the_deep_magic | The Most Epic Saga of Ragnar Hairybreeks and Borghild the Victorious

Okay, I know everyone and their mother has already seen the play, but whatevs. I HAVE OPINIONS.

So in case you didn't know -- I forget what I've posted here and what ended up on Twitter -- I had tickets for Angels in America last Tuesday and Wednesday... when Zach was at Sundance. I'm pretty sure, given what the understudy said, those are the ONLY shows in the entire run he missed. Yeah. When he tweeted about having six shows left, he was telling the truth, but two of those shows (on Saturday) were not on the Signature schedule. I got the text from

ewinfic saying he was staying in Utah on my way to the airport, and there was much D-facing. But by the time we met up in NY, both of us had kind of gotten over the initial FUUUUUUUUCK THIS FOR A NICKEL and put our Deal With It glasses on.

There was no sense in letting the non-refundable tickets go to waste, so we saw both parts with the understudy, Eric Bryant. He was excellent in the role, and actually physically fits the character a little better. If he wasn't Not Zach, I'd hardly have anything to complain about at all. The only thing that was a little bit awkward were the some of the scenes with Bill Heck playing Joe Pitt. I originally thought Bill was overplaying it, but later it was pretty apparent that he was still playing to Zach's Louis (more on that in a minute). Anyway, Eric played Louis a bit flirtier, a lot more hesitant, if that makes sense. It would be nice if he were the one taking over for Zach next week, but it's someone else. He's the understudy for Louis, Prior, and Joe, though, so he'd better stay on -- he must have the whole damn play memorized. We overheard him saying he played Prior for a week in December, but it sounded like those were the only times he's been on stage.

I was really impressed with Lynne McCullough, the actress who played Hannah Pitt. She had just taken over for Robin Bartlett, and I assume she'll be playing Hannah for the rest of the run. The character has to be no-nonsense, stubborn, and sympathetic all at the same time, and Lynne pulled it off wonderfully. She also plays at least three male characters, two of which have monologues at least as long as Louis's cafe spiel, and you'd hardly even know that it's her if it weren't in the playbill. Frank Wood's performance of Roy Cohn is very idiosyncratic -- heavy New York accent, talks through his nose, spits one hell of a lot -- and I wasn't sure I liked it at first, but it grew on me. It also got a bit easier to understand what the hell he was saying after a while. I don't know anything about the actual Roy Cohn, but I figure with that character, you gotta either go big or go home.

Anyway, I'm familiar with both parts of the play, but I'd never seen the second part on stage, so that was pretty cool. My buddy Tony Kushner likes to throw in stage directions like "Suddenly the walls are covered with burning alephs" (and my personal favorite, "Hannah has an enormous orgasm"), which makes the whole thing kind of a bitch to stage. As I'm sure has been noted before, the stage was split and both sides could rotate, and projection was used to set the outdoor scenes. The blocking was cleverly done to draw the audience's attention away from the scene changes, and there really wasn't much done to conceal the stage hands, which was kind of how it had to be.

So that was Tuesday and Wednesday. When Thursday afternoon rolled around,

ewinfic and I packed sandwiches and granola bars and got to the theatre at 4:30. We were joined by

aliassmith, who already had tickets but was awesome enough to come and wait with us, even though the snow on the rooftops and the sort-of awning was melting and dripping down on our heads. A Zach fangirl who lives in NY showed up soon after -- she'd just recently found out that Zach wasn't doing the entire run of the show and desperately wanted to see it before he left. More people got in line behind us, and even though we were in the front, we were still pretty nervous about getting seats. But that was about the time our luck finally started to turn, because a couple from Tennessee had just gone to the box office to see if they could sell back the tickets they bought for their friends. They couldn't, of course, so they offered them to anyone in the line who could pay cash. We took them up on it and dragged them to an ATM, and managed to get two seats next to each other not just for Thursday night, but Friday night as well! Other ZQ fangirl got a seat on the stairs for part one, but we didn't see her again at part two.

Okay, now for the reason you're all reading this: Zach. GUH. Really, really amazing. It was especially interesting to see two different interpretations of the character back to back. Zach's Louis was much more visceral, which I wouldn't necessarily have expected, since I tend to think of Zach as being very much in his head. But damn, he and Bill Heck were fantastic together. It was really easy to see why the two characters were drawn to each other, despite the fact that they both know what a bad idea it is.

We were on the right side of the theatre so, yes, we had a very clear view of That Scene in the Park (though the seats we had for part two were on the very front in the right -- we were only a little sad that we didn't have them for part one). It was kind of funny in that Eric, the understudy, just unbuttoned his pants and baaaaaarely tugged them down in the back -- you couldn't see any skin at all. Zach, on the other hand, just yanked his pants right down and left them there. I don't want to steal

ewinfic's thunder here, since she does a much better job of describing Zach Jr. than I do, but it caught on the hem of his shirt and, uh, bounced. :oD We were very happy fangirls, indeed. Okay, this is kind of odd, but... when Eric was doing the scene, it was obvious Louis wasn't getting any pleasure out of the act, but when Zach played it, even though I know it's not a sexy scene, the sounds he made were not entirely of pain. And afterwards, before he buttoned back up, he stuck his hand down the back of his pants and sort of... adjusted himself. I know it was probably down to conscious acting choices, but I found myself thinking okay, which one of these two men has had buttsex before?

LET US TAKE A MOMENT TO CLEANSE OURSELVES OF THE WEIRDNESS OF THAT PARAGRAPH, ESPECIALLY THE LAST SENTENCE. GOOD? OKAY. MOVING ON.

The scene in part one where Prior dances with Dream Louis near about killed me. I haven't mentioned Christian Borle yet, but he was amazing as well. Some reviews said he was over the top, but I think Prior has to be kind of queeny -- he and Belize speak cutesy French to each other through half the play. (Oh, and Billy Porter was hilarious -- he made really great use of silence, and you could always see exactly what he was thinking when another character talked to him [or, in Louis's case, at him] I didn't realize it until the second time I saw part two, but he's wearing these fabulous, sparkly pumps through the entire scene with Prior and the Angel.) The scene in part two where Joe and Louis fight was really intense. You will not be surprised to learn that Zach does Slightly Unhinged very, very well. During the bows at the end, Zach didn't smile either night, but the whole cast actually looked pretty tired. The only ones who were really beaming were Eric and Lynne -- I guess even standing ovations get less thrilling if you get them every night.

So, after the show. When we talked to Eric on Wednesday, he'd described Zach as "slippery" (me and

ewinfic: "Heh heh heeeeeh"), and sure enough, he was in and through the lobby very quickly after the show. Thursday night,

aliassmith and I decided that

ewinfic was going to be our official spokesperson so we could stand in the background and look pretty. Which we did with panache, if I do say so myself. Zach was, of course, very sweet. He asked

aliassmith about the flooding in Australia and thanked her for coming to see him while I continued to make this face: 8oD. The next night, I wanted to get a picture, but there were even more people around and I waffled like a waffling thing until

aliassmith, God bless her, grabbed my camera and got Zach's attention for me. He is a BIG DUDE and we were both wearing giant coats, so it would have been weird for me to lean in and try to sniff him, but believe me, I thought about it. When we left the theatre, we inadvertantly ended up walking behind him down 42nd St (because, really, most of Manhattan is in that direction) until he and some friends ducked into a cafe.

The Scoop: on Thursday night,

aliassmith sat next to some fanboys, one of whom apparently actually knew Zach. While we were waiting in the lobby, he talked to them, and though we weren't trying to listen, it's a small lobby and his voice carries and shut up, okay? Anyway, he told the guy that he'd be travelling through most of February, but that he'd be "coming back" on the first week in March. Now, I don't know if the guy he was talking to is from NY or LA, so take that as you will, but I'm guessing he meant NY. Which made me sad-face a little for both of his pets, Noah and Chris. (I assume Harold's doing just fine.) But, y'know, I guess we'll see.

Anyway, I wish I could have said something more articulate than "Hi... yes... amazing" while I stared at his eyebrows (which are FUCKING MAJESTIC OMG), but at least I got away without saying something really, really stupid, which I can't say for all the fangirls that were there on Friday. ::shudder:: I'm going to post the picture (and further ramblings about the trip) soon under f-lock, so if you're really keen to see it, leave a comment and I'll add you. You will also be forced to look at lots of pictures of snow in Central Park, because I'm from Florida and that's how I roll.

So, yeah, crashed like a mofo last night. I still kind of can't believe that it's over, or that it actually happened at all. My mom asked me if I got any souvenirs in New York, and I said, "Four ticket stubs. That's what I got." Totally worth it. ;o)