Culture For The Non-Cultured

On the weekends, I try to experience New York City as if I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tourist on one of those ubiquitous double-decker buses.  This attitude is tempered, of course, with the knowledge of one who is lucky enough to call herself a New Yorker.

This is what is known as a “staycation,” staying in your own city and experiencing your local surroundings.

Anyway, my Staycation started on Friday night, when I rode the Staten Island Ferry to Staten Island and back.  A fun ride, with a gorgeous view of the Manhattan buildings and Statue of Liberty.

Hmmmmmm, the Statue of Liberty.

Gotta love that lady.  

Did you know that that famous poem — “”Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — on the Statue of Liberty was written by Emma Lazarus, a Portugese Jewish woman?  I learned that once on the Circle Line Tour (on a different, highly-recommended staycation).

And then last night I went to the small, but reliably good, T. Shreiber Studio with a fun group from Culture for the Non-Cultured Meetup for a double-billing of Christopher Durang’s The Actor’s Nightmare and Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound.

‘Twas much fun.

The Actor’s Nightmare is about George, who thinks he is an accountant.  He is forced into a play to replace a sick actor, but has no idea of what the play or his role in it, and becomes increasingly nervous as an executioner’s sword begins to look all too life-like.  

At first, I loved The Actor’s Nightmare.  The lead actor is goofily charismatic, and the whole idea of being thrust onto a stage without knowing the lines such the stuff of nightmares that it was fun to see someone else going through it.

However, I think I would have enjoyed it more had I known more of the playwright styles it referenced throughout.  

It felt a little like I was on the outside of an inside joke, but I still found it enjoyable.

The Real Inspector Hound is a play-within-a-play about two theater critics who watch a murder mystery that turns a little too real.

It was great fun, with one ambitious critic — he wants to become the lead critic instead of playing second fiddle — and a lusty critic — he wants one of the actresses in the play they are watching.

The play they are watching is a badly-acted, badly-staged mystery.

And then it gets all sort of fantastical, with the critics becoming actors in the play and more shots are fired and …

Well, that’s enough spoiler, eh?  Go see it — it’s playing at the T. Schreiber Studio until June 15 ….

And go out for dinner, too, willya?  Yay: A Staycation!