As the owners of Chelsea Pines Inn, the most popular LGBT hotel in New York City, it behooved us to do something especially gay on Gay Pride Sunday this year. How to celebrate? Marching in the parade? Great, but done that many times. Dancing on the pier? Maybe 20 years ago. In truth, we had already decided several weeks ago where we would be on June 29: at the final performance of the amazing new production of Sunday in the Park with George, the classic Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical that in any other season would have trumped the Tony Awards, but with the last-minute arrivals of Gypsy and South Pacific, unfairly faded into the background and walked away empty-handed on Tony night. Don't get me wrong: the latter two shows deserve tremendous praise for their accomplishments, but it was a shame that the wonder that is Sunday has received but two Tony awards ever (scenic and lighting design for the original production, richly deserved), and not a single one for its creators or stars (Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin in 1984, Genna Russell and Daniel Evans in 2008). The best score of 1984 was judged to be Jerry Herman's La Cage aux Folles...don't get me started. Anyway, Steve's work has been iconically gay for decades, and who wouldn't want to be at a closing performance of one of his shows? We were so there!
Somehow we managed to land great seats (8th row, just on the side aisle), particularly lucky as we saw the long line of people begging for cancellations. Just as the lights went down, and a roar went up as this landmark show began its last performance, Mr. Sondheim slipped into his seat just across the aisle from us. Very cool. When I first met him many years ago, as concert producer/charter member of the NYC Gay Men's Chorus and for our Sondheim tribute evening, he had specifically asked for seats in the back of the house, because he wanted the audience to watch the show, and not watch him watching the show. Sadly, he's right. It was tough not to look over periodically to see how he was enjoying his own work, in the hands of this tremendously talented company, and I'm glad to report he seemed quite happy, applauding enthusiastically at the end of each number. The man has great talent and great taste.
I was pretty teary during Daniel Evans' heartfelt "Finishing the Hat" and was awash through his "We Do Not Belong Together" with Genna, Mary Beth Peil's moving rendition of "Beautiful" (why have I always thought it was called "Changing'?), and of course the first act finale of "Sunday". I cried all during the second half of Act Two, from Genna's gorgeous "Children and Art" through the very last moment, when I was sobbing (yes, I looked across to Steve, and he was sobbing too). As it was the last performance, and the audience had been hyped from the first moment, Daniel, Genna and company (which included the remarkable pop/jazz singer Jessica Molaskey) had to re-time their movements as the audience responded to the emotion of the moment over and over again. In its final moments, when the company is singing "Sunday" for one last glorious time, Genna was crying so hard that she was practically unable to sing her last solo line ("In our perfect park"), and Daniel was equally overwhelmed as he turned upstage and the entire company bowed to him one final time. As Genna/Dot floated off the stage, the roaring in the theatre was such that Daniel had to hold up his hand to the audience so that he could deliver his final line ("White: a blank page or canvas..."), his face wreathed in smiles and tears. As I looked across the aisle, Steve had characteristically left his seat, both in an effort to be backstage to congratulate the cast and to not be noticed by the audience. The man who has changed the face of the American musical theatre forever (no, as he put it in his speech read by Mandy at the Tony Awards this month, not single-handedly, but in collaboration with some of the theatre's greatest creative minds) had indeed been noticed; if not in person, as is his wont, but through the creation of a work of art that inexplicably moves us in ways that only great art can.
From the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous: to cap off our own Gay Pride celebration, we went downtown to Joe's Pub for an hour of outrageousness with Alec Mapa, the actor/standup comic who graces a moment or two on "Ugly Betty" and whose LOGO-TV special has been running for years (enough already, LOGO, time for a new special!) Billing himself as "America's Gaysian Sweetheart," Alec kept us convulsed by hitting all the targets: gay travel (his recounting of being a guest artist with both Rosie's cruises and an Atlantis cruise that also featured Debbie Reynolds and Charo were priceless), gay sex (his explanation of how he knows someone is a rice queen cuts right to the bone, as it were), and gay marriage, where he ends with an unexpectedly touching account of his own relationship was lovely. His outfit (very Project Runway, in a Catholic little-boys-school fashion, complete with school tie) was a winner (great legs, Alec), and when he describes the sex with his lover (howling like two cats having sex) we howled too!
We left the theatre, happy and exhausted, and a little sad that we had missed the fireworks across town at the pier. But no, we were in luck: the fireworks had just started, and as we crossed 8th Street going west, we could see them just above the trees and tall buildings. We stopped to marvel at them, and a young woman stopped with us, enjoying them but confused. "Why are there fireworks tonight?" she asked us. "It's Gay Pride night!" we answered in unison.
And for us, it really was. Thanks, Steve, and thanks, Alec.
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