spamalot

we are the knights who say "ni!"

opening night at spamalot with tim curry, hank azaria, david hyde pierce, christopher sieber, and my sweetie-wheatie.  one of the perks of having a boyfriend with ties to the theatre community.

okay, granted, we were back row, balcony  but, hey — free tickets!

(last minute, too.  i arrived straight from work, in jeans and a sweatshirt — so underdressed!)

the cast is great, with tim curry as a very solid arthur.  hank azaria gets to do most of the funny stuff that EVERYONE quotes from the movie.  david hyde pierce does a great sir robin, and christopher sieber is just dreamy as galahad (er, dennis). 

the breakout performance in this show is definitely sara ramirez as the lady of the lake.  whereas the men shine as an ensemble, ms. ramirez blows the audience away with her vocals in her four big numbers.  mix all of that together with a slew of contemporary broadway references (phantom, les miz, rent, chicago, fiddler, boy from oz, wicked) and my bet is that you have a record-breaking producers-dethroner on your hands.

a special highlight of opening night was getting to see all the original members of monty python on stage together during the curtain call — and, yes, i do mean all.  after eric idle, the show's author, introduced john cleese, terry gilliam, terry jones and michael palin, a cast member lovingly brought an urn filled (presumably) with the ashes of graham chapman.

good stuff.  go see this show.  i'll be seeing it again (though, hopefully, in a better seat).

dinner with sue

to celebrate my friend sue's six week stint in new haven, connecticut for her role in the upcoming long wharf theatre production of BFE, i took her to a nice restaurant in koreatown, on 32nd and 6th.  i asked her to order, and, although we only had two entrées, we were both completely stuffed, thanks to what sue's friend charity lovingly refers to as all the "satellite dishes." 

our main courses were the hae mul pa jun, a kind of seafood scallion pancacke, and the kalbi, the barbecued beef.  normally, with a larger group, the restaurant would bring out hot coals and we would cook the meat ourselves.  however, because we were only two people, the kalbi was pre-cooked; not as fun, but very tasty, nonetheless.

we spent most of the evening coming up with our dream cast for the live-action version of robotech (macross for all you hard-core geeks out there).  despite the fact that we share the same biases against many hollywood favorites, we actually had a hard time agreeing on our picks.  still, we came up with some pretty good ones.  here are my faves (some of them were split decisions):

• rick hunter - johnny depp/billy crudup
• lisa hayes - kate winslet
• lynn minmei - thandie newton
• lynn kyle - keanu reaves
• roy fokker - hugh jackman/matthew mcconaughey
• breetai - clive owen

if anyone else has any ideas, feel free to chime in (via e-mail, if you have it).