Broadway

Today we were up at the crack of dawn (okay, 8 AM) in order to get over to Times Square and join the line for the thousands of discounted theatre tickets sold each morning by the famous TKTS booth.  Tickets are for performances on the day of purchase only and can be up to 50% less than the regular price.  We really wanted to see the winner of the 2013 Best Musical Tony award, Kinky Boots - mainly due to the fact that the real-life Kinky Boot factory was actually situated in the small village I grew up in, not in Northampton, as the musical and 2005 movie would have you believe - although the movie does show a few shots of our famous Saxon church.  So, although we were intrigued by the prospect of seeing a Broadway musical based on a story from my mundane little village, the recent armful of Tony awards it received have pushed the ticket prices out of our reach ($hundreds) and have driven away the need for any discounts, such is its popularity at the moment.

Tickets for last year's Best Musical Tony award winner, however, were within our budget and, just hours before the show started, we bagged two seats in the orchestra stalls for Once.  Despite having heard good things and seeing a few posters around the subway, we really had no idea what we were about to see.  As soon as we stepped inside the theatre, most of the cast were up on stage singing what sounded like Irish folk songs, all stood around inside a pub - in fact they were actually selling drinks from the "bar" to the audience who could hop up on stage and mingle with the performers as the rest of us took our seats.  The cast took it in turns to play songs, with the actors themselves playing the instruments while dancing and skipping around.  Eventually, the audience members were subtly ushered offstage to their seats before one of the actors called over to a shy looking chap standing in the corner of the pub with a battered guitar slung over his shoulder.  'We haven't heard anything from you yet laddy!' his thick Irish accent leaving no doubt as to where this was going to be set.  The "laddy" slings up his guitar, the house lights go down, and the show begins.  

The next two hours were filled with some of the most beautiful, heart wrenching musical performances I have ever witnessed - lump in throat, goosebump inducing type stuff.  The story focuses on a young disillusioned singer songwriter from Dublin who finds new inspiration in a local Czech immigrant girl, also a musician and songwriter.  So along with their songs of heartbreak and despair, the story is interwoven with both Irish and Czech folk music, all performed live on stage by the rest of the Irish and Czech characters.

If you get a chance to see this in New York or London before it ends, we highly recommend it - the music was so good it could stand up as an album in its own right, the choreography and stage direction was spot on, almost like watching a movie cut from one scene to the next, yet the scenery didn't change once, and the touches of comedy were well timed and well executed without turning the whole thing into a slushy rom-com.

A couple of songs, courtesy of Youtube: