The Nutcracker, The Trocks, Chocolate Room and Buvette

In Alexei Ratmansky’s interpretation of George Balanchine's The Nutcracker™ rather than starting in the parlor, the curtain rises on a scene in the kitchen where mice are scattered about. Justin Souriau-Levine as the small, mischievous mouse who hides in the soup pot is superb.

The story unfolds to a more traditional telling, but American Ballet Theatre’s mixes fantasy and reality. There has been some criticism of the male bees pollinating the dancing flowers. It’s fun and unexpected. Richard Hudson designed both the gorgeous costumes and set, with Clara’s sky-high bed and the dramatic lopsided house we see at the beginning and the end. Ratmansky’s production moves permanently to the West Coast for the holidays of 2015.

We left humming Tchaikovsky. "Did it entirely hold your attention?" I asked 9-year-old Arden. “It would probably be better for ages 10 and up,” she said.

After the Nutcracker, we went to the Chocolate Room for a post-show treat. Close to BAM, it is open late (11pm). The dense three-layer chocolate cake that Oprah raved about is simple and not too sweet. My daughter’s favorite was the black bottom butterscotch custard with a strata of bittersweet chocolate and whipped coconut cream. The friendly staff offers chocolate samples while you wait.

 

Arden thought that Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo could be funnier. Of course, she’s grown up seeing men in drag on the stage, and The Trocks could not sustain the gag for her. With only a limited exposure to Russian literature, she’s forgiven for missing the humor in the troupe’s stage names, like Natalia Notgudinov and Ida Nevasayneva. (All the dancers have Russian bios in the Playbill.)

Seeing men en pointe was a sensation when the company started forty years ago. Robert Carter, who dances the lead swan, has been with the Trocks for twenty years—long career for a ballet dancer, and he’s still got it. Go For Barocco with music by Bach opened the second act and is a strong piece more focused on the dancing and less on being funny. Laszlo Major who plays a very male male in Le Corsaire Pas de Deux is stunning  and can turn like a dream. The Trocks have a loyal fan base and are sure to continue for many years to come. 

While most NYC restaurants are staffed by actors, Buvette, not far from the Joyce Theatre, has a wait staff full of writers. The first to get a book contract moved on. Waverly is in the midst of writing her novel, and Beck behind the bar is starting his.

What is it about Buvette? The tiny bistro is constantly packed, serving small plates off a petite menu. Cassoulet ($16) is colorful and warming, served in a round deep bowl. Salad beets were condensed in flavor and well seasoned. Brandade de Morue is served in a glass container with the toast standing up in it. About the only choice for a child was the Croque Monsieur ($12). Buvette's waiters did seem especially articulate when, instead of asking, “Are you still working on that?” they say, “Are you still enjoying that?”

The Dog in the Night-Time and the Osteria al Doge

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In the Night-Time begins when a neighborhood dog is killed and an autistic, 15-year-old boy tries to find out who is responsible for the crime. Christopher is highly intelligent and passionate, but ill equipped for such a task. As a savant, his awareness of numbers and facts is heightened, and he can't stand to be touched. We empathize immediately with his struggle with everyday interactions.

The story is told through narration and the ingenious set. Walls and floors are a grid pattern and become alive with secret compartments, train platforms, glowing boxes and a tube map as Jonathan’s search leads him to London. The dramatic scene in the station where he’s misplaced his pet rat is the sort of terror most of us hope never to witness in real life. Jonathan recites prime numbers to calm down and continues his search. At one point numbers take over the set as they take over his mind.

The actors are really good and Alex Sharp as Christopher is superb. We root for our hero in his honorable struggle for the truth, and we are anxious that he makes it back home. Based on the incredible book by Mark Haddon, which was popular with teens and adults alike, the unlikely but successful staging by the National Theatre of London received seven Olivier Awards including Best Play and is still running on the West End.

Venetian restaurant Osteria al Doge (translation: unassuming restaurant favored by the bigshot) is smack in the heart of the theatre district and dramatic whatever the time of day. Like a lot of great restaurants, the Doge has recently added a weekend brunch—Sunday brunch is after all when most New Yorkers like to go out to eat. Most of the time, the Doge is abuzz with happy theatergoers, like before Wednesday’s matinee.

Sit at a table in the romantic wraparound mezzanine and you get a sweet view of the hanging Latin candelabrum and the entire room. Seafood, meat and risottos are good value here, gorgeously presented, in big portions. Salads are heaping and colorful, and pastas deliver, such as the tender, ribbon-thin pappardelle made in-house. Individual pizza that overlaps the plate had a doughier crust than usual (note: next time ask for it extra-thin and burnt around the edges). To finish, espresso with a selection of gelato and biscotti. 

A Delicate Balance and Frankie and Johnnie's

John Lithgow and Glenn Close in A Delicate Balance

Agnes and Tobias’s luxurious house (scenic design by Santo Loquasto) has alcoholic sister Claire living upstairs. But never mind, a martini “dividend” is always on offer, even in the morning, from a well-stocked liquor caddy next to the black marble fireplace.

John Lithgow plays Tobias with restraint and muffled charm. He is nicer than he should be, and he can’t help it, as when sister-in-law Claire requests a drink. His best friend and the irritating wife, Harry and Edna (Bob Balaban and Clare Higgins) turn up and ask to stay over, because of an unexplained “terror” back home, and Tobias can't say no nor do anything to set a departure date. Lithgow is lovable in the part of unconditional friend, and he's the best at striking a delicate balance.

Glenn Close’s Agnes is admirable rather than lovable. Others have played Agnes as passive-aggressive. This Agnes stands by her man, even though she expects more of him. Close is unexpectedly just a little bit boring. Perhaps it is not Glenn, but the part of Agnes. You want her to let it rip, but she never gets the chance. (See Glenn Close fully expressed in the 1991 opera film "Meeting Venus," by Istvan Szabo.)

Martha Plimpton is daughter Julia, who arrives home after her fourth marriage has collapsed and expects more sympathy than she gets. We’ve loved Plimpton in films and on television, but on stage she is truly amazing. Her angry Julia provides catharsis in a play reined in by politeness, and she also grounds the play.

As to Lindsay Duncan as Claire, she makes a beautiful entrance, drunk and contrite. Thereafter, the audience liked everything she did. Even her “Are we having our dividend?” and “By golly, that’s a good martini,” got belly laughs.  The only thing that dates Edward Albee, perhaps, is his tolerance for drinkers. 

Albee lives in a loft in Tribeca and continues to refine his plays, as he did a couple of seasons back adding a cell phone to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Albee has certainly earned his dividend. Pam MacKinnon directed both.

Across the street from the Golden sits a small chophouse, Frankie and Johnnie's, that has been booked every night of the week since the 1920s when it was a speakeasy. One of the oldest restaurants in town, it is full of nooks and crannies, including an intimate upstairs bar papered with photos of celebrities who have dined there, including Thelma Ritter. Nothing has ever changed. You enter a snug time capsule.

The menu lists clams casino, lamb with mint jelly, creamed spinach, big portions, and huge grilled steaks. Your waiter wields a rubirosa pepper mill. "Would you like your steak medium rare?" he suggests. And who would not? The $47 sirloin had a delectable thick charred crust. Caesar salad was old-fashioned, eggy and salty with anchovies, and there was a generous bread basket. With potatoes made eight different ways, the French fries were chewy and just outstanding. In all but price, F&J's compares to the dreamy era of "Mad Men." 

It is bustling and full of good cheer that dates back a long, long time to before you were born. Say hi to waitress Roxy for us. During Prohibition, one gained access with the password "Frankie?" and the person on the other side of the door responded, "Johnnie." 

Brasserie Magritte and St. Therese: The Show

Brasserie Magritte is a loving homage to nearly everyone's favorite artist. The ceiling is a bright mural of clouds. There is a chandelier of floating bowler hats. Art on the walls includes work by a contemporary Belgian photographer that restages the paintings of René Magritte (1898-1967). Every detail is so charming, including the optical illusion placemats.

Chef Shohn Donaghy and the staff are from Belgium. Sausages are made on the premises. Mussels are steeped in a beer butter sauce and come with a cone of twice-fried crispy frittes, served with garlic mayonnaise as well as catsup. Belgian beef stew and rabbit and duck are in beer reductions. Brasserie Magritte regularly holds a mysterious 14 Strangers Dinner in its back room, with fourteen diners who have never met and an array of their classic Belgian dishes. (Our names are on the waiting list!) Background music is a carefully curated selection of mostly jazz and Edith Piaf. A massive chalkboard lists the Belgian beer served, each is served in its own exquisite stemmed glass. Significantly, Heineken cannot be ordered there. "There are just too many other great Belgian beers," said the manager.

      A short walk from the Upper East Side Brasserie Magritte brought us to Our Lady of Good Counsel Roman Catholic church. No, not to pray, but to attend a traveling show based on the short but influential life of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897). St. Thérèse was born into an aristocratic family. Although she died at the age of twenty-four she left behind an influential autobiography and is known as the saint that writers evoke to cure writer's block. In sleepy St. Patrick's Cathedral, her small altar near the apse is a hive of activity with blocked writers of all faiths making offerings and kneeling to light a votive candle. 

St. Thérèse is evoked by opponents of the death penalty for her radical belief that a person may do something bad, but it doesn't mean he's a bad person. She found evidence to prove that there is some good in everybody. Michel Pascal, a remarkable singer, offers a chance to touch her brown robe and to view up close a reliquary of Thérèse’s hair. He takes you behind the closed doors of her Carmelite convent and makes you feel "closer to her than you have ever felt before."

Indian Ink and Fig & Olive

In Sir Tom Stoppard’s 1995 Indian Ink, based on a radio play, Flora Crewe, a young British poet, diagnosed with a fatal illness (something to do with her lungs) decides to spend the last few months of her life in India writing poetry and letters to her younger sister Eleanor. The play transports us to a fictitious town, Jummapur, where Flora has her pick of men to distract her and she chooses an artist like herself. He is one of many; “Men were not really important to Flora,” says her sister played by Tony winner Rosemary Harris. “If they had been, they would have been fewer. She used them like batteries. When things went flat, she’d put in a new one...”.

The play jumps back and forth between India 1930 and England 1980. Flora in India and her sister Eleanor fifty years later in England recanting Flora’s story to a young writer and the son of the painter who did Flora’s portrait. Stoppard questions what to do with time and the choices people make. Rosemary Harris and Romola Garai (Flora) are delightful and the two Das men (Firdous Bamji, father, and Bhavesh Patel, son) romantic and captivating. As always with Stoppard, the dialogue is thrilling.

The set is bathed in soft blue light and lulling instrumentals. Indian Ink has few patches of rough water. Mostly the waves are gentle and rhythmic. Elegantly directed by Carey Perloff. The Roundabout follows this up with Stoppard’s 1982 smash hit, The Real Thing.

Gazpacho Andalucia

Zucchini Carpaccio

Off Fifth Avenue on 52nd St. is one of three Fig & Olive restaurants in the city (another on the Upper East Side and one in the Meatpacking District). Chef Pascal Lorange's menu emphasizes fish (including octapus served a couple of ways and whole branzino) and different olive oils, often listed. On the drinks menu is an heirloom tomato Bloody Mary. Anything you order will be better than you've had anywhere else. The mushroom pasta, Penne Funghi Tartufo, was the most mushroom pasta ever: garlicky, flecked with herbs and Parmesan flakes, topped with grilled shrimp. (Maybe it's the very specific olive oil that made it taste so good?)

Gazpacho Andalucia was the best gazpacho. Zucchini carpaccio may be the only zucchini carpaccio you've ever tasted, but it's the best (zucchini, lemon, pine nuts, Parmesan and Picholine olive oil). The $28 three-course prix fixe allows you to savor all of the above. The noise level is low and the soft jazz in the background is soothing. Every thing is just right, including that slippery descriptor, atmosphere. Even the flatware and stemware are nice to the touch.

The Maids and Triomphe

Screen icons Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert

Australia's Sydney Theatre Company The Maids by Jean Genet, brought to New York by Lincoln Center, begins with the maids Claire and Solange dressing up in their employer’s gowns and perfume and dancing to Nico's I'll Be Your Mirror. It’s a dreamy start to the 90-minute avant-garde classic played without intermission that continues to build all the way through.

Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert are, unimaginably, the maid sisters. Tall Elizabeth Debicki is the self-dramatizing mistress, who one moment promises her servants, “Some day I’ll leave everything to you,” and in the next moment forgets their names, based on a true story.

The younger of the sisters, Claire, is the magic Cate Blanchett, a lioness. She bellows, frolics, and then curls into an exhausted fetal state. She isn't capable of defending herself, much less committing murder. It comes as no surprise that the naughtiest of the two sisters, Solange, is Isabelle Huppert, whose mischief is well-known from French cinema. Onstage her energy is unstoppable, and she is both coltish and graceful. Many have commented on her strongly French-accented English. We understood her and found her delivery haunting.

When the mistress is home, Blanchett and Huppert are such great actresses that they are convincingly servile and in awe of her. For her part, Australian newcomer Debicki holds court with aplomb. Much has been made of this production using a younger rather than older mistress. To us, the three seemed relatively the same age, which gave the old play (1947) a new twist.

When the mistress arrives, we see the video monitor as she gets into the elevator and the maids scramble to clear up the mess. The constant video projection was distracting, though sometimes used comically – we can watch as, in the kitchen, poison is mixed into the mistress’s tea. Glass walls surround the lavish bedroom and a long rack of countless gowns, color coordinated, and bowls of cut flowers create a bubble of excess – a suffocating world. It was unnecessary, because we felt trapped already. These women are captivating all on their own.  

 Florian Wehrli in his rooftop garden

Swiss star chef Florian Wehrli's good reputation precedes him. On the top of his restaurant in the Iroquois Hotel, he has a massive organic garden that grows red peppers, yellow tomatoes, potatoes, flowers, over thirty herbs. It's like the Garden of Eden, with the Chrysler building in the background.  "Taste this." He broke off a leaf. "It's stevia, a hundred times sweeter than sugar. I'm trying to figure out how to use it in a dish."

At Triomphe, the intimate restaurant downstairs, he serves food that is known for perfectionist beauty. His food is beautiful without seeming fussy or over-handled. If there's another quality besides taste that we could pin to Florian's edge it is crispness. Scallops in a crisp almond crust. Beef Wellington in a crunchy en croûte of bread instead of the traditional pastry. The gazpacho had crispness in micro minced peppers (grown on the roof) and the crunch of dried onion pieces. Crème brûlée, with perfect burnt shell, comes in "three mysterious flavors." The maître d' checks in to see if you guessed before he'll tell you what they are. Ours were bay leaf, raspberry, and toasted coconut, and we were only able to guess one. But when he told us, the other flavors rang out.

The well-written menu at noontime offers four prix fixes, including the Bounty lunch of three exquisite courses of vegetables, and "4 Courses on 44" (the restaurant is on 44nd St.) for, you guessed it, $44. Most popular is Tribute to Provence, at $25, with one main course, either shrimp niçoise full of lacy cress or grilled steak with white corn summer salsa, served with the perfect glass of wine.

Striped Sea Bass on Squid Ink Pasta
with Roasted Tomatoes

Triomphe regularly publishes a hardcover with photos of each of the dishes served that season. "About forty copies are printed," said the chef. "It's nice to remember what we did." Check them out in the Iroquois lobby library. Triomphe serves a pretty breakfast too and will soon offer a late-night menu.

50 Shades! The Musical and Turkish Cuisine

"Sure, I'll sign your contract, Mr. Grey."

50 Shades! The Musical Parody at the Elektra Theater is hilarious – and kind of X-rated. At the bar during intermission, a woman said she wondered whether the actors would actually get naked in the second half.

At one point, a cast member wags his finger at the men in the audience (there are a few), and tells them not to criticize their wives and girlfriends for reading books like Fifty Shades – as if the millions of female readers needed permission. The premise is a book club choosing to read Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, confident of its worth because the writer is English.

Amber Petty is innocent Anastasia Steele, working in a hardware store. She has an unforced singing style and a brilliance that transcends the material – the material being the tortuous bestseller. 50 Shades! The Musical is way better than the novel.

Journalists are not allowed to publish a picture of the incredible actor who plays the male lead, so as not to spoil the surprise when he struts out on stage. Christian Trevelyan Grey, the intimidating billionaire who introduces Anastasia to his wicked ways, is played by Jack Boice, comic genius. His uninhibited dance steps and crystal clear tenor voice held the audience in the palm of his hand. He’s so good you want to slap him.

Dinner in the garden at Turkish Cuisine

After 50 Shades we wanted to spice things up and walked around the corner from the Elektra to Ninth Avenue. Turkish Cuisine more than satisfied our craving for assertive flavors with an appetizer of spicy hummus and grilled pita, followed by chopped Shephard salad, grilled salmon, and the grilled combo that is one of the best deals in town.

           

The meze looked fantastic. Platters were generous, everything fresh and healthy. We should have ordered something with eggplant. In the pretty back garden, a neighbor cat climbed over the wall, sauntered through the tables, then hopped back up the wall to leave. Strings of lights swayed in the breeze and with the full moon above it felt like an outdoor café on the Bosphorus.