Hotel:
- Milford Plaza Link to my review
Restaurants:
- Pierre Au Tunnel Link to my review
- 21 Club Link to my review
- Blue Fin
- Theatre: Glass Menagerie
New York City (March 2005)
Coming Soon!
Hotel:
Hotel:
Theatre: The Glass Menagerie at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre (March 2005)
The Glass Menagerie is a five-character memory play by Tennessee Williams
that premiered in 1944 and catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame.
The play has strong autobiographical elements, featuring characters
based on Williams himself, his histrionic mother, and his mentally
fragile sister Rose. In writing the play, Williams drew on an earlier
short story, as well as a screenplay he had written under the title of The Gentleman Caller.
The play premiered in Chicago in 1944. After a shaky start, it was championed by Chicago critics, whose enthusiasm helped build audiences so the producers could move the play to Broadway where it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1945. The Glass Menagerie was Williams's first successful play; he went on to become one of America's most highly regarded playwrights.
The play is introduced to the audience by Tom, the narrator and protagonist, as a memory play based on his recollection of his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. Because the play is based on memory, Tom cautions the audience that what they see may not be precisely what happened.
Amanda Wingfield, a faded Southern belle of middle age, shares a dingy St. Louis apartment with her son Tom, in his early twenties, and his slightly older sister, Laura. Although she is a survivor and a pragmatist, Amanda yearns for the comforts and admiration she remembers from her days as a fêted debutante. She worries especially about the future of her daughter Laura, a young woman with a limp (an aftereffect of a bout of polio) and a tremulous insecurity about the outside world. Tom works in a shoe warehouse doing his best to support the family. He chafes under the banality and boredom of everyday life and struggles to write, while spending much of his spare time going to the movies — or so he says — at all hours of the night.
Amanda is obsessed with finding a suitor (or, as she puts it, a "gentleman caller") for Laura, whose crippling shyness has led her to drop out of both high school and a subsequent secretarial course, and who spends much of her time polishing and arranging her collection of little glass animals. Pressured by his mother to help find a caller for Laura, Tom invites an acquaintance from work named Jim home for dinner.
The delighted Amanda spruces up the apartment, prepares a special dinner, and converses coquettishly with Jim, almost reliving her youth when she had an abundance of suitors calling on her. Laura discovers that Jim is the boy she was attracted to in high school and has often thought of since — though the relationship between the shy Laura and the "most likely to succeed" Jim was never more than a distant, teasing acquaintanceship. Initially, Laura is so overcome by shyness that she is unable to join the others at dinner, and she claims to be ill. After dinner, however, Jim and Laura are left alone by candlelight in the living room, waiting for the electricity to be restored. (Tom has not paid the power bill, which hints to the audience that he is banking the bill money and preparing to leave the household.) As the evening progresses, Jim recognizes Laura's feelings of inferiority and encourages her to think better of herself. He and Laura share a quiet dance, in which he accidentally brushes against her glass menagerie, knocking a glass unicorn to the floor and breaking off its horn. Jim then compliments Laura and kisses her. After Jim reveals that he is already engaged to be married, Laura asks him to take the broken unicorn as a gift and he then leaves. When Amanda learns that Jim is to be married, she turns her anger upon Tom and cruelly lashes out at him — although Tom did not know that Jim was engaged, and Amanda knows this.
As Tom speaks at the end of the play, he says that he left home soon afterward and never returned. In Tom's final speech, he bids farewell to his mother and sister, and asks Laura to blow out the candles as the play ends.
March 22, 2005, to July 3, 2005, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre
The play premiered in Chicago in 1944. After a shaky start, it was championed by Chicago critics, whose enthusiasm helped build audiences so the producers could move the play to Broadway where it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1945. The Glass Menagerie was Williams's first successful play; he went on to become one of America's most highly regarded playwrights.
The play is introduced to the audience by Tom, the narrator and protagonist, as a memory play based on his recollection of his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. Because the play is based on memory, Tom cautions the audience that what they see may not be precisely what happened.
Amanda Wingfield, a faded Southern belle of middle age, shares a dingy St. Louis apartment with her son Tom, in his early twenties, and his slightly older sister, Laura. Although she is a survivor and a pragmatist, Amanda yearns for the comforts and admiration she remembers from her days as a fêted debutante. She worries especially about the future of her daughter Laura, a young woman with a limp (an aftereffect of a bout of polio) and a tremulous insecurity about the outside world. Tom works in a shoe warehouse doing his best to support the family. He chafes under the banality and boredom of everyday life and struggles to write, while spending much of his spare time going to the movies — or so he says — at all hours of the night.
Amanda is obsessed with finding a suitor (or, as she puts it, a "gentleman caller") for Laura, whose crippling shyness has led her to drop out of both high school and a subsequent secretarial course, and who spends much of her time polishing and arranging her collection of little glass animals. Pressured by his mother to help find a caller for Laura, Tom invites an acquaintance from work named Jim home for dinner.
The delighted Amanda spruces up the apartment, prepares a special dinner, and converses coquettishly with Jim, almost reliving her youth when she had an abundance of suitors calling on her. Laura discovers that Jim is the boy she was attracted to in high school and has often thought of since — though the relationship between the shy Laura and the "most likely to succeed" Jim was never more than a distant, teasing acquaintanceship. Initially, Laura is so overcome by shyness that she is unable to join the others at dinner, and she claims to be ill. After dinner, however, Jim and Laura are left alone by candlelight in the living room, waiting for the electricity to be restored. (Tom has not paid the power bill, which hints to the audience that he is banking the bill money and preparing to leave the household.) As the evening progresses, Jim recognizes Laura's feelings of inferiority and encourages her to think better of herself. He and Laura share a quiet dance, in which he accidentally brushes against her glass menagerie, knocking a glass unicorn to the floor and breaking off its horn. Jim then compliments Laura and kisses her. After Jim reveals that he is already engaged to be married, Laura asks him to take the broken unicorn as a gift and he then leaves. When Amanda learns that Jim is to be married, she turns her anger upon Tom and cruelly lashes out at him — although Tom did not know that Jim was engaged, and Amanda knows this.
As Tom speaks at the end of the play, he says that he left home soon afterward and never returned. In Tom's final speech, he bids farewell to his mother and sister, and asks Laura to blow out the candles as the play ends.
March 22, 2005, to July 3, 2005, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre
- Jessica Lange as Amanda Wingfield
- Josh Lucas as Jim O'Connor
- Sarah Paulson as Laura Wingfield
- Christian Slater as Tom Wingfield
New York City: 21 Club (March 2005)
My spouse and I dined at 21 Club in March 2005. This seemed like our first "fine dining" experience in New York City. We distinctly remember the beef tartare with green peppercorns - they warned us that it would be spicy!! The 21 Club, often simply 21, is an American traditional cuisine restaurant and former prohibition-era speakeasy. The Bar Room includes a restaurant, a lounge and, as the name implies, a bar. The walls and ceiling of the Bar Room are covered with antique toys and sports memorabilia donated by famous patrons. Perhaps the most famous feature of 21 is the line of painted cast iron lawn jockey statues which adorns the balcony above the entrance. In the 1930s, some of the affluent customers of the bar began to show their appreciation by presenting 21 with jockeys painted to represent the racing colors of the stables they owned. There are 33 jockeys on the exterior of the building, and 2 more inside the doors. The first version of the club opened in Greenwich Village in 1922, run by cousins Jack Kreindler and Charlie Berns. It was originally a small speakeasy known as the Red Head. In 1925 the location was moved to a basement on Washington Place and its name was changed to Fronton. The following year it moved uptown to 42 West 49th Street, changed its name to the Puncheon Club, and became much more exclusive. In 1929, to make way for the construction of Rockefeller Center, the club moved to its current location and changed its name to "Jack and Charlie's 21". On January 24, 2009, it ended its long-standing policy of requiring men to wear ties at dinner. However, all other regulations (including wearing a jacket) still stand.
New York City: Pierre Au Tunnel (March 2005)
Pierre Au Tunnel is located in Midtown Manhattan and serves bistro and French cuisine. Pierre Au Tunnel accepts advance reservations and serves alcohol. Owned by Jacqueline and Jean-Claude Lincy, 41-year-old Pierre au Tunnel has a warm, inviting aura. You pass through the spacious bar with several tables along one wall en route to the dining room, which has brick walls on one side, stucco on another, timbered beams overhead, red banquettes and a fireplace adorned with a giant stag's head. The small French women waitresses who seem to have been here since the Eisenhower Administration appear timeless. They go about their ministrations with alacrity, although the pace can be slow sometimes at dinner. This restaurant has an attractive, low-key setting with banquettes and bar in the smaller front room and well-spaced tables in the back A restaurant as old as Pierre au Tunnel presumably has had time to stock a varied wine cellar. Pierre au Tunnel, while occasionally inconsistent in its food, is unfailingly consistent in its nostalgic charms. The ships may no longer come to the West Side, but restaurants like this still fly the flag.
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