Times Square!!

Me, with my BFF, on Times Square. TIMES SQUARE. On November 13, 2009, after having spent an unbelievable couple of hours watching Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig on stage in A Steady Rain. They were amazing... they had the Chicago dialect down quite well; you'd probably never guess.

Until the show was over, of course. When the lights came back up, they were both still on stage and told us they were raising money for a particular charity... and that most shows auctioned off a piece of the stage, but since the set was rather spare for this play, they couldn't do that... so the two of them BEGAN UNBUTTONING THEIR SHIRTS to reveal their undershirts, and said they'd sign the undershirts and give them to the highest bidder.

Why am I not rich? I want to know this.

Anyway, they were speaking in their own dialects for this last part, which I enjoyed very much because we got to hear them talking as themselves. They congratulated the audience for having turned off their cell phones; they said they were delighted to realize they'd gotten through the entire show without a single phone ringing. Heck, I didn't just turn mine to vibrate, I turned it OFF. There just isn't an emergency that can't wait until I get out of the theater.

The show itself was very gritty, hard-edged and ugly... the characters were not particularly nice people, and I wouldn't take a kid to this show for anything. Very rough. But totally well-played by these two incredible actors. I was thrilled to my core to be there.