11/05/2025
Vance and Jay with a couple of "theatre" days in New York. Time for just two plays and one exhibition.
"The Baker’s Wife," at the intimate Classic Stage Company, is a 1976 Stephen Schwartz ("Wicked," "Pippin") musical that died on the road to Broadway. Loved by musical theatre aficionados for its outstanding score (the song "Meadowlark" is a cabaret standard), Jay was especially eager to see it. A terrific cast, including Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose, really delivered. This is a "little" musical - low on spectacle but big on heart. Based on a Marcel Pagnol story, it is set in a little French town with a focus on all the often-odd and eccentric characters that populate the town. A simple love story with a happy ending! Anyway, we loved it, and off to dinner after to Union Square Café.
Baker's Wife.jpg
The next day we attended the traveling Anne Frank exhibition, and so glad we did. It is an absorbing and deeply moving telling of the story leading up to the Frank family’s two-years in hiding, before being discovered and sent to the concentration camps. We learn of Hitler’s rise to power and his gradual but inexorable elimination of one pillar of democracy after another. Truly a cautionary tale for our own time, if we really needed one. Interesting to learn, too, that Anne’s "Diary" is the most translated-into-other-languages book in the world, next to the Bible.
And that night, "Ragtime," at Lincoln Center. Gorgeous singing of an absolutely great musical score. This musical, now 30 years old, and in a wonderful new production, intertwines the stories of a wealthy white family, a Black family in Harlem, and a Jewish immigrant family from Eastern Europe, showing how their lives become connected. It blends historical fiction with real figures like Harry Houdini and Emma Goldman, exploring timeless themes of prejudice, hope, and identity.
Both the exhibition and "Ragtime" should be required viewing for every living American,
especially at this fraught time.
