{"id":1157,"date":"2009-12-25T04:47:28","date_gmt":"2009-12-25T08:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/?p=1157"},"modified":"2009-12-25T04:47:28","modified_gmt":"2009-12-25T08:47:28","slug":"rebeck-understudy-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/2009\/12\/25\/rebeck-understudy-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Nights of Big Apple Fun"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve ever fantasized about a career in the theater, you owe it to yourself to see playwright Theresa Rebeck’s The Understudy <\/em>on Broadway. Actually, anybody who needs or wants a good laugh should see it. Hubby Mark and I caught it Wednesday night and loved its uproarious depiction of the theater world’s underbelly.<\/p>\n

This Roundabout Theatre<\/a> production is playing through January 17, 2010 at the Laura Pels Theatre<\/a>. (It’s a limited engagement because the theater is booked after that date, and rumor has it that its great Broadway cast may be taking it on the road.)<\/p>\n

Speaking of the cast, Justin Kirk (of Weeds<\/em> fame) plays the title role. And while I really like him in Weeds<\/em>, I had no idea what a wonderful comedic actor he is until I saw him in The Understudy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Mark and I were already huge fans of co-star Julie White, who plays the stage manager. (We’d seen her in The Little Dog Laughed,<\/em> for which she won well-deserved Tony and Obie Awards.) <\/p>\n

Last, but certainly not least, is co-star Mark-Paul Gosselaar, well known to fans of Raising The Bar,<\/em> NYPD Blue,<\/em> and Saved By The Bell<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We’d planned to eat dinner after the show at our favorite Mexican restaurant, Tolache<\/a>, which I wrote about in my Happy Birthday To Me<\/a> post. But it was so damn cold out, that the thought of walking even a few measly blocks just wasn’t … well … appetizing. So we decided to give the restaurant next door a try.<\/p>\n

Turns out it was a terrific decision. Indian food’s my favorite cuisine and the large and lovely Utsav is Indian food at its finest.<\/a> Best of all, when you ask for extra spicy, you actually get extra spicy.<\/p>\n

Okay, that was last night. But I never got a chance to post about our visit last weekend to the Comix Comedy Club.<\/a> (New York City has lots of clubs featuring standup comedy, but Comix is quickly becoming a favorite.)<\/p>\n

The reason for our latest Comix visit was headliner Kevin Pollak<\/a>. After decades of seeing his comedy and impersonations on TV shows like The Tonight Show<\/em>, we were eager to see him live. Wow! He was hilarious, and his impersonations of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, William Shatner, Robert De Niro, and Christopher Walken were letter perfect.<\/p>\n

The two warm-up acts, comedians Steve Patterson<\/a> and Jon Fisch<\/a>, were also good, especially Canadian Steve Patterson, whose dry delivery and idiosyncratic point of view were refreshingly funny.<\/p>\n

After the show we had drinks at nearby Scarpetta, an Italian restaurant<\/a> housed in a Greek revival townhouse. Its bar is lively and comfortable, and we would have tried its well-reviewed food<\/a>, had we not already eaten burgers at Comix. Next time!<\/p>\n

(Note to the FTC, which recently passed some annoying blogger regulations<\/a>: I was neither paid nor comped for these reviews. Trust me, we spent way too much money on both nights.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve ever fantasized about a career in the theater, you owe it to yourself to see playwright Theresa Rebeck’s The Understudy on Broadway. Actually, anybody who needs or wants a good laugh should see it. Hubby Mark and I caught it Wednesday night and loved its uproarious depiction of the theater world’s underbelly. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[178,870,75,72,869,887,868],"tags":[874,881,886,880,884,877,876,882,888,878,731,872,885,883,875,871,879],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":70,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1228,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions\/1228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}