(no subject)

[skygiants]

Yesterday sovay and I went to go see the National Yiddish Folksbiene Theater's Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish translation at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC, which is why I am currently on an early-morning train back to Boston.

sovay already did a really good write-up that teases out most of the things I caught about the translation to-and-from Yiddish plus some things I didn't, so I'm just going to add a few more production notes:

- Chava was about a foot shorter than the actresses playing her two elder siblings and had a high adorable voice and it very effectively gave the impression that she was an ABSOLUTE BABY, which makes everything with her even sadder
- Fyedka was UNEXPECTEDLY JACKED, which was extremely noticeable because someone made the hilarious decision to costume him in a skintight red shirt and jaunty red beret
- (sovay, when I mentioned this during intermission: yes, well, then there's Perchik, who's just costumed like a contemporary NYU student
me: to be fair, the standard student socialist outfit really hasn't changed that much in the past hundred years)
- I think the relative set simplicity made the strength of the dancing stand out that much more; Tevye, especially, just had this constant energy as he moved through the empty space that powered the entire production
- Lauren Jean Thomas as the Fiddler was uncomfortably attractive for a metaphorical representation of Orthodox Jewish mores and culture in a rapidly changing world

During this trip I also had dinner with gramarye1971, aberration, my old roommate Thomas, and his mother, with a guest appearance by newredshoes; a ferry ride and brunch with my parents; a brief visit as documented by sovay to a pickle festival where I did not manage to eat pickle ice cream OR a pickle macaron; dinner with sovay and obopolsk; and a trip to the Strand. You'd think I could manage to make it literally 36 hours in NYC without buying more books than is wise, AND YET.

Comments

[minutia_r]

Aww, man, Mr. R is in New York for a few more hours and he'd been thinking of going to the pickle festival, but he didn't have anyone to go with.

[skygiants]

Aw, that's too bad, he could have joined us! (Though we only made it for the last 15 minutes, and the line was already so long for fried pickles that they could not accommodate us!)

[larryhammer]

You'd think I could manage to make it literally 36 hours in NYC without buying more books than is wise, AND YET

That's WAY too much time to limit potential bookness.

[skygiants]

I'd never found the cheap vintage mass-market section in the basement of the Strand before and I one hundred percent blame sovay for this discovery.

[dhampyresa]

What books did you buy?

[skygiants]

A replacement for my disintegrated copy of Murder Must Advertise, an unfamiliar pulp gothic whose name and author I do not remember but whose back copy prominently featured identical twins, a book of Houdini's collected writings on How To Successfully Commit Crimes, and a turn-of-the-century novel called American Wives and English Husbands which I bought one hundred percent because of the adorable front-copy inscription from a 1902 child to his parents.

[gramarye1971]

You'd think I could manage to make it literally 36 hours in NYC without buying more books than is wise, AND YET.

... I mean, in about 48 hours in NYC that same weekend, most of which I spent playing mahjong, I still managed to buy a near-complete used set of Naoki Urasawa's Pluto manga. (7 of 8 volumes for $20! Bookoff is so dangerous.)

[skygiants]

...I mean, that's a find that nobody could walk away from. >.>

[obopolsk]

I am honestly still trying to decide whether I liked the pickle ice cream.