This year marks the 9th annual
Brits Off Broadway festival and I still don't know how it has escaped my attention all this time. Having lived in both Scotland and England before, and being from the Commonwealth myself, shouldn't I be somehow attuned to all things colonial happening in New York? But what's that they say, "better late than never"?
This year's festival opened yesterday and will run until 29 June, which
sounds like a long time, but it's really not when you consider how many plays they're staging - and how good so many of them are likely to be.
I got to
the 59E59 theatre about 20 minutes early tonight, so I had a bit of time for a cold glass of bubbly before the show started. I took a seat at the bar next to a little old lady with cotton-ball hair and we got to talking about the theatre shows we'd seen in the City, and she confessed a love of thought-provoking productions that made her grouchy for days. "I like thinking pieces," she admitted. I liked her immediately.
Before long though, the usher was calling us all to our seats, and the cotton ball lady and I went our separate ways. When I sat down in my row, I was next to an ancient woman who was complaining to her younger companion that she was stuck on Level 52 of "Candy Crush". Old people. I don't even know anymore.
I had bought tickets to see a double bill tonight,
"Clean" and "A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity". I knew nothing about either play, other than the fact that "A Respectable Widow" had been part of the Edinburgh Fringe and was being staged here in New York as part of Scotland Week. I was hopeful for accents. I got them.
As the lights dimmed and the actors took the stage, Mrs Candy Crush leaned forward in her seat for the first 10 minute or so, and I knew she was struggling to comprehend what was going on. Not so for me. I soaked it all up - it was far too familiar.
The lyrical, slick production of "Clean" only went for about 45 minutes, and in the 10-minute intermission that followed I read the schedule and determined which plays I would come and see next. I think I settled on six, including one about a mother of a boy with disabilities (which I will probably bawl the whole way through), and a rather mysterious one called
"Peddling", which was written by (and stars) Dudley Dirsley from
"Harry Potter".
When "A Respectable Widow" started, I was overjoyed to hear the thick Scottish brogue - memories of a very happy six months spent in Scotland back in 2005 came flooding back.
Again, about 45 minutes later the house lights went up and the audience scattered. On our way out we were treated to the wonderful sounds of a very talented jazz trio playing in the downstairs lobby. A great touch.
While the plays I saw weren't necessarily "thinking pieces", I still wanted to reflect on them so I took myself for a glass of wine at the famous
"Monkey Bar" inside the
Hotel Elysee on East 54th Street, just a few blocks from the theatre. With kitschy monkey murals on the walls, monkey lamps on the bar, and red leather booths with vinyl gingham tablecloths, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the bar had seen better days. But the cocktail list and food menu are amazing, and its history goes all the way back to the repeal of Prohibition. The bar and adjacent restaurant (with amazing Jazz Age mural) was
Tallulah Bankhead's hangout for a while, and
Tennessee Williams apparently died there in the very front bar! It was like stepping back in time to Old New York, and it was perfect.
