Once, A New Musical

Fuck it. I'm going out of order. I'm a few shows behind, but I'm going to jump to today's because I want to talk about it while it's still fresh. Not that I have any expectation that it's going to slip from my mind that soon. It's just that it was so, so good.

I didn't see the movie Once in the theater. For some reason I didn't expect to like it very much in spite of all the good buzz. But when I finally did see it, I thought it was a wonderful movie--warm and sweet and tender, if a little thin. I'm going to go ahead and say that the stage version is incredibly faithful to the movie, but if anything, the emotions have been refined and this boy meets girl story maintains the intimacy and realness of the movie while somehow blowing the emotions up bigger than life. It's really just a love story between two people and their music and how their love for each other may not be strong enough to overcome life's complications, but at the very least, it strengthens their songs.

As soon as you enter the theater, the bulk of the cast is already on the stage which is not only designed to look like a bar but is actually a fully functional one. Audience members are invited to head on stage and grab a drink before the show and during intermission. And the ten or so cast members up there perform music together, singing and playing their instruments straight through until ever so subtly, the show itself begins. Steve Kazee as the guy (the guy and girl aren't given names and somehow this doesn't feel gimmicky) performs a song as a busker. And then in a smoky mirror at the back of the stage, you catch sight of Cristin Milioti as the girl, awestruck in dusty lighting. I wish I could say why I teared up at that moment, but I can't quite place it. It's simply one of those rare moments when everything seems perfectly aligned--actor, set, lighting, song. And the simplicity of it combined with this beautiful, dreamlike transition to the world of the show is complete. So before the two leads in this everyday tragedy have spoken to each other, I was already misty. A feeling that didn't go away for the duration of the show.

Milioti and Kazee are fantastic. He plays the guitar; she the piano. Her accent is Czech; his is Irish. Between them, they carry the bulk of the show (the ensemble is brilliant, but the heavy lifting is all on the leads--a weight they bear with ease). But let's talk about that ensemble for a moment. The actors also handle the music and are the stagehands and are called upon to handle Steven Hoggett's astonishing choreographed movement. And while none has more than a couple scenes of their own, they register so fully from Anne Nathan as the girl's mother Baruska seeming sexy and matronly and a little devilish at the same time to Paul Whitty's brash, silly, overbearing, lovable shop owner and Elizabeth Davis as Reza, the sexy Czech girl who loves to seduce men, cares deeply about her friends and family, and is there for the people she loves.

Hoggett also choreographed Black Watch and American Idiot, and I've mentioned him with regard to those shows before. I'm starting to think he might be one of the most singular voices in theater today, putting a very modern dance style on stage while making it accessible to the audience and working with actors who aren't dancers. There's a stylized moment showing someone being folded into an embrace that I think might be the most beautiful three seconds I've ever seen on stage (I could be exaggerating, but I might actually not be).

Another moment turns the body of someone who has kneeled to cry into part of the cityscape of Dublin by way of a subtle and lovely use of lights. And that's the thing about this show: the whole is wonderful and tremendously moving, but there are these little tiny moments of stage magic that are so well in tune with the show itself that they bolster and deepen everything happening at the heart of the story with GUY and GIRL. Everything seems effortless only because you know there's a team of people behind the scenes and an ensemble on stage all working together perfectly, all on the same page. Whether it's a group a capella song or a few bars of transitional music, every note adds to the show even though the songs aren't actually integrated into the piece in a traditional way. This is a show about musicians, and the numbers performed are almost exclusively their own, just reinforced and expanded by this on stage band.

Every cynical shred of me thought that this could end up being just another cheap ploy to turn a movie into a musical in order to cash in on the film's popularity. Seeing it, you feel exactly how unlikely it is that anyone involved did this without the fullest and deepest commitment instead to putting together a show that honored and enriched the movie itself. Rumor has it that even though the show hasn't opened Off-Broadway yet, the producers are looking for a Broadway theater to transfer it. Everyone should root for it to happen. It's a bittersweet show of true beauty that is as near to perfect as these things can be.

Seminar

As someone who works in publishing, the fact that there are so many plays lately about writing is not unwelcome to me. Other Desert Cities and Venus in Fur and now Seminar, Theresa Rebeck's somewhat thin but entirely delightful new comedy about a vicious writing instructor teaching a private workshop to four young writers.

Alan Rickman is that instructor, Leonard, and if seething with disgust and decimating writer after writer doesn't seem like a particularly huge stretch for him, that doesn't make him any less of a joy to watch, and some of his barbs are so incisive that they're squirm-inducing, all the more so because there is the sense throughout that while there is a lot of bluster (and a great deal of offensiveness), quite often he's very likely completely right.

And here comes the sort of giant caveat I feel like the show requires: you're asked to believe, repeatedly, that all it takes to judge someone's talent is skimming one or two pages of their work. While of course I don't want to just sit and watch people read for several hours, and while I can accept that you can know a lot about a writer from any sample of their work, the strain to push aside incredulity does become more intense throughout the show. There are other believability issues throughout as well, but when it comes down to it, the show is just fun enough that for me they were all worth overlooking.

Not only did it tickle me that essentially the play was a love letter to writers of true talent and passion (and a mourning for how difficult the road can be for them), but the show is so perfectly cast that it's a delight to simply sit back and watch a great group of actors tear into the material with so much glee. Lily Rabe is stupidly fantastic as the student hosting the seminar but also whose work is treated to the first and most vicious criticism. She is conflicted, brittle, and annoying as hell, but she's also sympathetic and believable. You can feel her playing against some of the most obvious choices, but not in a mannered way. It all feels so organic. Brilliantly so. Jerry O'Connell is making his Broadway debut, and he's suprisingly great. It feels like a throwaway part at first--the dopey, well-connected douchebag. But as things start to break down for his, a tenderness and affability snuck in and caught me off guard. And Hamish Linklater is Martin, the writer most reticent to share his work. It's almost a sneaky performance because while it seems like it might be Rickman's show or Rabe's for most of the time, in the end, it ends up that Linklater is really the one it all hangs on. Beautifully.

Ultimately, though, it's just a great ensemble in a great ensemble piece. It's got a real hint of the God of Carnage about it--a small group of great actors being vicious and funny in service of a show that's maybe not especially brilliant, but fuck it you're loving it anyway. And you know what? I'll take it!

Wild Animals You Should Know

I maybe wasn't suuuuuper excited to see a play about Boy Scouts and sexual abuse because, frankly, it's not the freshest topic. Molestation plays have not only been done. They've been done brilliantly: Doubt, anyone? How I Learned to Drive? What sets Wild Animals You Should Know apart, though, is that it's got a little bit more of a Lolita sensibility. The kid is definitely the pursuer. The counsellor is most resistant. But to hold onto Doubt for a second, like that play, we never know whether anything actually happened.

Sure, I can describe the play entirely in terms of how it relates to its predecessors, but there was a vague undercurrent of nastiness that kept it just fresh enough to be, if not necessary, at least entertaining. So lets just say it's the funniest molestation play you're likely to see?

Jay Armstrong Johnson plays the potential sociopath Matthew, and he's the kind of blandly good looking, sincerely charming guy that you can imagine would have been able to twist people around his finger in high school just as he does in the show. Believing that he's in high school now is slightly more challenging, but I guess casting 15 year olds as sexual aggressors whose first appearance on stage is doing a striptease to the Boy Scout motto is maybe potentially challenging. And can I take a moment to talk about how weird it is that the two biggest trends on stage this fall are plays about books and plays about teen boys having sex with adult men? well, this show is considerably more tasteful than Burning. AND less interesting. But...well, let's say that Burning might be the first show that gets a second post out of me, but that's for another time.

Meanwhile, Matthew's best friend is gay teen Jacob played to perfection by Gideon Glick who I think I've now seen in every major gig he's had. He was brilliant as the gay teen in Spring Awakening. And the gay teen in Speech and Debate. And even as the non-specifically gay teen in Spider-Man before his part was cut prior to opening. I will admit that with his strange voice and relative flamboyance, he's a specific enough performer that he will likely always be at risk of being typecast, but goddam he's good at what he does.

Matthew's mannered father, Patrick Breen, serves as a chaperone on a scouting trip along with the charming drunk Lenny. It's on this trip that Matthew confronts their scout counselor Gordon about the fact that he discovered that Gordon is gay and will out the counselor unless he admits that he finds Matthew attractive. It's an incredibly strange scene and it's here that things seem like they're really getting good because what the playwright does best is hint at the complexities and ambiguities of teendom. Sadly, he then shifts to focus on Matthew's father and the other counselor.

We come back to Matthew in the end and a really tantalizingly open to interpretation ending. Which is strong enough to send you out on a good note, not really knowing what happened, but with enough hints to be really curious about what did. And there's skill involved in that. If you're going to end on an ellipses, you need to give people enough to ponder so they aren't just unfulfilled and frustrated. And he did that. I just wish that when he did put periods on his sentences and scenes, they were just as satisfying.

Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway

Hugh Jackman's not really a great singer, and he's not really a fantastic dancer, so it's a little confusing that his show Back on Broadway is so stupidly fantastic. There's something about him that just gives him the ability to put material over even when it shouldn't work. A cheesy cover of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" set to images of the outback and with two didgeridoos should be saccharine enough to make my teeth itch. His sort of sexless sexiness is so bland that it shouldn't even register, but there's something appealing even in its crisp safeness. And while the show is just covers of stuff he's done before and tributes to the most obvious of notions (I love my wife, New York's awesome, my dad really loved me), it's all strangely, wonderfully compelling in his hands. He's like the world's most charming used salesman. He may not have anything great to sell, but you're not leaving the lot empty-handed.

And if that all sounds bitchy, I don't mean it to. Because truly, Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway, is a stupidly good time. Because no matter his specific limitations in particular areas, Jackman is a capital Entertainer. And his joy at bringing his audience along for the ride is, in fact, pretty infectious. He's got that sort of Tinkerbell/Lady Gaga I'll-live-if-you-applaud quality. Some of the show is obvious and silly, but at no point is the man coasting, and I respect the crap out of that.

The banter between the songs was up-to-the-minute fresh. Whether joking about Rick Perry's debate gaffe the night before, bringing out the four dancers having their first opening night on Broadway that night, or engaging a member of the audience in a genuinely amusing back and forth, Jackman was at his best on his toes. It's that charisma and relatable quality that set him apart.

There were musical highlights, certainly. I loved his version of "Tenterfield Saddler," and his "Soliloquy" from Carousel was the best showcase for his particular vocal qualities. A big movie musical medley was bubbly and fun and engaging, but not as much so as his Act 2 entrance decked out in gold lame to do a little Peter Allen tribute. Still, though, if it weren't for his peculiar blend of star quality and humility (real or imagined), none of it would register as big as it does. Bottom line: he just always looks so fucking happy. So yeah...that's infectious. There's no depth to the show, but sometimes a night of candy coated entertainment is just fine too.

Lillias White at Aaron Davis Hall

I first saw Lillias White in The Life, the mid 90's musical about mid-80's Times Square. More specifically, it was about the hookers in Times Square. I went to see it instead of going to my junior prom in high school. How did my mother not know I was gay?! Anyhoo, Lillias played Sonja, a 26-year-old prostitute who had been tricking for ten years and was feeling worn out. Which led to the song "The Oldest Profession," possibly the most legit show stopping moment I've seen next to maybe Patti Lupone's "Rose's Turn."

White is one of thoseperformers that I'll drop everything for. And, as it turns out, go to 137th St. to see. Triple digit streets? That shit's just crazy.

Like a lot of musical theater performers, I tend to think she's best when she's broadest and biggest. She CAN kill it with a slow, simple number, but give the woman a song big enough to encompass her personality, and she goes from merely great to uniquely spectacular. She covered a lot of stuff I've seen her do before and could watch her to forever more. Her ode to loving plus sized men, "Big Fat Daddy" came with plenty of audience interaction and a big-hearted prurience that can't be contained. Covering Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror," she really just brought the pain. Because what you always feel is that she's just so present. Which doesn't mean she can do ANYthing. A reggae-tinged cover of Jessie J's "Price Tag" was one of the most baffling things I've ever encountered.

But the whole show really ended up just being a prelude to the encore. Lillias played Effie White in Dreamgirls back in the day, a fact that did not escape the two extremely (and I mean extremely) enthusiastic men next to me in the front row who started shrieking for her to sing "I Am Changing" as soon as she came back on stage. No one had the music, but not one to disappoint, she just stood center stage and served it. Here's something about me: I don't do outwardly enthusiastic. It's not my thing. The two men next to me? They were squealers. The fact that I was so fucking impressed that I didn't want to stab them through their four minute vocal orgasms? Truly a testament to how amazing the performance was. When all is said and done, I'm just a sucker for a gigantic voice taking on a dynamic song. And you just don't get bigger sounding, more dramatic songs than Effie's. I don't want to say it was transcendent or anything. But I might have tinkled a little. She's just that damn good.

Other Desert Cities

How weird is this? I already get to talk about a (semi-)new production of something I already wrote about this year. Because Other Desert Cities which I didn't like so much Off-Broadway has transferred to the big leagues, and you know what? I liked it a lot more.

Off-Broadway, I had two major problems with the show. The first was that the twist at the end felt heavy-handed and false. I didn't but it for a second and felt so pissed that the play veered into melodrama when it did that it colored my perception of the whole thing. My second concern was that it pandered to its liberal audience for its entire duration, making a lot of really facile arguments about why Republicans are terrible people. It still panders, for sure, and that plot twist is still the crux upon which the play turns, but it plays so, so much better than it did.

Why? Rachel Griffiths took over for Elizabeth Marvel as the clinically depressed daughter of an uber-conservative couple who has decided to publish a memoir about the tragic loss of her brother years before and its implications for the family. She has come home to get her parent's blessing. Hijinks ensue. Now, Elizabeth Marvel is a pretty amazing actress. Her performance in The Little Foxes was ferocious and heartstopping. But while she played the depressed daughter aspect of her role brilliantly in this show, I was unconvinced by a late-game transition to pathos and rage. Griffiths, on the other hand, seems built for this kind of soapy material. Her early scenes seemed to lack a little of the zip that had been present before, but once the play got moving, it occurred to me that what was happening was that she wasn't approaching any of the material as just lines that she could land or moments she could make sing. She was building to something greater from the very beginning. And by the end, she made a moment that in its first incarnation had me thinking, "You have to be fucking kidding me," into a moment of real beauty.

Judith Light has also taken over a role, replacing Linda Lavin as Aunt Silda. It would be difficult to imagine two more divergent takes on the part of the drunken old screw-up. Lavin was the good-time-gal. The lady you'd love to get drunk with because she'd always make you laugh. Light...well, you'd probably shift a few seats down the bar when she came in. She spotted the ugliest things about the character, and she dove at them. I loved Lavin's approach. But Light's seems to make more sense and probably does a better service to the play itself.

Before I swing over to the last female actor in the play, let it be known that I think Stacy Keach and Thomas Sadoski are giving great, great performances. Sadoski is nothing if not relateable as the moderate screw-up of the family. And Keach is endearing as the low-key father but allows the character his own moments of despair and animosity.

But let's talk about Stockard Channing, shall we? Because she's unreal in this play. As the nipped and tucked ice queen mother who rules the roost, she is acerbic, witty, and brittle, and yet at the same time, she plays the woman's dedication to her family to the hilt. But that can only be pushed so far. She says repeatedly through the show, "I know myself," and you get the sense that beyond anything else in her life, her fierce belief in her self-made identity is really the single thing of the utmost importance. She has incredibly vicious, bitterly cold moments, and she appears (and likely is) unbreakable, but she never loses that barest hint of fragility. She's extraordinary now as she was before. The real achievement of the transfer from Off-Broadway to Broadway is that the rest of the show has risen towards her level. She is still, to my eye, the best thing about this play, and she still burns brightest, but to the credit of all others involved, she no longer threatens to completely unbalance the entire evening.

Love's Labour's Lost

We already covered my 100th show of the year, the deeply disappointing and pretty ridiculous Thomas Bradshaw play Burning. Now it's time for the 100th post! Which means...well, it's another disappointment. Don't worry: I know the next three posts are going to be about stuff I liked!

I love that the Public Theater has a "Lab" program where they workshop shows. I love that I got to see Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson there for $15 a few years back. And I love that they're tackling some of Shakespeare's less produced plays as part of the series because, ever the completist, I set the relatively stupid goal of seeing every Shakespeare play performed at least once. This program let me knock Timon of Athens off my list. Next month, it will take down Titus Andronicus (because the movie doesn't count). And this month, it allowed me to cross of Love's Labour's Lost.

I'm happy to report that the problems I had with the show have nothing to do with Shakespeare himself. Sure, the plot about four men taking a vow of chastity in order to further their academic pursuits only to be shortly thereafter visited by four beautiful women is as ridiculous by today's standard as most of his work, but that's just the nature of the beast. Someone had to establish the cliches.

The problems aren't even with the cast (well...mostly). Instead, I lay blame at the director's feet for turning out a show that felt somehow frantically dull. First of all, the script must have been hacked apart to turn this into a two hour show with no intermission. I don't know the show, but you can feel that pieces are missing. And say what you will about Shakespeare, the man was thorough. I never had the sense that his plays were incomplete, if you see where I'm going with this.

But let's move on to something more troubling: "Hangin' Tough." Yeah--the New Kids on the Block song. Which the four leading ladies ever so briefly do a little dance to. Well before they do the Beyonce "Single Ladies" dance. You want to give me a new interpretation of something that interpolates contemporary(-ish) pop culture? Fine. Do it. You want to jar me out of the moment forcefully? Go for it. But if you do? You better make a point. And I sure hope it's significant.

Little moments of ridiculousness are scattered through the show as though to highlight its outlandishness. Letters are monstrously large. Costumes are black and white except for the occasional burst of silly bold color. But here's the thing: the show is already silly. So why not just play it straight? The worst offender (and I'm not fully prepared to blame the actor in lieu of the director) is the performance of Samira Wiley as the page Moth who manages to add excess to excess and seems not a clown as much as a buffoon.

Other performers far significantly better. Stephanie diMaggio is delightful as the lusty wench Jacquenetta. And Francis Jue's curate might not have the biggest part, but he left the most significant impression.

In the final moments of the show, the cast joins together for a joyful musical number that jars us out of the ennui that set in almost imperceptibly over the two hour running time. But I have to say, I'd rather be let down by the last two minutes of a great show than lifted up by the finale of something so deeply mediocre. Ah well. Good reviews a'comin', I promise!

Justin Vivian Bond

I miss Kiki & Herb. For those who don't know, they were played by Justin Bond and Kenny Mehlman and were an old-timey lounge act with a hilarious back story and a penchant for covering increasingly bizarre songs. Who can say they've lived unless they've seen a trans woman in old-lady make-up do a balls out performance of "Wu-Tang Forever?" No one. That's who.

I first saw Kiki & Herb in the basement of the NYU Catholic Center (obviously) in '98 or '99. I also notably saw their farewell concert at Carnegie Hall (downtown goes uptown for real), their subsequent "second coming" at the same venue, and most notably for me, a concert at the Knitting Factory shortly after 9/11/01 that was searingly bleak, uncomfortably hysterical, and ultimately one of the most memorable things I've ever seen.

Point is, since the "second coming," they haven't been back on the scene together, but I've caught up with each many, many times--Kenny regularly at Our Hit Parade and Justin wherever she happens to play.

It was with great pleasure that I got a chance to check out her show the night before Halloween at Joe's Pub. The on stage chatter veered from estrogen therapy to Samhain Eve to lap dances and Casey Anthony. The tone, as ever, was caustic with an undercurrent of warmth and a hint of wonder, as bitter and bold as ever.

I really enjoyed the show which was loosely organized around the theme of "songs by dead people." So loosely, in fact, that many of the songs were by people who are alive and simply old. Which was confusing to be sure and did lead to a moment of genuine concern when she started singing Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat." Leonard is happily still among us.

Justin's voice perpetually sounds just this side of fully shot and always in danger of just tumbling over a cliff, but she can use that to find these incredible moments of pathos and humanity. But here's the thing: when she goes for funny, no one else can do what she does. When the target is earnest, I feel like there are wonderful moments but that they lack a level of transcendence that I know is possible. So maybe she doesn't want to be funny all the time. That's fine. And we still get shows that are pretty wonderful. But I walk away with that niggling voice suggesting I could have had an even better time. So...yeah. I miss Kiki & Herb. But in the meantime, I'm certainly not going to turn down an evening with Mx. Bond.

Burning

I've had my eye on when I'd hit 100 posts because then I'd have seen my 100 shows, but now that I'm at post 98, I realize that I did skip writing about that one concert way back when and also did one post about two shows a few months ago. Which means that my 100th show of the year was The New Group's production of Burning at the Acorn Theater in Theater Row. The same space I saw my first show of the year in when I started the blog. OMG FULL CIRCLE.

So yeah, that might seem like kismet except...Burning. Umm...what to say?

Let's start here: at intermission, I had the following conversation:
Friend: "We're leaving...right?"
Me: "I know it's fucking weird, but I maintain that this COULD end up being brilliant."
Friend: "..."
Me: "No, I mean, it's experimental and interesting and going fascinating places, and we should keep an open mind and hey, I haven't been bored at all, so...yeah, it's super weird, but can you honestly say you have any idea what's going to happen next? Doesn't the fact that anything can happen make you at least curious enough to stay?"
Friend: "I bet the neo-Nazi fucks his sister."

Spoiler alert: act 2 opens with the neo-Nazi fingering his sister. FINE, friend. You were right. Whatever. I still wasn't bored.

Let's just try to do a reallllllly quick plot overview, mm-kay? Brace yourselves. So this 14-year-old wants to go to acting school but his mother dies of an overdose. He heads across the country to interview anyway and convinces an older gay couple to take him in, let him into the school, and have sex with him. Meanwhile, German neo-Nazi's sister is paralyzed as a result of a car accident that also killed their parents. Back in America, a black artist is preparing for an exhibition in Germany when his cousin dies of an overdose. Cousin's son wants him to pay for the funeral but blah blah class issues blah.

So we cover neo-Nazi's, race relations, pedophilia, AIDS, drugs, incest, and a whole bunch of other stuff over three hours as the storylines eventually work their ways together. It's about 14 times too absurd to take seriously as a drama, 5 times too facile to really work as a satire, and half as funny as it needs to be in order to be a comedy. So instead it's just a mess. A big, flailing, did-no-one-EVER-suggest-any-cuts mess.

Out of the 15 person cast, I'd guess maybe three of them kept their clothes on, so if you see the show you can take bets on who'll disrobe next. The nudity, like everything in the show, feels extraneous at best, seemingly there to shock or titillate but falling flat. The worst part is that pieces of the show feel like they could have had an impact. And other parts might legitimately challenge the viewer. But it's all so muddled that the only logical response is to sit back and think, "Really?" It's like every cultural fear of 1996 got together and decided to have an orgy.

Which is not to say I didn't find any moments affecting and other parts very funny. The line "I was in a vagina for a moment" was a stand-out in a too-offensive to actually be offensive monologue about a hermaphrodite rapist (I'm still not making any of this up).

It's telling that in a show that I THINK is aiming to be unnerving and funny, the only time I actually laughed in discomfort was in a quieter scene as two actors whispered to each other when an old man a few rows behind me (oh yeah--I should mention I was in the front row) suddenly screamed, "LOUDER!"

Any time I see something new that I think is crazy dumb I worry that somewhere down the line, that play will become a classic that no one understood when it was first performed. That I'll be the idiot decrying Genet or walking out on Chekhov. But in the case of Burning, I'm pretty secure saying no, it was actually just fucking stupid.

Willie Nelson

It's not a secret that I have a list of performers I want to see before they die. High on that list was one Mr. Willie Nelson. Now, Willie's only 78, but some people just look like they've really LIVED, you know? In any case, I wasn't going to take my chances and let his most recent concert slip me by, so I headed out to Jersey to catch his show.

There's something charming to me about a performer who is fully willing to be exactly who their audience wants them to be, to the extent that they almost parody themselves. And watching Willie line up a bunch of bandannas and then tie them on for a bit before throwing each into the audience...that was adorable. If only because he seemed to do it all in good humor. He was nothing if not a pro. Songs charged into each other, banter was kept to a minimum, and on we plowed through decades worth of material. It could have felt cold and calculated (and who knows, maybe it was), but with his voice sounding completely unchanged by the years and his guitar playing energetic and enthusiastic, it was a near perfect concert for someone who had never seen him before. From "On the Road Again" to his version of "Me and Bobby McGee," he played everything I could have hoped for. I would argue that he was never the most forward-thinking or innovative musician, but he writes a damn good tune nonetheless. And his new songs , a few of which he played amidst the two hour set showed the great humor and heart that he's always brought to the table.

The audience at the show was a pretty fascinating cross-section of people that went from business suits to neck tattoos. And the curiosity factor about who would get thrown out for drunken misbehavior next definitely added a level of tension to the show. For the record, the first two people ejected didn't even make it to the end of the first song. And there was a 47-year-old woman who wasn't about to go without a fight (which oddly involved her hollering her age repeatedly).

What else is there to say? Willie Nelson is the flannel pajamas of music--cozy and warm and possibly going to lull you into a slumber--in a good way. And if he does an 80th birthday tour, I'll get out there to see him again for sure.