Friday was an excellent theater day!!

For starters, the weather in the Big Apple for the whole week has been terrific and Friday was no exception. It felt sooooo good to be out and about.

When the day began I had only two theater events scheduled for the day/evening, one Fringe Festival performance and one Off-Broadway show. I left the apartment around 1:00pm and took the 6 train down to Canal Street and then walked over to Walker Street and located the venue, aptly named “walkerspace,” between Broadway and Church Street. The show was at 2:30 so I had time to wander a bit and people watch.

“Parental Indiscretions” is written and performed by Steve Hayes and Tom Cayler and is about two twin brothers, one gay and one straight, who discover that they might not be brothers after all and how they deal with these revelations about family secrets and deceptions. The actors play many roles and the whole thing is very fast-paced. I liked it, but have to admit that it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. It gets a rating of 3.5 stars out of 5 on the Billi Pod scale.

When the show was over I had an unfilled gap until my second and last scheduled show at 8:00, so I rushed to the subway to see if I could get a ticket to the 4:45pm show “The Fabulous Kane Sisters in Box Office Poison” playing at The Cherry Lane Theater in the West Village. When I got to the theater the ticket-purchase line had already formed so I thought, what the hell, and got in line. I passed the time by playing solitaire on my iPhone. The line got longer and longer. I was able to get a ticket and it turned out that the house was about 98% full.

This is the blurb about the show: “Murder, mayhem and muscular bodies fill the stage as the Fabulous Kane Sisters attempt to solve a mystery and prevent their own murders in this bawdy, burlesque. It’s like a trip through the sewer in a glass bottom boat” and it doesn’t really do the show justice. The Kane sisters are played by the two co-authors, in drag, and is set in a performance space in Pocatello, Idaho, in 1956. The sister are desperate for a gig and accept a booking in this venue even though there has been a series of unsolved murders of previous lead performers. I have to say that this show was, to me, gut-busting funny. It was racy, profane, politically incorrect, and wonderfully performed. The audience was really into the show. It gets a 5 star rating from Billi Pod and I hope it has a life after The Fringe.

When the show was over I had about 90 minutes to kill until my next show at an Off-Broadway venue located on E. 24th Street between Park and Lexington. I decided to take the subway rather than walk. Began listening to the Yankee/Baltimore game with The Moose pitching and it didn’t start off well for the Yankees as they quickly fell behind. I thought it was kinda ironic that my show for the evening was about baseball.

I have described “National Pastime” in a previous post but, briefly, it is about a 1930s radio station, located in a backwater town, that creates a fictional baseball team, The Cougars, who only play against All-Star teams in Europe. The station’s ruse is much more successful than they imagined, but things become really confused when Major League Baseball shows up with a request/demand to play an All-Star game against The Cougars. The show has been performed twice at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown but this is its first performance in New York City. It was funny, well written and very well performed and I liked it a lot.

When the show was over I immediately turned on my trusty Walkman and learned that the Yankee bats finally woke up late in the game and the Bombers won 9-4 although The Moose didn’t get the win. At this point every game is a must-win.

Tomorrow will be something kinda different. I plan it to be a movie day. I want to see “Tropic Thunder” and “The Rocker” and then come back to the apartment to watch the Yankee/Baltimore game at night because I want to see Carl Pavano pitch his first game of the season. If you are a baseball fan you know the Pavano saga. The local newspapers have branded Pavano as ...”perhaps the biggest bust in Yankees’ franchise history considering he has worked only 19 games for the $40 million bestowed on him before the 2005 season.” So, I gotta watch this game even if it is a Saturday night in The Big Apple. Hell, being retired means that every night is a Saturday night for me.

I will bring my Fringe Festival report and ratings up-to-date tomorrow, I promise.

Go Yankees!!

Billi Pod
wanjr@aol.com