I went to Kearny / Hoboken / Manhattan last weekend to see a show and to visit relatives.

The hotel I stayed at, a new Hampton Inn in Harrison overlooking the Passaic River, had a shuttle van pick me up at the Newark train station.

I fiddle-faddled around too long with a wireless Internet connection in the hotel that wasn't working properly and it got too late to walk to my sister's house in Kearny, then I missed the bus and so I took a cab.

We went to the Thistle Restaurant which I thought was going to be one of the Scotch restaurants in Kearny; it's turned into a seafood restaurant and was very good.

I had a particularly good cream of potato soup and fish and chips and my sister had  one of the daily specials, seared salmon with asparagus and toasted leek strips.

We then took a cab to the Harrison Tube station [where I got out and my sister went on to a beauty parlor].  

It was 19 minutes by Tube to the World Trade Center. It's still an odd feeling as you hit daylight 70 feet below ground level. Then walked over  to the East River and the South Street seaport Museum where I visited three exhibits: Nieuw Amsterdam: Dutch New York, which was interesting but very small;  Monarchs of the Sea: Celebrating the Ocean Liner Era, a good survey of the major trans-Atlantic liners from 1900 to 1960;  and Van Ryper: A World of Ships in Miniature a small exhibit on a company from the 1930s and 1940s that began making models of ocean liners for promotional items and then became a major modelling company. [In the Great Depression year of 1933, Charles K. Van Riper founded a small company to make, as he put it, “small, inexpensive models of great ships.” The first models in the Van Ryper series appealed to the general public as well as to the shipping trades. Today Van Ryper models are prized collectibles, a fleet unto themselves of fine ships, their owners and their nations. In this exhibition, they sail once more!]

While walking over to the sailing ships anchored in the East River I passed by the downtown location of TKTS, the one that used to be in the World Trade Center, at the corner of John Street and Water Street and remembered that this is the location where you can get tickets for matinees the day in advance, something you can't do at the Times Square office.  I didn't need a half priced ticket because I already had a ticket for a show that night.

I took the train uptown to Yorkville to have supper at the Hungarian Cafe Mocca. At first I thought it was a bad mistake: the store front was empty and a sign directed you to a new location, 2 blocks down Second Avenue  where the sign said "Mocca Italian-Hungarian Restaurant".  I was expecting a disappointment, but I was wrong. There are many Italian and American items on the menu but there also were over a dozen Hungarian, or at least Mitteluropäisch, items available. I had goulasch soup, chicken paprikas and palatschinken for dessert. The teas was included with he meal.

I began walking downtown on Madison Avenue past these flower box lamp posts but it was cutting things a little  close and had to rush downtown on a train to midtown for the play. 

Musicals Tonight usually produces revivals of shows that haven't been done for 50 or 60 years, from the 1920s and earlier. This one was perhaps the "newest" show they've ever done, from the 1960s -- but the first time it was ever revived since it closed.

I heard the producer commenting that he was contractually obligated to advertise the show as "The High Life" and not use its original title "The Gay Life". I thought New Yorkers were sophisticated enough to know that "gay" has many meanings; maybe they aren't that sophisticated.

I've never seen the show [as I said, I think its never been revived and so no one has ever seen it] but I liked the music on the cast recording and I also like plays by Arthur Schnitzler on whose "Anatol" series the musical is based. 

I had read that one reason the show failed in the 60s [it ran about 100 performances] was because the star Walter Chiari was Italian and couldn't speak English -- and also couldn't speak memorized English without a heavy accent. The accent was so heavy that - it was claimed - the audience couldn't understand him.  I know that on the recording I have a hard time understanding the lyrics when he sings and I can't even easily understand  the little bit of dialogue that he speaks.

In Musicals Tonight's version there was - as always - no scenery, simple props, an orchestra reduced to a piano, excellent singers and actors, and unamplified singing.

Anatol was played as a sophisticated and bored roue - the way he was in the plays - but still personable. The other highlight was an actress who played three of the "other women" in Anatol's sex life [a married woman, a gypsy spit fire, and a French magician's assistant]. Here's a list of the show's numbers.

The whole show as very well done and the only thing that was missing was a full version of "O, Mein Liebchen" a Viennese waltz number that in the original show must have been a big production number with ballroom dancing. In this version it was just pleasant with a piano and a half dozen people on a small stage. But still everything else was beyond good.

The house was about 90% sold out with more old people than young  people. Down below is an extract from a review of the show; unfortunately these shows run only two weeks and it's closed already. The next show, which I won't be able to see,  is Good News beginning November 2 and if you're near Manhattan, try and go see it.

The next morning I spent some time looking out the hotel window and seeing the Passaic River instead of the Hudson River and 19th Century railroad bridges instead of the Manhattan skyline that I usually do. [There were no discount rates at the hotels in Jersey City.]

One of my cousins came over and we drove to Hoboken; we walked a while, then went to the Cafe Mola for chai; then walked a lot, partially through Stevens. We passed by St Matthäus Evangelische Lutherische Kirche "Errichtet 1877" on River Street, one of the few reminders of Hoboken's German past, and then had a late lunch at the Cuban restaurant, La Isla [in spite of its name, Cuban not Puerto Rican] on Washington near 2nd Street for chicken croquettes and Cuban sandwiches.

I was driven back to the Newark train station where I saw a regular Washington train pulling out of the station as we were pulling in. I noticed that a New York Florida train was due in within 10 minutes, showed my incorrect ticket for the incorrect class on the incorrect train to  the Pullman conductor and was told I could get on. After the train pulled out, the railroad conductor came through and said I had to get off at Philadelphia. Then he changed his mind so I stayed on all the way to DC.



Review   Based on Arthur Schnitzler's popular 1893 play, Anatol, The Gay Life lasted a mere three months on Broadway, despite the presence of Barbara Cook, Jules Munchin and Tony-nominated Elizabeth Allen. Some say the heavily-accented Italian film actor Walter Chiari, making his Broadway and musical comedy debut, was not the best choice for the leading role, and with so many top-flight and/or star-driven musicals around at the time, The Gay Life, despite a charming score and a funny book, was lost among the competition.

The lady-loving playboy Anatol (Paul Jason Green) has decided he's ready for a wife. ("I'm finished with love. I'm going to get married.") His best friend Max (Doug Shapiro) has a younger sister, Liesl (Jenni Barber) who has always had a crush on him an seems the perfect candidate. But it's not until the innocent frau stands up for herself and demands fidelity from her fiance' that Anatol truly begins to love and respect her.

Though the score produced no hit songs, it's a perfectly charming mixture of traditional Broadway and operetta. The book and lyrics are often quite clever and sentimental without getting syrupy.

In the leading roles, Paul Jason Green has a pleasant light baritone and a nice, laid-back manner as the young cad, Anatol. Jenni Barber has a lovely traditional Broadway soprano and a charming humor as the ingenue trying to be seen as a woman. Doug Shapiro, in the juicy role of Max, get the funniest lines and delivers them with cracker-jack timing. His rich singing voice is featured in some of the score's cleverest numbers. As a variety of Anatol's lovers, Barbara McCulloh is a delicious vixen. (Gentlemen -- if you sit on the aisle, watch out for her!)

Thomas Mills, who has been directing for Musicals Tonight! since the company's inception, stages the show with his usual brisk tempo and straightforward style, giving the audience a sense of what the show could be like in a full production. The chorus sounds terrific under music director James Stenborg.