds a bit like "motherf•••er.")

We didn’t go for the eponymously titled and trademarked Crack Pie^TM, nor for the suspiciously multicolored Confetti Cookie. Giant cookies, irresistibly low priced at 3 for $5, were delivered to the table in their cellophane wrappers. Two versions with chocolate chips were fine, but the Corn Cookie was the stuff of dreams. Má Pêche, Momofuku’s midtown location, has a Milk Bar (dessert bakery) attached.

Hell’s Kitchen and Kinky Boots

Hell's Kitchen is a friendly place

Adjacent to the theatre district is the neighborhood real estate refers as “midtown west” and New York knows by its more colorful name, which Hell’s Kitchen restaurant embraces proudly. Star chef Jorge Pareja emigrated from a southern Mexico region that specializes in both farming and fishing. His menu has fresh, confident flavors: boiled pork shank in mixiote (barbeque) sauce, sea bass over plantain purée, grilled half chicken with molé negro. (The chicken is Murray’s, which uses oregano oil in place of antibiotics and tastes much better.) Corn tortillas are made in-house. Hell's Kitchen fish tacos are the best ever.

Staff might take an order for an appetizer-size portion of a main course or main-course size app. There is a weekend brunch including bison eggs benedict with jalapeño hollandaise. Hell’s Kitchen has a clean and modern décor, soft lighting and spectacular food. Any leftovers mysteriously seem to taste better the next day.

Harvey Fierstein and company

Kinky Boots originated with the 2005 film set in Northampton, England, based on a true story. A shoe factory’s economy was revived by Lola (the versatile comedian Billy Porter), a drag queen in ladies’ shoes, observed by the straight junior CEO of the shoe factory, Charlie (Stark Sands, every bit as cute as Justin Timberlake), who recognizes the potential in creating a boot for drag queens that can support a male’s weight and structure. Charlie hires Lola to be his designer.

By the end, Lola and Charlie begin sleeping with one another and make plans for a traditional church wedding – no wait, that’s a different story! By the end, Charlie switches from a rich girlfriend to a poor one (Annaleigh Ashford, sensationally funny). Diva Lola is still fabulous, but alone. The main thing is, everyone male and female, gay and straight, starts wearing high-heeled boots, as though we were in the court of Louis XIV.

Stunning, narrow-hipped drag queens abound, however this production feels too tame by half. Kinky Boots is carried along, mostly, by the want-to-have-fun, guitar heavy music of the great Cyndi Lauper, and by the oft-repeated line, “Ladies and gentlemen, and those who haven’t made their minds up yet.”

First Date and Orso

Zachary Levi and Krysta Rodriguez meet cute

The zesty and fluffy new musical comedy, First Date, takes the audience on a date 2013 style. Aaron and Casey struggle to drop their baggage and be present. Are they prisoners of their personal histories and past dating patterns? A Greek chorus pops by and plays devil's advocate, made up of Grandma, the bail-out friend, therapist, bad choice boyfriend, selfish ex-fiancée, and future son.

Zachary Levi is jumpy and awkward as a financial geek. It's a good set-up for his kick ass end-of-the-show song "In Love With You" where he kisses off his ex- for good. Adorable Krysta Rodriguez is polished and cold. She's hiding, but slowly lets us in. Both have great pop vocal chops and got their start in television. We root for them, and the happy ending feels right – and, well, if Terry Teachout was charmed by this new little musical, after what he had to say about Kinky Boots, who are we to quibble?

Fig tart à la Orso

Italian restaurant Orso is named after a street dog the owner befriended in Venice. There is an Orso photo collage as you enter and a very nice sketch near the bar. The atmosphere is fresh, modern and quiet, a restaurant novelty in NYC. Music is kept on low dial and the tables are nicely distanced from one another. Tableware is colorful and house wine is served in pretty glass pitchers.

Get your pasta here, but another specialty, calf's liver with pancetta and crispy onions, was a standout. Roasted quail stuffed with sweet sausage, pine nuts and broccoli rabe was another. Antipasti greats were the beet, Jersey peach, hazelnut and goat cheese salad, and pan-fried artichoke hearts. Dessert tarts ended our date on a sweet note.

The Weir and Tír Na Nóg

New girl in town

Conor McPherson's The Weir invites you on a dark and windy night to warm up with a few good stories.  Time and place:  1997, country pub, Ireland.  An attractive woman, a "blow in," provokes four local men to tell outrageous stories, real and ghostly, related to her new village. Many drinks are drunk, but only "small ones," and herbal cigarettes passed around. (Broadway substituted herbal cigarettes for real ones long before Mayor Bloomberg made New York City smoke-free.)

The country pub lacks a ladies' room, if you can imagine. As the lovely new neighbor retreats to the owner's house to use the facilities, the men chastise themselves for their upsetting conversation and vow to be more civil. Upon her return, Valerie (Mary McCann) tells the story that brings everyone to their knees.

But wait, another's speech, upon leaving, is the one that breaks our hearts. Irish actor John Keating, with his beautiful words of comfort, causes the audience to choke up, and although he hadn't seemed a possibility before, now we wonder whether Valerie will hook up with him.

A harsh wind howls outside throughout. Irish Rep’s remounting is excellent and all the stories still fresh in our minds.

Branzino Tír Na Nóg

Tír Na Nóg has a sure hand with fish, which you would expect of an Irish pub. The seared scallops were big and juicy, and the branzino seasoned with saffron, chorizo, and clams. Potato leek soup comes with a dash of truffle oil. Two can share the hearty shepherd’s pie. It’s a truly friendly place, with Irish as well as Scottish accents floating about, and you might wish to eat at the bar if you’re alone, and order some oysters and a half pint of Harp lager.

Close to Madison Square Garden, the ambiance might not be as old world and couthie before a Rangers game. Stop in after a play or and get Irish coffee served with no frills, just the way we like it, and apple pie on flaky pastry with cinnamon ice cream and a sprig of mint.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, with Bond 45

Billy Magnussen and Sigourney Weaver

References to Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya are sprinkled over a fresh family drama set in Bucks County, PA, including, “Oh, Olga, let’s go to Moscow!”  But we’re firmly in Christopher Durang-land. Film star Masha (Sigourney Weaver) returns home to announce that she is selling the lake-view family house where her siblings, Vanya and the adopted Sonia (David Hyde Pierce and Kristine Nielsen), have been quarreling comfortably for years.

Shalita Grant is the housekeeper, Cassandra, who predicted this would happen. Kristine Nielsen’s Sonia lives for the sighting of the blue heron on the lake. Pushed to extremes, Nielsen’s Sonia keeps the audience under her wing. Hyde Pierce is glacially calm and understated until he explodes. Everyone gets a satisfying chance to go nuts before it’s over.

They regress all the way to childhood and back, everyone except for Masha’s much younger boyfriend, Spike, played as epically inappropriate by Billy Magnussen. Could the part of Masha possibly be as cool without Sigourney Weaver’s insouciant smile? Oh, Sigourney, let’s go to Moscow!

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike touches on upstairs-downstairs dynamics, sibling rivalry, and the effects of aging as a family fences with and lusts after one another. Durang wrote the play, which was first performed Off-Broadway in 2012, with these actors in mind.

Bond 45 Prosciutto and Buratta

Bond 45, which seats 220, advertises on a billboard above Theatre Row, with a menu that includes paper-thin designer pizzas and the flat “lasagna” made from the hard-to-handle fazzoletto (handkerchief) pasta. Soft-shell crab had a creamy sauce on top that was Paula Deen-ish calorically. Their 16 oz. homemade Buratta is delectable surrounded by colorful, grilled antipasto-bar vegetables.

The mezzanine offered a spectacular view of the massive restaurant. It seems a good place to go on your own – many people were solitary and contented. Such a big place, it can be spaced out and unusually quiet, preventing that curse of the solo diner – unintentional eavesdropping on the people at the next table. Homemade brittle and cookies hot from the oven are offered as you say farewell.

Artist of Light: iLuminate is the idea of Miral Kotb, who combined her talents as a choreographer and software engineer to make a special-effects, techno party-like event. It is parent-friendly, with cocktails served at your seat. Special effects we gasped over: a giant dog, exchangeable heads, a dancing paintbrush, and floating bodies. Children relate to the sheer power and physicality of Kotb’s team. Performers don’t exit the stage so much as disappear.

There is, loosely speaking, a plot. Our young critic, Arden Wolfe, age 7, understood it better than we did. Arden liked “the girl with orange hair and red lips, who fell in love at the end, and the evil guy, who turned two squiggly men into porcupines.” She also admired, as we did, the “glow-y costumes.”

Root beer float at Junior's

Junior’s Times Square opened in 2006 so that Manhattanites could have a taste of this Brooklyn institution, famous for its cheesecake and pastrami and corned beef sandwiches on rye, served with complimentary coleslaw, beets and pickles. A Reuben with a side of Russian dressing hit the spot. Arden’s root beer float was “perfect,” the mac and cheese quickly consumed, and pronounced, “Creamy, creamy, creamy.”

Centrally located in the theatre district, Junior’s has quick service, reasonable prices, and outdoor seating for warm weather. Your kids will thank you.