Finding Neverland and City Kitchen

Matthew Morrison and Kelsey Grammer, photo by Carol Rosegg.

The new musical Finding Neverland is based on the 2004 film. Matthew Morrison plays the sensitive Scottish playwright, author of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie. One afternoon in London’s Kensington Park, Barrie stumbles upon Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (the fabulous Laura Michelle Kelly, aka Mary Poppins), with her four lovely sons and their shaggy dog. Carolee Carmello is powerful as Sylvia’s mother, the famous mystery writer Daphne du Maurier. The family releases the playwright from writer’s block, and one of the boys becomes the inspiration for Barrie’s indelible creation, the boy who never grew up. The boys rotate the role of Peter.

Arden, our nine-year old reviewer, swooned when the “Glee” star appeared on stage. To us it seemed at first that Matthew Morrison might be phoning it in. Or was it the heavy tweed suit, the Scots accent, and the beard that hid his chiseled chin? He redeems himself in Act 1 when he has a chance to show off his remarkable dancing skills. Mia Michael’s choreography is angular, abrupt, and there are lots of vertical jumps. The choreographed dinner party is a gem.

Kelsey Grammer is delightful and totally present as the curmudgeonly producer and also Captain Hook. His dead-pan delivers. The ensemble actors in the backstage story and Teal Wicks as the first Mrs. Barrie are fun. There is something satisfyingly dark about it all. The pop score by British rocker Gary Barlow is manipulative but sweeps you up. Catharsis comes with sparkling stars, a storm of glitter, and Tinker Bell’s flight. We left feeling shaken and stirred.

Like salted caramel and "large plates," the food court is a trend. Brand new City Kitchen has sushi, Gabriela's Taqueria, Kuro Obi noodles, Luke's Lobster; homemade pita and salads from ilili Box (our best destination); local green pickles, wedge salad, and the Juicy Lucy burger at Whitman's (Arden's best pick), alluring Wooly's Shaved Snow and other vendors. It's a good place to take children, allowing a huge choice and the ability to see the food before ordering.

Rather than eating in the food court, carry your boxes to the spacious adjoining hotel lobby. It's peaceful there, however if you would like less peace, and Mom would like a drink, broad steps lead down to a flourishing bar with a huge movie screen showing vintage rock concerts. 

Wolf Hall, Parts I and II, and Russian Samovar

The Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Hilary Mantel’s books on the court of Henry VIII, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, is the scintillating two-part “Wolf Hall." This king is driven (at least in Part I) by his heart. He needs to get his marriages annulled under the Catholic Church, which leads to the Reformation. Characters speak at times in modern short-hand. “Thank God!” Thomas More. “No, thank me,” Thomas Cromwell.

At the center isn’t More, Henry VIII, or Anne Boleyn, but wily advisor to the king, Thomas Cromwell. The BBC miniseries has Mark Rylance to play Cromwell like he’s constantly having to save his own neck. Ben Miles is sleek and smoother, more of an Eddie Haskell and a Republican. Courteous but deadly, he sounds like David Brooks explaining the Bush administration’s war.

Lydia Leonard is a thrilling Anne Boleyn, who may be young but knows her power. She protects religious “heretics,” and unfortunately can’t guess what’s coming. The king’s new mistress was always kept under wraps until the current queen could one way or another be deposed and the next one installed. (A funeral dissolves into a wedding onstage.) In Part I, handsome Nathaniel Parker’s King Henry is sweet as a puppy. In Part II he feels the effects of gout, though he is still somewhat of a pushover for women. Was this ever possible? “Henry the Eighth to six wives he wedded: one died, two survived, two divorced, two beheaded.”

Hilary Mantel has said in interviews that she “leaves certain questions unsolved” as would only be honest to do in writing about the Middle Ages. Her revisionist Thomas More is not A Man for All Seasons. “He was a great man apart from when he wanted to burn people alive,” Mantel has said.

The mostly empty stage facilitates swirling costumes and skipping, joyous dance. You wonder whether there really was a sixteenth-century dance step where they snapped fingers in unison. Such is the authority of Hilary Mantel that you accept that she discovered rather than invented anything.

After a didactic first half hour, the remaining five hours plus fly past. The production was condensed for Broadway, yet, you feel nothing important is left out, including two-faced sister Lady Mary Boleyn, the royal lapdog, and Mark, the lute player. Leah Brotherhead is a freshly imagined Jane Seymour. Can’t wait for the third in the trilogy: The Mirror and the Light.

Table 16, where Joseph Brodsky wrote.

Between Wolf Hall I and II at the Winter Garden, it was a treat to eat pelmeni with dill and sour cream, tender smoked salmon and sturgeon, and "herring in a fur coat" (layered beet salad) at the nearby Russian Samovar, a non-glitzy piano bar.

Our corner banquette, table 16, is a shrine to poet Joseph Brodsky. At another table sat Bolshoi ballerina Maria Kochetkova, wearing sweat pants, dining with a fellow dancer before a performance.

The Russian Samovar was nightclub Jilly’s in the Sixties, Frank Sinatra's hangout. If Frank’s ghost walked in, he’d appreciate in the stairwell that a graffitied wall from the old Jilly’s was left intact.

The Heidi Chronicles and Butter Restaurant

Nothing has captured the beauty and excitement of the women’s movement in the 1970s like Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles. This star-studded revival leaves behind the cushy Ivy League feel of past productions and makes the revolution egalitarian. Sharp supporting roles by Tracee Chimo and Ali Ahn bolster the thrilling Broadway debut of Elisabeth Moss as Heidi Holland, art historian and trail blazer.

Heidi’s slide-show art history lesson promotes unsung women painters of the Renaissance. At a feminist consciousness-raising session, Heidi is ill-at-ease, alienated from a woman asserting independence by refusing to shave her legs (a dated reference, and the only one that may require more explanation). Participating in a morning television panel, Heidi is overlooked by the host, and the men on the panel interrupt her. She feels frustrated and insecure. Two full-strength actors portray her great friend, who is gay, Bryce Pinkham, and the manipulative boyfriend that she finally leaves behind, Jason Biggs. Songs by Stevie Nicks and Janis Joplin provide underpinning.

Elisabeth Moss is an actress for our times. She’s the liberated Heidi sort: smart, self-sufficient, considered a sport. In “Top of the Lake,” Moss's character uncovers, in the New Zealand outback, and led by Holly Hunter, an all-female utopian community living in discarded boxcars. Moss made that seem real. Her Peggy Olson grounds “Mad Men”—she adds a needed threat. Heidi Holland wins, too, but sometimes she breaks down. Moss is so affecting on stage that when her character gives a commencement speech and gets carried away and cries, sniffles could be heard around the audience.

This is an exceptional revival in every way. Pam MacKinnon shakes up this wordy, unwieldy, cathartic play. She is marvelous directing the juicy roles that every actress wants to act: Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Heidi in The Heidi Chronicles.

 
Down the street from the Music Box is Butter restaurant. Chef Alexandra "Alex" Guarnaschelli is a television star and cookbook author. Hot Parker House rolls served with herb butter begin your meal. The butter is fresh, from local Jersey cows (either from Jersey cows or from cows in New Jersey—we couldn't tell from the menu's unspecific wording). Alex may be all about comfort food, but she also wants you to try the unexpected. Butter’s menu used to include ostrich. The menu changes all the time. Her current signature main course is peppery charred whole cauliflower with braised carrots and sherry reduction.

The food looks as good as it tastes, served on a collection of vintage restaurant plates. Tuna carpaccio is in cubes on top of melon-balled cucumber. Grilled Long Island striped bass has sesame vinaigrette. Flavors are subtle, and the chef has a light touch with salt.

The former East Village location was more celebrated. Like it, Butter midtown is windowless and cavernous. You walk downstairs to a dark and woody lounge with a central core and view of shadowy foot traffic overhead. A hideout for a rendezvous and favorite for Sunday brunch before a Broadway matinee. The $35 prix-fixe lunch makes it permanently Restaurant Week (a New York City tradition that every city should adopt). Next time we’ll order the frozen toasted marshmallow faux Mallomar.

Rasheeda Speaking and West Bank Café

Master class in a doctor's office. Photo by Monique Carboni.

There is a pre-Obama retro vibe to Rasheeda Speaking by Joel Drake Johnson. Timid, white Ileen, played by Dianne Wiest, is asked to spy on and list the infractions, like arriving late to work, of her black co-worker, Jaclyn, played by Tonya Pinkins, building a case for human resources to fire her. Jaclyn has just taken time off work after having an allergic reaction to the Xerox machine that sits next to her desk.

Dr. Williams (delightfully unctuous Darren Goldstein) condescends and offends both women, including speaking with Jaclyn in jocular black dialect. He flatters Ileen and rewards her with the title “office manager.” The employees are obliged to flatter him. He loves for Ileen to tell him, “I love my job. I love working for you.” To Jaclyn, he asks, “Do you think I’m fat?” She offers him donuts and gives him a Hallmark card in which she has written, “You are not fat.”  

The windowless Chicago doctor’s office (marvelous set by Allen Moyer, fluorescent lighting by Jennifer Tipton) is decorated with wilting philodendrons and a Georgia O’Keeffe flower poster from the Chicago Art Institute. It’s a chillingly lifelike set for a ninety-minute master class in acting, each moment coached with humor and infinite finesse by first-time director Cynthia Nixon.

Ileen feels terrible about what she has become. Another brilliant actress, Patricia Conolly, plays Rose, a delicate elderly patient. Because she is clueless, her racial epitaphs (“It’s like they’re paying us back for slavery”) float past unacknowledged. Jaclyn is indeed in a toxic environment. You can probably guess which one of them winds up leaving.

Generous prix fixe at West Bank Café

Established in 1978, West Bank Café has a dedicated following and is difficult to book before or after a play. The reason is the food, and for instance, kale salad—now on every menu across town—is ingenious here, mixed with grilled octopus, radishes, and smoked salted almonds. A 3-course prix fixe for $35 gives as a main course salmon or chicken with abundant vegetables. Entrees include rainbow trout piccata and black linguini with rock shrimp, and desserts, hot chocolate bread pudding with vanilla ice-cream and caramel. The cocktail menu sounds delectable and wine by the glass is good value.

West Bank Café has a downstairs space, the Laurie Beechman Theatre, where many great performers have done shows, including, as recently as 2013, Joan Rivers.

Honeymoon in Vegas and Wolfgang's Steakhouse

\

Photo by Ruven Afanador for Vanity Fair

Based on the film written and directed by Andrew Bergman, in which a sweaty Nicholas Cage tried to pay off a gambling debt with his fiancée, Sarah Jessica Parker. As long as you ignore the woman-as-chattel theme, you’ll have a great time at Honeymoon in Vegas. The onstage orchestra sets the mood with a terrific overture.

Tony Danza is suave as the casino owner Tommy Korman, in mourning. Betsy Nolan (Brynn O’Malley) is a dead ringer for Tommy’s late wife and a Vassar-educated teacher to boot. O’Malley has an edge that makes Betsy believable. It’s stunning when she appears as a mirage of Tommy’s less impressive dead wife, with crazy hairdo and manicure, chewing gum and sunbathing in a bikini.  

Rob McClure’s sweet Jack Singer stumbles his way to heroic, but first wins the audience singing “I Love Betsy.” When shopping at Tiffany’s for Betsy’s ring, his mother’s ghost (Nancy Opel) hilariously rises from a display case. Jack’s manipulated into playing poker with Tommy, who suggests as payment for a huge debt a chaste weekend with Betsy. Insulted, Betsy ends their engagement and stalks off with him.

Tommy secretly plans to marry her himself at a 24-hour Nevada chapel, but first spirits her away to his private island in Hawaii. The orchestra changes into Hawaiian shirts for this part. Jack follows them and proves his mettle by skydiving and by resisting the local women. Despite Catherine Ricafort’s vibrant voice and selling of the song, “Friki-Friki” is a road bump.

Lyrics and music by Jason Robert Brown are otherwise so clever that you follow every word. Choreographed showgirls and Elvis impersonators add zing. Sleazy, cheesy Vegas denizens are expansively portrayed by David Josefsberg, Michael Saldivar and George Merrick and all of the others. Honeymoon in Vegas is a very classy production.

Head waiter, Matt

Wolfgang’s is a high roller’s steakhouse. The Times Square location has tall windows and unusual spaciousness. It’s light and airy any time of the day. Park Avenue Wolfgang’s has an amazing vaulted tiled ceiling. We’d like to visit all the locations and compare them architecturally. They're always open; lunch and dinner served seven days a week including holidays.

Mouth-watering smells hit as you walk in, and a one-page menu makes the choices seem manageable. That’s a little deceptive, because it’s hard to skip extravagant appetizers, like the specialty Canadian bacon strip that would be a main course in any other country. Chunky crab cake comes with a cool and delicious herb sauce that we’d like the recipe for. Tomato sauce, horseradish on the side, accompanies the seafood platter and is also a fine sauce. Steaks and lamb come perfectly seared and tender, with brilliant flavor. Baked potatoes the size of footballs and chipped German potatoes lead as side dishes. Another favorite with guests is creamed spinach that is pure spinach (without cream). Their famous Schlag with dessert is so fully whipped, the way it's done at the Wisconsin State Fair, that you can cut it with a knife and fork, and it’s served in the size of the snow bank outside.

On the Town and Carnegie Deli

On the Town has music by Leonard Bernstein and a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. You've probably seen the 1949 MGM movie filmed on location. Sailors on a 24-hr shore leave must see the whole city and find a date. The Manhattan women they meet are not a bit shy and include a taxi driver, an anthropologist, and a dancer. These sailors could not possibly get more lucky. If anything dates the tale, it's perhaps how gosh golly happy they feel, and that happiness is contagious.

Bernstein's music performed by a full orchestra is so fresh that the songs feel new. Written several years before his West Side Story, On the Town might be the sparkier of the two, you think, after seeing this stellar production. Dancing choreographed by Joshua Bergasse is spectacular. The pas de deux with Megan Fairchild and Tony Yazbeck in Act II made us forget the Gene Kelly version. Alysha Umphress, the taxi driver Hildy, is a hoot in "Come Up to My Place" and the careening ride around town with her new love interest, Jay Armstrong Johnson. The scene in the Natural History Museum, Elizabeth Stanley's "Carried Away" with her new supplicant, Clyde Alves, is the coolest version of this female empowerment number that we may ever see, and "Lonely Town" was never more haunting. Jackie Hoffman in her many hats, who this reviewer met during her Second City days, was perfectly silly.

Could have done without the American flag curtain and "Star Spangled Banner," but maybe that's just us. On the Town is playing in the massive Lyric. Thin menus attached to the seats offer seat service at intermission for drinks and snacks. We'll have two Brooklyn lagers, a large Brooklyn Popcorn, a bag of North Fork Chips, and Tate's chocolate chip cookies, please.

Not much of an appetite after dinner, a mile-high pastrami sandwich at the non-kosher Carnegie Deli. You might know this tourist hotspot, which opened in 1937. It never fails to be a warm and friendly slice of Manhattan, around the corner from Carnegie Hall. (The joke goes, out-of-towner asks, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" The answer: "Practice.") There are wheeler dealers here and also just simple folks like us, who come to share a sandwich, complimentary pickles, coleslaw, and sterling conversation with native New Yorkers. It's relatively expensive, but you can have lunch for an entire week on sandwiches and salads made from ample leftovers. Carnegie Deli's mustard is particularly good, and they deliver, so ask for extra mustard and pickles.

Side Show and Joe Allen

Set in the 1930s and based on the Hilton sisters, Daisy and Violet, conjoined twins, Side Show opened and tanked after a matter of weeks, just as it did in 1997 when this full-blown musical premiered. Side Show is teeming with powerful love songs, however it is doomed by its subject: the darkness of the lives of side-show performers. A corny subplot involves a forbidden love interest. Jake, a black man, appears in the circus as the “cannibal” and is their one true friend. David St. Louis is absolutely gorgeous when he sings of his love for Violet. He's sure to get a Tony nod in spite of the show's closing within minutes.

Erin Davie as Violet and Emily Padgett as Daisy are marvelous and deserve Tony noms too. Violet and Daisy are discovered by a vaudeville producer who helps them create a name for themselves on the stage. Additional love interests are the producer and dance captain. Robert Joy is evil Sir, the Joel Grey-ish sideshow manager with fancy manners. We embrace his demotion to coffee boy for MGM when the sisters go on to appear in a movie. The lighting by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer was dramatic and memorable.

The story has great heart and it’s engrossing in spite of a slow pace. Side Show has reportedly been successful in regional theater. The creation of Bill Russell (book and lyrics) and Henry Krieger (music), you have to give them credit for taking “difference” as a theme and running with it. 

Joe Allen descends the stairs and has breakfast while reading the drama criticism in all of the newspapers every morning. He has a soft spot in his heart for the plays that close on Broadway. His star-studded restaurant is decorated with posters of plays and musicals that have bombed. The poster of Side Show is at the framers' shop now.

The actors who eat at his restaurant are the ones appearing, for however long, in plays nearby. It does not feel touristy, 'though undoubtedly many tourists who love Broadway gravitate. Waiters are attentive and get you out in time for the curtain. The diners who really enjoy Joe Allen stick to a few dishes on the menu. House-made paparadelle is pretty delicious, and the dark crusty bread in the bread basket accompanies it well. Lobster roll is really good, but especially the Joe Allen hamburger, served medium-rare, with toasted bun and pickles, has a dedicated following. The spinach side dish is fluffy and a triumph. Popeye would adore this place. But the best is that at Joe Allen's bar or table area, you mix with marvelous New Yorkers. 

Here are the charming actor types enjoying Joe Allen's at the table next to ours. When they were posing for a group selfie we intercepted this group portrait. Wait, isn't that a phenomenal stage and screen actress we all know standing in the back row? 

Posters behind them include that brief sensation, the musical based on Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's.