Choral services and corsages

We went into the village for a meal with Cindy last night. She chose a lovely little vegetarian restaurant on Thompson. She was a little late, so Michael and I ordered starters. I opted for a vegetable soup which was placed on the table almost as soon as I’d asked for it, in the style of the old Stock Pot restaurant on Old Compton Street where they used to want to get you in and out as quickly as possible. High turnaround meant larger profits.

My problem is that I’m not a huge fan of eating alone if I know the person I’m with is waiting for their food. I feel self conscious and then get food envy whilst they finish. I waited some ten minutes for Michael’s food to arrive and then stopped the waiter and asked if he could take the soup away, keep it warm and then bring it back when Michael’s starter was ready. The man looked confused, “I’m sorry!” he said, “I didn’t realise you’d want to eat together!” It was unquestionably the oddest thing which has been said to me since coming to the States this time. You walk into a restaurant with someone. You sit down with them. And the waiter assumes you don’t want to eat at the same time as them?! Bizarre!

Cindy joined us, and we chewed the metaphorical fat and caught up on at least a year’s worth of gossip, before taking a pleasant stroll around the village to a bar called Pieces where we’d hoped to see a drag show. Sadly the bar was very crowded and very loud. We were all shattered and the queens took rather a long time to get onto the stage. More to the point, they weren’t the finest drag queens I’ve ever seen and because I felt we were in for a night of crude lip-syncing and lame jokes, we ducked out. 

As we left, I was reminded of the time I went to Pieces with Philip Sallon about ten years ago. I had a ball but he was fairly unimpressed. I still remember him going up to the door man as we left and saying “you know what the best thing about this club is? ...LEAVING it!”

This morning we decided to go to an American synagogue to see whether their standard of choral singing could hold a torch to ours, so we ventured to the Upper East side.

The thing which I’ve noticed time and time again since being in NYC is African American people, obviously in deep distress, delivering endless, angry monologues to pretty much anyone who’ll listen. Sometimes the rambling is almost poetic and sounds like freestyle rapping. Sometimes it can be quite frightening. The great sadness is that the behaviour tells you what enormous gulfs there are in society over here. Plainly these folks could do with some help. Plainly they’re not getting it.

The synagogue was very large and rather beautiful. It’s obviously at the centre of a very thriving Jewish community. It was bustling and fairly crowded and no one came over to the two Brits standing at the back of the kiddish because no one noticed we were there!

Sadly there wasn’t a choir - and the chazan wasn’t fabulous - so I didn’t get my dose of spectacular. New West End, in my head at least, can continue to be the greatest orthodox choral service in the world!

We sat under a tree in Central Park, and actually dozed off listening to the susserating leaves and the park-like sounds which don’t change wherever you are in the world. Children laughing. Dogs barking. Mothers reprimanding...

We went down to Battery Park in the afternoon. That’s the bit at the southern most tip of Manhattan where the ferries leave for Staten Island and you can see the Statue of Liberty watching over the bay. Boats full of tourists left every few minutes, helicopters chugged overhead and there were quite a few people on jet skis. None of any of this was appealing, although there is something genuinely iconic about the Statue of Liberty.

We walked along the Hudson, back up to the World Trade Centre and ended up getting horribly lost in the network of subway stations all of which are in slightly different places, serving different lines, but seem to call themselves World Trade Centre. It’s a genuine nightmare. The signage in the stations is terrible. At one point we were in a crowd of horribly frustrated people looking for the E line, literally going round in circles...

We finally boarded an entirely random subway train where everyone was so irritable that a woman who managed to trip herself over on the heel of my shoe stood for some time giving me daggers expecting me to somehow apologise for her clumsiness.




...And then, of course, you get off the subway train in Midtown, and are instantly surrounded by even more fuck sticks, all stopping for selfies in the middle of the street and generally seeming to have no concept of what’s going on.




It was a relief, therefore, to duck into a deli for tea with Christopher Sieber before he performed in The Prom this evening. It’s Tony season, so he’s knackered. He’s not allowed to miss any shows, and every spare moment is spent rehearsing special material for the award ceremony.




On the way to the theatre I heard a woman, rather appropriately, singing Uptown Girl and suddenly started wondering whether the Pet Shop Boys’ dark, sardonic West End Girls was a typically English response to that somewhat perky American song. Seconds later, we walked into a cafe and, just as we sat down, Uptown Girl started playing, loudly, on the radio.




Chris was absolutely wonderful in The Prom. It’s a light, fluffy piece with a shed load of heart about a young girl who wants to take her girlfriend to a school prom, and, as such, it has shades of Everyone’s Talking About Jamie about it. The Americans certainly know how to put a musical together and those old timer actors in the cast certainly knew how to sell a joke and a number. It was a hugely entertaining and diverting evening and the crowd, particularly the younger ones, went mental for it. I noticed afterwards that some of them were dressing like the lead characters and wearing corsages on their arms.




We went backstage afterwards for a quick hug and a congratulations before wending our way back to the financial district, feet aching from all the walking we’ve been doing today.