Day: June 21, 2007

Life

Frost / Nixon

Christa Avampato

Once I found out I definitely had the job offer I have been hoping for, I decided to take myself out to celebrate that very afternoon. I start my job on July 9th and one of the most beautiful things about being unemployed until then is that I can stand in line for rush tickets and hardly anyone else will be there. In New York, rush tickets are given out the day of a show, at 10am, for a discounted price. Not all shows do this, but many do.

I had heard a lot of buzz around Frost / Nixon, mostly because one of the lead actors, Frank Langella, just won the Tony award for his performance. I am a little mebarrassed to admit that I had no idea what the show was about, and I had never heard of David Frost, despite the facts that all of my family members have been invloved in politics all whole their lives and that one of my majors as an undergraduate was history. In an effort to not be so hard on myself, I must say that I was raised in a house where Richard Nixon’s name was considered to be a synonym for any four letter word you can think of. My mother still has a profound dislike for the man, almost as strong as her dislike for the Red Sox. (She grew up a decided liberal and a decided Yankees fan.)

A short synopsis: David Frost was a British talk show host who landed an interview with Richard Nixon soon after Nixon decided to resign from office. The play chronicles those interviews, in which Nixon confesses his guilt in the Watergate scandal. David Frost becomes an international celebrity and Richard Nixon never recaptures any of the glory he had pre-Watergate.

I decided to go to the 2pm matinee on Wednesday for a couple of very good reasons. In business school, I occasionally felt like an old foggie for having graduated from undergrad in the 90’s. At this matinee of Frost / Nixon, I was easily the youngest person in the house. How thrilling! When I used to work in a box office, this was my absolute favorite performance of the week. Everyone arrives half an hour early, they are accessorized to the max, and no one has a cell phone that will start to ring at the pivotal moment of the performance.

I get inside at about 1:45 and make my way up to the mezzanine, where I assumed my rush seat would be. A kind usher pointed out to me that not only was I in the orchestra section, but I was in the middle of the very first row. I couldn’t believe it! I’ve never sat in the front row of anything in my entire life, except a baseball game at Wrigley Field (which was equally as exciting but much more expensive.)

So the play begins and I am on the edge of my seat just waiting to see the fall of the man that all these years I thought of as a crook. I was going to see how a dashing, young media man did what no other investigative journalist, Congressman, or attorney had been able to do before. If only my mother were here….

Except it didn’t happen that way at all. Mr. Langella’s performance was so riveting, so engaging that I found myself not only liking Nixon; I was ROUTING for him! I wanted him to come out on top. I wanted everything that I did know about Watergate to be an enormous lie. I didn’t want to see this man disgraced and torn apart; I wanted him to be triumphant. (My mother would be horrified at this reaction!)

I had the great pleasure to see Brian Dennehy in Death of a Salesman in 1999. (Mr. Dennehy, like Mr. Langella, won the Tony award tha year for Best Actor in a Play.) And I felt for Frank Langella’s Nixon the same sympathy, the same heart-breaking sadness that I felt for Brian Dennehy’s Willy Lowman. It was tragic to watch a larger than life man with dream and hopes claw his way out of his own desperate situation only to watch him plunge back down to a point lower than he started. And worse, to watch him orchestrate his own demise.

I have been out of professional theatre for several years now and I’d like to return someday, in some way. For now, it was incredible to have that magic reignited. When you work behind-the-scenes in theatre, that spark, that “wow” factor falls away to some degree. They don’t tell you that when you first sign up for the gig. Once you see what happens before the curtain goes up, what happens after that can becomes less intriguing. I am so grateful to Mr. Langella for helping me re-capture a bit of what I thought I’d lost. He was nothing short of stunning. And if you have the chance, you shouldn’t miss the opportunity to see the show, no matter what the price of the ticket. Maybe you’ll find yourself routing for Nixon too….

Life

Not Quite New York Enough….

Christa Avampato

Now that my job search is complete, I am moving on to my number two priority, an apartment. I love everything about New York, except the apartment hunt. It’s brutal. I’ve never experienced anything like it. 15% broker fees, brokers who are keen to show you exactly what you DON’T want, and a very tight market. At the moment the vacancy rate in New York is 1%, the lowest it’s been in decades. I had heard of the legendary “shoebox apartment” though I’d never seen one until today. I went to a see a “cute studio” on West 64th street. I am not exaggerating when I say that it was 150 square feet, if that! My sister, Weez, has an adorable miniature dachshund and this apartment is too small even for him. Still, I am optimistic.

My friend, Dan, keeps telling me the perfect apartment is out there. He’s taken to sending me uplifting text messages. I appreciate these – they arrive just when I feel like I may never find a place of my own. So I spent some time walking around neighborhoods, collecting phone numbers from the precious few “for rent” signs on the upper west side.

Pounding the pavement in search of an apartment is tiring work so I took myself to Cafe Lalo on West 83rd Street. In the movie You’ve Got Mail, Meg Ryan waits in a cafe to meet than man she’s been flirting with on-line. That scene takes place in Cafe Lalo. It’s a lovely little spot, lovelier than I remember. Classical music playing, marble everywhere, huge windows that open out on a tree-lined street. I was thrilled to see it.

I walk up to the counter, order myself a big piece of apple pie and a coffee. The woman at the register just stares at me. And I stare back.

“A what?” she asked.
“A coffee?” I said.
“What’s a coffee?”
“C-O-F-F-E-E. Tea, hot chocolate, coffee…” I felt terrible because I couldn’t figure out how to say this without sounding like a jerk.
“Oh, you mean a cAUffee.”

I was stunned! This woman was implying that I had an accent, the wrong accent. I haven’t had an apartment here since May 2001. Still, had I been away so long that I was now a foreigner in my own town? I was always under the assumption that you could take the girl out of NY, but you couldn’t take the NY out of the girl.

I then sheepishly handed over my AMEX card.

“Oh, we don’t take those. Only cash. It’ll be $8.50”

“Sorry. Here you go,” I replied, shocked at the cost of a slice of pie these days! “Is it okay if I sit anywhere?”

“You want to sit DOWN?”

“Is that okay?” I asked. I was growing increasingly less comfortable.

“I guess,” the woman said as she rolled her eyes so much I feared they’d get stuck in the back of her head.

I walked over to the far corner of the bar against the window and made myself as small as possible. The pie and cAUffee arrived a few moments later.

I sat staring out the open windows for almost an hour, eating my pie (which wasn’t all that tasty) and drinking my coffee (that was much too strong.) How could this have happened? And if I wasn’t a New Yorker anymore then what was I? I realized how much a home defines us, shapes us, and the way people view us.

A homeless woman walked by me and stopped in front of one of the flower baskets hanging on one of the lampposts. She began to run both her hands through it. It took me a moment to figure out what she was doing. It had rained that morning and she was washing her hands with the water still clinging to the flowers, humming. Then she went on her way.

And just like that I was snapped out of my momentary slump. I took my plate and cup up to the counter and gathered my things. Suddenly I realized that no matter how dire my situation may be in my apartment search, I was indeed lucky, much luckier than most. Even if I have forgotten how to pronounce “coffee”, this is still my town and I have a lot of work to do here.