Another Opening, Another Show

Last night, I went to the premiere of the revival of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs and the subsequent party at Tavern on the Green.
Great play and really well cast. Jessica Hecht as Blanche Morton is heartbreaking and Laurie Metcalf as Kate is brilliant... but then she's always brilliant.
The star of the show's LAST outing was a high school production of The Producers in which he played Max. Off, off, off, off, off, off Broadway as the program states. He as "Eugene" is quite a find.
Openings are a blast. You get to play Spot the Facelift and Who Am I Peeing Next To? (in my case, it was Neil Simon himself during the intermission). Woo. And since when did the lines for the mens' rooms get to be longer than the ladies... What the hell are we DOING in there???

The party at Tavern was great fun. They separated crew and cast in different rooms, which I thought was a bit Jim Crow-ish, but whatever, the food was great and I had a blast at my table. The menu was what you would find in The Jerome Household, so of course I went back for Kugle, chopped liver and meat balls... delicious.

In the 26 years I have lived in NYC off and on, I have never been to Tavern so this was unique. The whole place is kitsched out in the New York of another age and I really hope this stays as it is. Too much here is changing too fast and not really for the better... It's all just one big Upper West Side Pottery Barn past 59th Street. Anyway...

The ceiling in the main room looks like the top of a wedding cake and the gardens with their twinkling Chinese lanterns and Fairy-lit trees jolt you out of your big city complacency and into the second reel of an Audrey Hepburn movie--although the giant King Kong topiary was a little out of place and creepy in an otherwise empty garden.

Joan Rivers showed up and she looks surprisingly good considering that I don't think that any part of her face is real. She's also utterly minute. As is James Lipton--although his face was blotchy red and he sort of seemed like a demonic leprechaun.
Ah well, fun evening thanks to an old college friend and will be doing it all over again at the opening of Ragtime.