Pbenjay's Blog

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New York City has been called many things; The Big Apple, The Capitol of the World and is described in the most eloquent of terms, AND I call it a Cultural Cafeteria – a phrase that came to me a couple of weeks ago after we saw two movies that hadn’t been released yet and went to a Judy Collins Concert held in the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art all in one week. And that’s only an itsy-bitsy smidgen of what goes on every night in Manhattan.  It is really mind-boggling!

Here’s a random sampling:  The opera, Das Rheingold opened at The Metropolitan Opera.  The play, Brief Encounters, a British-born production played at Studio 54, The Joyce Theater featured the Batsheva Dance Company, The New York City Ballet Company performed Barber Violin Concerto and Opus 19/The Dreamer.

Angels in America, first American revival of Tony Kushner‘s masterpiece is in previews at The Signature Theater, the Film Forum is showing The Bridge Over the River Kwai and it doesn’t end there.  Well anyway, you get the picture!

First we saw You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, the latest Woody Allen film – it was good, I liked it and I haven’t cared for some of his more recent movies.  I think it was good that he wasn’t in it and it was very different from his earlier movies which were all about Jewish angst and Manhattan.

Then the next night we saw Jack Goes Boating and this WAS shot in real-time, I swear.  Very very slow.  It had its poignant moments and I always like to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman although this character was particularly sloppy, fat and very unkempt.  I wish he would lose some weight.

The next night it was Judy Collins in Concert – the venue was the Temple of Dendur in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What a place! What a voice! What a body! Judy is a wonder, she is 71 years old!!! Her range of octaves is phenomenal, her figure slim and her voice beautiful.  We were crying when she sang Both Sides Now– the nostalgia swept thru the mostly baby boomer-semi-hippie crowd.  We all had memories associated with that lush love song.  Her show was full of glorious praise for her now-hometown, New York City and peppered with quips, anecdotes and self-deprecating remarks-she was really funny.  She ended her show (which ran over in time) with a heart-wrenching rendition of Bring in the Clowns which brought the 200+ audience to its feet clapping and clapping and clapping.

Special for me was the fact that I, an adopted New Yorker,  was sitting in the Temple of Dendur attending an evening concert.  So many nights as Peter and I drove through the Central Park transverse we would see crowds in the Temple and wonder what was going on there after hours and how come we never knew!

What a night! What a week! I LOVE NEW YORK!