"In the Heights"

The Statue of Liberty was my last stop on my tour because of the long lines getting to and from the Island. So I headed back to meet Jeff, grab dinner, then go to our next theater experience.

When I first found out we were going to New York, the first thing I did was figure out what shows I wanted to see. That was the one and only reason I wanted to go to New York - the shows. The rest was fun too, but the shows were what I wanted. Seeing Wicked was a no brainer for me. So the question was what other show should we see. I looked at what was on Broadway at the time and saw old favorites, and some that I've already seen that would be fun to see again. I decided that I really wanted to see something new. I wanted the experience of seeing the original cast. So I thought back to the Tony awards and remembered one musical number from one of the plays that I thought was incredibly inventive. It was called "In the Heights." I did some research on it and decided that this was the show I wanted to see. Jeff was beyond thrilled because the story is about a Latin neighborhood in New York City. All the back beats are latin in origin and Spanish is strewn throughout the music and dialogue. On top of that, rap is thrown in also. Jeff is a closet fan of old time rap so this made him happy. He was also surpised that I would be interested since I am not a rap fan. What caught my fancy was the way the music took so many different styles and was able to mix them together brilliantly. On top of that, the voices. Wow! We borrowed the CD from the library before we went to the show just to get an idea of what to expect. I tried not to listen too hard to the lyrics because I didn't want to know the plot before we went, but I was blown away by the music and by the two lead female voices. They were amazing and I was very excited to see them live.

So, Friday night, off we went to see "In the Heights." Here's a picture of the theater from the outside.

We went early hoping to walk around the theater like we did at Wicked. This theater was tiny though and you can see the lines in the bottom of the picture. There was no room inside the theater to walk around and there really wasn't anything to see. So we grabbed our seats. The theater isn't very big (although it is beautiful) so there wasn't a bad seat in the house. We had seats that were pretty darn close. Here's a picture of the set. It looks just like a typical New York street.

In this theater we really weren't supposed to take pictures, so we snapped this one as quickly as we could when no one was looking, but that's the only picture we got. But hopefully you can see how close we were. We could see the actors faces really well and a couple of time when the microphones went out, we could still hear them.

The show was amazing. Jeff and I loved it. The talent on that stage was incredible. The story is touching and heart warming. The show is full of energy and excitement. After the first number I leaned over and told Jeff that we have to see the show at least six more times to catch everything that was going on. Each actor performed their heart out and Jeff and I fell in love with the show - rap and all.

After the show, we went back to our hotel two very happy campers. We were both extremely happy with our choice of shows for the evening. Here's a self portrait of the two of us after the show in our hotel. Not a great picture but we are oh so happy!

Well that concludes my New York trip. Now you'll just have to live with the typical pictures of my adorable children doing adorable things.