I have booked for the last few rows of the Stalls (and for the matinee of the Cabaret immersive revival that same day!) so I am very excited for a very theatrical day out!

Variety:  Wicked Overtakes Mamma Mia as Biggest Global Broadway Adaptation
                    Universal's Wicked is officially the highest-grossing Broadway adaptation in global box office history.


Also, the East Anglian tulip market (if that was even a thing previously?) must be glutted.

I now have found four occurrences of "my hair."

My menorah candles for the last night of Hanukkah have just burned out. I think next year I will splurge for the next level of menorah candle up, because this batch was difficult to keep lit. These were the $5 (plus change) box of candles.

I have made exactly zero resolutions for New Year's. When I make resolutions, they tend to come at some random time of the year. 

Quote from: DiveMilw on Dec 30, 2024, 08:40 PMLet's pretend I am going to purchase a ticket to the show.  Is there a spot I want to avoid sitting in? 

Here's a webpage that attempts to make sense of the "best" and "worst" seats, in terms of value for money:

https://www.theatremonkey.com/venues/lyttelton-theatre-national-theatre

Scroll down a bit and select, on the left, "Best Seat Advice" (for notes) and "Seating Plan(s)" (for graphic); then, on either of those pages, scroll down to Here We Are, although for the time being these opinions are presumably more general to the venue than specific to the show.

The latter may be hard to gauge just yet, not knowing just how much of a replica of the Shed production this will be.  Here We Are's seating plan, both on theatremonkey.com and on NT's own ticketing pages, suggests that they won't be creating any kind of true 3/4 thrust at the Lyttelton as they did at the Shed, but it remains to be seen just how dramatically (or not) that might affect the design and staging.

Theatremonkey's general advice affirms my sense that the Lyttelton, like the Shed's Griffin Theatre, really has few bad seats, but  @Leighton is probably much more familiar with it than I am.  I'd be curious to see HWA from the front mezz (Dress Circle), but given the starry cast, I wouldn't want to go any higher than its first couple of rows if at all possible.  At the Shed, where there was no balcony, I was never further back than seventh-row orchestra (stalls), but close was good; while the performances were appropriately broad (as is probably evident from photos and the cast album), they still very much rewarded a closer view, as I imagine the London cast's will too.  (However, the NT itself prices the first four rows as the cheapest in the house — theatremonkey mentions that there's little-or-no audience rake until Row F —  so maybe take "close" with a grain of salt).

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that they do replicate the New York staging as closely as possible even without the thrust, I'd say the extreme sides probably aren't ideal (as they rarely are, in general).  And a certain second-act moment that's been mentioned previously on this thread took place upstage(ish)-left here in NY; so if the NT staging follows suit, then the farther House Right seats would be especially worth avoiding.

Speaking of price, I have to say: with premium seats for this production currently topping out at about $125 USD while equivalent seats on Broadway (and even HWA's Off B'way) easily double that, I am envious.  I assume this is partly to do with the fact that this is at the National rather than the West End.  But then, I envy that, too: i.e., NT's very existence, with nothing remotely equivalent over here.  And God bless NT at Home, where I enjoyed Andrew Scott's 2019 Old Vic Present Laughter last week, and the West End Prima Facie a few days before that, and where I'm hoping Here We Are will eventually wind up streaming.

Let's pretend I am going to purchase a ticket to the show.  Is there a spot I want to avoid sitting in?  

For what it's worth, the seemingly most-obvious occurrence of "my hair" may not be immediately familiar, because it didn't appear in the original Broadway production — or on the original B'way cast album — of the show for which it was written.  It was actually written later, for a subsequent production of that show, and is now "optional": the song in question serves a useful dramaturgical purpose, but not an absolutely essential one, and it does lengthen an already-long evening; accordingly, it has appeared in some, but not all, subsequent productions and cast recordings.

In a similar vein, "Bang!" (above), was of course cut from A Little Night Music and might therefore be unfamiliar to casual fans of the show or its composer, though the song did resurface in the revues Marry Me A Little and Putting It Together (and on their various recordings, as well as the 1985 compilation A Collector's Sondheim).

But none of the other five instances (that I have in mind) are obscure in that sense, all having appeared in their respective shows' original B'way productions, and on their OBCRs; and having remained, unchanged as far as I know, in their respective libretti, performances and recordings ever since.  One of the shows in question is, admittedly, among SJS's less-often produced; but I'd wager that many of those who have heard its score would cite the song that includes the "my hair" lyric as a highlight.

Also, I'll go ahead and say that none of these six instances (or seven, including "Bang!") is obscure in the sense of being "hidden" in chorus or counterpoint: all occur in clear, easily-understandable solo lines — though none of the songs in question is itself a beginning-to-end solo; most are technically duets, while one is part of a larger group extravaganza.

Finally, these seven lyrics (including "Bang!) come from a total of five different shows:  two of the shows each contain two distinct "my hair" references, unrelated musically (these aren't reprises or developments of the same material) and narratively (in both shows, the two instances are sung by different characters).  So, five different shows, but still seven different women — and they are all women, ranging from very-young to approaching-middle-age — singing seven different songs in which they mention their own hair.  (If we leave out "Bang!", it's still five shows, but six women — including two characters from a single show, who are rarely onstage together and largely unaware of each other's existence — singing six different songs.  Their upper age range might run a little lower with Desirée out of the mix, but among the six remaining, one or two might be eyeing middle age from a cautious distance).

I found two of them. ("my hair"s) Now I have to find the other four.

Twenty minutes to arrange
Those bloody awful flowers—
	(Bang!)
Can I get away with more?
	(Bang, bang, bang!)
Then I have to brush my hair,
And that could take me hours...

---

I count no fewer than six additional instances of "my hair" in the canon!  (And at this rate, it's entirely possible that I'm missing more; I just stopped counting at six, and that's not even including the one from "Bang!", cited above).

I ate a piece of Marie Callender's chocolate silk pie for breakfast, and then a leftover Smashburger for lunch. (They were buy one, get one free.) I did a load of laundry and listened to a bunch of Jimmy Buffett music (because it's also Jimmy Buffett's birthday). Then I listened to the 2017 Gyllenhaal/Ashford Sunday in the Park with George, probably for the first time since 2017.

Yesterday, Bernadette ate a pair of my pajama pants. 

Now I'm listening to a 2017 Wilco concert, and plan to take the lovely doggie for a walk afterwards. Then I plan on lighting the menorah. Thank goodness for Amazon for the last-minute candle delivery. I am planning on having Hormel roast beef au jus for dinner, which I figure is festive enough. And another piece of pie. I originally bought this pie for Thanksgiving, but forgot about it until a couple days after the holiday.