Hear Me Roar!

We hadn't yet experienced New York pizza.  So we headed to John's Pizzeria, arriving as they opened for the day.  John's is an iconic pizza place in an old Gospel Tabernacle church.  We were seated near the altar....I mean mural of NYC.

We got a "small" pizza.

Then we headed out for our fourth show, Strange Loop.  It was a cold and windy day.  But we could see blue sky.

We chose to come to New York this week because Strange Loop's last performances would be today and we didn't want to miss it.  All we knew about this musical was that it was about a Black queer writer writing about a Black queer writer.  When we got our Playbills we learned that Ru Paul, Alan Cummings and Jennifer Hudson were co-producers of the play.  The Black queer writer's name was Usher and he worked as an usher at The Lion King on Broadway as he worked on a musical he hoped to get to Broadway.  There were 6 thoughts who constantly swirled in his head telling him about how he wasn't good enough.  One of the voices that filled his head belonged to his mother, who gave him a message of love knotted up with the condemnation of God for being a gay man.  It was the "strange loop" he lived in, finally deciding to turn his back on the thoughts filling his head and face forward. I was a crying mess when the play ended and I was not alone.  It would be almost impossible to see the show and not walk out with a mirror facing you.  I left thinking about my opinions, beliefs and ideas about this world and my place in it.  As we exited the building, so did Jennifer Hudson.

Weak and heavy from the play we decided to head to Rockefeller Plaza and poke around.  We went inside FAO Schwarz and experienced what true excess really looks like.

We got fish and chips for dinner, continuing to process Strange Loop.  I told Linda if the street preacher was in Times Square as we headed home tonight I was going to have a talk with him about the damage he is doing.

Then we made our way to our fifth and final show in 2.5 days.... & Juliet.  

It was a jukebox musical telling the story of what happened to Juliet after Romeo.  The music was filled with well-known pop songs like "I Want It That Way" and "I Kissed a Girl."  It was light and fun and well done.  I had been wishing I had been here for the ticker tape of New Year's Eve.  I got my ticker tape experience in this musical.  I was covered with it when the play ended.  We laughed, we danced and I didn't leave crying.  

As we walked back to our hotel I kept my eye out for the street preacher in Times Square we had encountered the night before, but he wasn't there.  I was disappointed I didn't get to have my conversation with him.

Linda and I worked on our ratings of the two shows when we got back to our room.  What is it we are rating?  How good we felt as we left the show or how long the show would live in our gut, making us process it over and over and over again?  We gave Strange Loop an 88 and & Juliet an 87.