Celebrating Blogging on Closing Night

So before we knew the show was closing we invited several bloggers to the show. It turned out this was the last Broadway performance too.

Mary caputred the closing scene on stage highlighting the Electrician who is going to retire next month.

Sanford's Review

Leveraging the connections within the blogging community - and applying some of the old media techniques (comp tickets to the show), a number of female bloggers - Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen, Mary Hodder of Napsterization, Betsy Devine of Funny Haha, Esme Vos of MuniWireless, Elayne Riggs of Pen-Elayne on the Web, Laurie from The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Suzy Conn of Blogway Baby. The goal - to have female bloggers discuss the show and begin some positive word-of-mouth on the upcoming road tour.

Betsy Divine's Post

Just got home from New York City and the big blogging party after the final Broadway performance of "Little Women." I Flickr-ed the whole thing--so did Mary Hodder

I love Mary's photo of me with Sanford Dickert, so Manhattan including the neon "Celebrity" meme behind us....true for Sanford at least, he was John Kerry's blogging CTO...

Darn, my hair is so flyaway! But let's pretend it's somehow because of the gallons of tears I cried during all the play's sad parts (and some of its very happy parts.)

"Blogway Baby" Suzy Conn

Thanks to Kaliya for setting this up--keep watching for their blog for news of the national tour.
Pen-Elayne Riggs has more notes and photos, as well as the best blogpost title: "Praising the electrician or someone like him."

Little Women On The Blogging Edge!

I had the great pleasure of being invited to and attending a special blogger meeting in New York on Sunday. One of the producers of Little Women, Scott Freiman, and Kaliya Hamlin, a blogger who worked on setting up the Little Womencast blog(see myprevious post invited a group of female and theater bloggers to come and see a matinee of >Little Womenand then have a dinner after. Unlike Blogway Baby, most of the blogs represented were not theater-specific blogs.

Praising The Electrician, Or Someone Like Him

On Sunday I was honored to be among a dozen or so bloggers invited to attend what turned out to be the final performance of the Broadway musical Little Women, starring Sutton Foster (Jo) and Maureen McGovern (Marmee). The news that the show's cancellation had come as quite a surprise to the cast and many producers earlier in the week, so I found this performance to have something of a double meaning, particularly in the second act as the March family tries to cope with the loss of Beth. (I'm sorry, I'm not going to label Beth's death a spoiler; if you have any interest at all in the book or the myriad movies made from it then you already know, and if you didn't know you probably have little desire to peruse this classic anyway.)

From what I could tell squeezed into my seat (the Virginia Theatre is a wee bit unforgiving to large folk) up in nosebleed territory (mezzanine row J, two long flights up), the audience was probably about 90% female, which didn't surprise me at all. Everyone wept as expected in the right places, and the performances were poignant and enthusiastic, even if the adapted material didn't always live up to the actors' talents. Besides Foster, the real standout for me was Danny Gurwin, who played Laurie, and the times the two of them were on stage together were delightful. Best of all, it retained what the point of Little Women had always been for me - the idea of pursuing your dreams, and keeping memories alive, through writing.

One of my favorite bits came at the end, where the cast took their final bows and then Foster, after thanking all their audiences and the folks behind the scenes at the theatre, brought out head electrician Gregory Cap, whose last show this was after a 46-year career in the industry. You don't often see crew members honored like that, and I thought it was a wonderful touch. What a great note to go out on.

After the show, cast recording CDs in hand, we hiked the eight blocks downtown to dinner at Angus McIndoe (right around where you took the Spamalot picture, Cat) and had a chance to chat. I am not exaggerating when I say I was tremendously outclassed by everyone else at dinner. Here are my pictures: