NaBloPoMo Day 2 Seeing Sunset Blvd with the book club

Admittedly I'm sandbagging with these NaBloPoMo blog posts. It's due to my perfectionist compulsion to maximize my chances of "one post a day for a whole month" success and the reality of my incredibly overwhelmed life right about now. 

I saw this Andrew Lloyd Webber revival on Broadway a month ago and I'm being clear about that so no one thinks I'm out of the loop re: what everybody is talking about in Chelsea. "The gays love Sunset Boulevard" and that is a direct quote. 

I went to the show with my middle-aged ladies book club. Ok fine, in the moment, my cool factor was minimal at best but I'm not about to bring that up in this blog post. 

So, I swanned into the performance with my posse and we took our seats that were. Not great. We were way up in a balcony. 

Plopped in the seat to my left was a 20-something guy and seated in the row in front of him was his.. friend? boyfriend? Unclear and irrelevant. I guess they couldn't get seats next to each other so they picked the next best option. I say all this to say that I was sitting next to the one guy and directly diagonally behind the other guy, who was in my line of sight the entire time.

This set up turned my not great seat into the best in the house. I realized this during the opening solo of the star of the show, Nicole Scherzinger. She got up on that stage and belted out a booming number filled every crevice of the place with max virtuosity. And the guy in front sobbed a little bit and I saw the tears trickling across his cheeks.

His friend behind grabbed his shoulder in solace. And in that moment the impact of the performance became all the more raw and real. It made me appreciate the talent on that stage. 

This full on appreciative feeling lasted the entire performance run time. Whenever Nicole sang something difficult and nailed the shit out of it, the guy in front would thow both his hands up in the air like, OMG, did you see what she just did there? Other times, he would do a sort of fist pump.

The pure joy of being there, in that moment in that theater just rolled off of him and infected everyone around. I forgot about my not great seats and everything else just being in the proximity of the action and reaction and just all of it. I love broadway. And I love maybe even more the people who love broadway.