On Saturday, we headed for Times Square in the late morning to see about getting some tickets to see "Speed the Plow", the David Mamet play starring Jeremy Piven, Raúl Esparza, and Elisabeth Moss. We had read online that the show has Student Rush tickets on sale, starting two hours before show time,a dn Suzy's Pace ID would get us two for 26 bucks each. We got to the theatre right around noon, and there were already people in line for student tickets. We had no problem getting ours though, and ended up with tickets about ten rows back on the main floor, though way off to the right side, against the wall. However, as we discovered once we got in there, they were still great seats in general, plus it really seemed to me like the three actors were very good at opening themselves up to the sides, and not just playing to middle of the audience.
The play was fantastic, with Esparza probably being the best of the three. Piven was great, and it was good to see him play a character that wasn't as brash as most of his roles, while still being an arrogant go-getter of a character. Moss was good, and had very strong moments, though she just didn't have as strong a performance as either of the two men; she's great on Mad Men, so I'm inclined to blame the script more than her. Mamet's shows (and movies) tend toward the World of Men, and I wonder just how well he can write a female character... Hmm. But I really enjoy the Mamet dialogue when it's done well, and Esparza and Piven do it well. The plot may be a bit thin, but I certainly didn't care at the time, and though the show was ninety minutes with no breaks (other than two black-outs that were just long enough for set-revolves and costume changes) it really flew by. As I was realizing in the final minutes that the show was wrapping up, I was shocked that it was done already. It really clipped along!
After the bows, Piven announced that Esparza and Moss would be waiting by the main exits with buckets for some sort of Broadway AIDS fundraiser, and they bolted off the stage to man their positions. As we filed out of the theater, I pulled some change and my sole dollar bill out of my pocket, and looked around to see where the actors were. Sadly, the flow of the crowd was forcing us out Esparza's door; no offense to him, but I was hoping to go by Ms. Moss so I could make some sort of Mad Men fanboy comment.
We wandered around Times Square for a little while, then hopped a subway to the Upper West Side to make our dinner reservation at Dovetail.
I had crab ravioli appetizer, and an entree that consisted of a cube of sirloin that was seared on all sides and amazingly uniformly medium rare inside, along with a small square of beef cheek lasagna. While the lasagna was good, if unremarkable, the steak was phenomenal, probably one of the best pieces of beef I've ever had: flavourful, tender, and again, perfectly cooked. I don't recall what Suzy had for an appetizer, but her main course was a duck dish, and the taste I had was very good. We both immediately went for the same desert: Brioche bread pudding with caramel-glazed banana and ice cream with candied bacon. It was really good; chalk up another one for the quest to find restaurants whose desserts live up to their savoury dishes.
Sunday was a crisp but not too cool fall day, and sunny, so we headed over to Central Park for a walk. It's no wonder that there's so much hype about Autumn in New York: It was insanely pretty there with the changing trees and the leaves on the ground, and a very pleasant day to walk around. The park was, of course, a popular spot on a nice fall Sunday afternoon, and there were people and dogs everywhere.
We took a subway to Union Square after our walk and headed to a movie theatre to see "Rachel Getting Married", or at least that was the plan. At about fifteen minutes before the movie started (at 5pm on a Sunday, and it being one a 6 showing of the movie that day) it was sold out. So we went to see "Zack & Miri Make a Porno" instead.
It was pretty funny, an odd combination of the View Askew movies, thanks to Kevin Smith writing and directing, and the Apatow comedies, thanks to Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, and others being present. It was cool to see some of the Askew-niverse people like Jay Mewes and Jeff Anderson playing new roles.
This movie was so very raunchy, as is typical of a Smith comedy; but the biggest change, thanks to this being a movie about people having sex, rather than just talking about it, was that there is a huge amount of nudity in the movie, and a couple of "gross-out" or shock comedy moments that were never really common to his movies. But my biggest complaint is probably the ham-handed way that Smith resolves the romantic plot ... he was reaching a little too hard for the emotional conclusion. Luckily, thanks to some great stuff with Mewes, the comedy returned for the final bits. All-in-all, an ejoyable movie experience.
