Good show, good run, good visit to my hometown

Scene from "Falsettos" on Broadway, with Andrew Rannells in hospital bed

Tradition, tradition...

Facebook was kind enough to send me a memory from the New York visit that Katie and I had two years ago when we saw the wonderful and bubbly "On the Town." It started almost the same way as our trip earlier this week:

"Drove in on Saturday and got a spot good for the two days we needed. Happy feeling." Just replace Saturday with Monday and you get the same thing.

This year's winter pick, "Falsettos," was a different kind of show. A comedy and a drama at once, it is a revival of a 1992 play by William Finn and James Lapine, the creators of Spelling Bee, which originated in Great Barrington.

The play about two gay Jewish men and their extended family starts out at a fast, funny clip, then takes a turn in the second act as one gets the mysterious illness afflicting gay men at the time of the second act, 1981. Writing in the New York Times, Charles Isherwood called it "exhilarating and devastating." You could hear a lot of laughter at the beginning and a lot of sniffling at the end.

I would recommend seeing it but the limited run ends in a week. Check out this feature in Playbill.com to hear a medley. It was interesting to see Andrew Rannells, who we saw as the Elder Price in The Book of Mormon, in the more nuanced role of Whizzer to Christian Borle's Marvin.

Nice place for a run

It was our second year staying at an Airbnb in the Lower East Side. With its scattering of overgrown community gardens, it is a different world. Katie drove in all the way, and, as an honorary New Yorker, successfully turned on her parking radar and found a spot in walking distance of our place on 9th street off Avenue C.

Due to street cleaning from 11 a.m. to 12:30 on Tuesday, someone would have to sit in the car and move out for the street cleaner, a New York routine in which I delight. Then the spot would be "good for tomorrow," meaning that we wouldn't have to sit in it or move it on Wednesday before our checkout.

Monday night after unpacking, we wandered around in some of my old stomping grounds in the West Village, ate dinner at a tapas restaurant and found dessert at a nearby patisserie. Being an old(er) person, the next day I woke up early and went for a run. Our place was conveniently located across the street from 9th Street Espresso, so I got up and got a coffee before heading the couple of blocks over to East River Park.

After doing the hilly Hot Chocolate 5K last month, I had an easy time jogging under the Williamsburg Bridge about three miles on the flat pathway with the beautiful views of the river. I feel so much better about everything when I can run without pain.

I made it to the car on time and got so engrossed in talking to a friend on the phone that I didn't notice that the street cleaner had pulled up behind me. The driver started honking. The idea is to pull out, wait for the street cleaner to pass, and then back in. But a car had pulled even with me and I couldn't get back in. Parking panic ensued. I zoomed around the block and got back in the space. But you still have to wait the whole time, so Katie came and took my place while I took a shower.

We had what my father called "free time" before meeting for dinner and going to the show. We were a little disappointed afterwards that Rannells didn't come to the stage door with some of the other performers, but we got over it with cheesecake afterwards.