Had a few ‘disco years’ flashbacks recently when Dean and I spent a long weekend in New York City.
The first flashback was really the main reason for the trip. Dean’s a huge fan of Dolly Parton and wanted to see the Broadway version of ‘9 to 5’, for which Dolly wrote the music. You’ll remember the 1980 movie starring Dolly, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. I thought the movie was silly, simple fun. The musical was fun too…but not quite as much so. Dolly’s music was certainly excellent and Megan Hilty, who played Dolly’s role of Doralee, was dead-on. It’s just that the whole thing felt a little…flat. The plot of the musical is exactly the plot of the movie. Even most of the dialogue was verbatim, which in a way was kind of cute since you knew what was coming but…that was also kind of the problem. You knew what was coming. Exactly what was coming. Maybe if I hadn’t seen the movie I’d have enjoyed the musical a little more. All-in-all, though, I’d recommend it as an enjoyable night out. It’s closing this month on Broadway, but a national tour is planned. In the meantime, you should totally check out the soundtrack on cd or download.
The second flashback was by total happenstance. Dean had heard that a lot of the Broadway actors have dinner after the show at a restaurant called Joe Allen’s, so of course we had to go do some star gazing. Over delicious burgers and fries we saw, of all people…Marcia Wallace! Remember her from ‘The Bob Newhart Show’ (1972-78)? The show wasn’t really my thing, but my folks liked it. I do remember Marcia as one of the funniest things about the show. She looked just like herself…flaming red hair and all. She’d been sitting in the back (I guess the celebs who ‘want to be left alone’ always sit in the back), but we saw her as she was leaving. Good thing I watch ‘The Young and The Restless’, on which she’d recently done some guest star work, or I might not have made the connection.
The last flashback was on a guided tour of New York City movie locations, which I highly recommend. We saw all sorts of locations from ‘Friends’, ‘Enchanted’, ‘Men In Black’, ‘I Am Legend’, ‘The Cosby Show’ and on and on. The flashback came when we saw Lois Lane’s apartment building from the 1978 ‘Superman’ movie starring Christopher Reeve. I tell ya, the building didn’t look like much to me. but now Renee Zellweger has an apartment in it! The guide assured us that it’s very posh on the inside. It’s near Central Park, so it’s prime real estate. The guide mentioned that even in the 70s there is no freakin’ way a person could live there on a reporter’s salary…guess Lois was doing some serious moonlighting!
Anyway, good times…
