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A Solo Journey into Where The Affair Began.

by root-knowyorkcity
written by root-knowyorkcity

A Solo Journey into Where The Affair Began.

The main character Noah is a New York City schoolteacher and budding novelist with a wife of twenty years and four children. Alison is a young waitress and wife from Montauk, trying to piece her life back together in the wake of a tragedy. The provocative drama unfolds in Montauk and is shot at locations in and around the town.

The Affair is a popular streaming television show that explores the emotional effects of an extramarital relationship aided and abetted by the scenic and gossipy backdrop of Montauk, a fishing village turned hipster surfer resort at the wilder extremes of New York’s Long Island. This is my journey to where it all began…

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EntertainmentReviews

Open Throat

by Mimi Jacobson
written by Mimi Jacobson

Open Throat

Little Island Amphitheater

July 10-14, 202

“I have never eaten a person before.”

Unlike Deep Throat, there’s nothing to see or hear here. 

The show, adapted from Henry Hoke’s 2003 novel of the same name, may be sold out (God knows why) but never fear. Just meander on the circuitous path up Little Island at dusk, enjoy the blood red sunset and pause indefinitely at the third turn which directly overlooks the Aph stage. But make sure to arrive early. Welcome to not-quite Drag Queen story hour about a queer mountain lion in the (West) Hollywood Hills.

“My mouth opened and I touched the man,” says the person in Crocodile Dundee garb, complete with safari hat. The sole other occupant, strikingly clad in black, appears across the sparse white-floored oblong stage and suddenly flips on his back legs up, spread eagle.

I applaud Diane Von Furstenberg and Barry Diller for creating this marvelous and magical public space/manufactured park with the best outdoor theater on the island. I welcome their programming choices and the chances their funding doles out to alternate voices. 

“Is it a boy or a girl?”, the little child swinging from the railing next to me asked. I looked askance to their parent for a response. This play/reading is NSFW and may not be for children.

 

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Food $ DrinkReviews

Frenchette Bakery

by root-knowyorkcity
written by root-knowyorkcity

Frenchette Bakery

At the Whitney

Mon, Weds,Thurs, Sat, Sun 10:30am-6pm

😀😀😀

“Table for One, please”

At the Whitney’s new Frenchette Bakery, I figured I would give solo sober dining a try…at brunch! The light-filled space looks out to the High Line above and to the museum interior, which is now partially shielded with a floor-to-ceiling scaffold artfully potted in muted terra cottas with the occasional pop of chartreuse—wish that’s what I was drinking! 😉

“Table for one, please”, I say a little too forcefully, overcompensating for having to utter those words the first time in 7 years. The host smiles at my bold request and leads me to a high top with views both ways. He compliments my coat, which happens to match the aforementioned bright-hued pots and the color palette of Harold Cohen’s 1970s AI art generator AARON now on view on Floor 8. I order a skim latte ($5.50) and peruse the crowd. Tables with tourists, families, and older art patrons—not the scene, but the latte is rich and arrives in a sizable classic French tea cup. I feel like Alice in Wonderland. The menu focuses on pastries but has pizzettes, soups, sandwiches, and various salads. The chicories include pepitas, squash, and goat cheese, and almost tempts me to order. I will be back. Although I miss the 8th-floor cafe terrace (still closed for renovations for an upcoming installation), I could make solo Saturdays at Member Mornings a thing. 

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Food $ DrinkReviews

El Nico

by root-knowyorkcity
written by root-knowyorkcity

El Nico

288 N 8th St Williamsburg, Brooklyn NY 

😀😀😀😀

“Who knew a view overlooking the BQE could be so romantic?”

That’s what I thought to myself as I sat at the roomy bar on the 11th Floor of a semi-youth hostel (think Freehand) at the not-yet-one-year-old El Nico restaurant. After a night in of packing up my apartment for a renovation, I googled “tacos” for some food fun. I vetoed Vera Cruz (no good since 2005), Dos Toros (a chain), and Birria (better for take-out or a quick bite), but was intrigued by newcomer El Nico and headed out into the wintry night in search of a crowd and good Mexican….

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EntertainmentPolitical PopReviewsUptown/Downtown

NYC Ballet: 75th Anniversary Season-The Evolution

by root-knowyorkcity
written by root-knowyorkcity

David H Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC

🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

““No pants here! NYC ballet stays on trend for spring.”

Justin Peck – Act I 

Is this called a “Threesome?”

Get ready for the next Skims ad: Leotards and pastels. Watch out for the woman in gray underwear and a black crop top. Prima ballerina is on alert as the John Meyer wannabe in purple unitard can’t keep his hands to himself. I know the florescent type gained headway circa the Jessica Simpson era but paired this lavender version over a white turtleneck says onesie and done.  

Tiler Peck – Act II

Jewels has found it’s 4th act: Sapphires!!

Tiler brings it with quick tempo catch and release, foot-loose and fancy-free. Costumes by Zac Posen captivate. Catch her while you can!

Alex Ratmansky- Act III

Odessa was perhaps the most traditional piece it shows both haunting and ethereal in its duality. Dancers cavorted in red shadow, while couples in the foreground danced in baroque. You could really tell each choreographer without even looking at the program. Tiler Peck is clearly pulling together all her years as a principal dancer into one stunning masterpiece. 

This trio of performances is a treat!

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LeisureReviews

Edith’s Diary

by root-knowyorkcity
written by root-knowyorkcity

Dry January Must Reads: Edith’s Diary, Patricia Highsmith, 1977

“Blast From the Past: Girls Gone Mad?”

Staff Pick, McNally Jackson, Williamsburg

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It is a cautionary tale of suburban malaise in the vein of Hulu’s Fleishman’s In Trouble in its most recent incarnation. Both Lizzie Caplan’s character and Claire Dane’s show marks of Edith’s issues. Add a dash of the Real Housewives with non-stop cocktail hour and you are in for a wild read. But female hysteria/psychosis tales date further back than the 1950s unhappy housewives and even before Flaubert’s 1890s seminal work of females gone mad, Madam Bovary. Where Highsmith succeeds more than any other in this genre is that she keeps us guessing, “Who is the crazy one?” up until the final dastardly death. 

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EntertainmentReviews

Hell’s Kitchen

by root-knowyorkcity
written by root-knowyorkcity

Hell’s Kitchen: Just say “Hells Yeah!!

🤩🤩

“Mayor Giuliano’s gonna clean all this up”

The Public Theater through Jan 14, 2024 The Schubert Theater, Broadway starting March 28, 2024



A last-minute cancellation and AmEx preferred seating scored me a coveted ticket to the final performance of Alicia Keys’s acclaimed new hit. Squeezed front and center between gaggles of young white women and aging patrons, I wondered if this was really her fan base or just the ones privileged enough to get tickets. 

Replete with 90s style and dance moves, this show brings it back in living color. Go for the supremely innovative new arrangements of Alicia Keys’ greatest hits and come back for more to watch the ensemble cast hip hop hooray and ho their way through her catalog, as they bust a move with the Roger Rabbit, the Kid ‘n Play and the Hammer Dance.  The young Ali, played by Alicia Keys look-alike Maleah Joi Moon, sings like a powerhouse while her mother’s jaw-dropping numbers steal the show. Shoshanna Bean as Jersey is one to watch in this hard-to-cast role as a middle-aged single white mom who can dance opposite Brandon Victor Dixon as Davis, the piano-playing Ghost Dad. Yet, this dead-beat dad’s vocal stylings on Keys’ classic, “Fallin’” are both fun for a mini parent-trap plot and so smooth that you must return to hear it again.

Is this suitable for children? I thought this would be the perfect inspirational, make your dreams come true relate-able musical biopic to which my high schoolers could relate. Single-parent drama, young love. Her mom’s comedic opening number about her bratty, love-struck daughter having seventeen on the brain was quickly eclipsed by underage sex and repeated swearing by even the adults. Go for the song, dance, and full band artfully showcased on set in stacked MTV video-style open stage wings. You can skip the teen Alicia’s inner monologue part of the libretto, but nevertheless, I can’t wait to catch it for a second and third time when it comes to Broadway. 

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EntertainmentReviews

Saltburn (2023):

by root-knowyorkcity
written by root-knowyorkcity

Saltburn (2023): Now streaming on Amazon Prime

Review: Mimi Jacobson

🤩🤩

Emerald Fennel makes a gay sex movie.

“What do all these schools teach you? Latin, water polo and child abuse”

Barry Keough

If Jacob Elordi, who plays the old monied campus playboy Felix, were not fresh off The Kissing Booth trilogy, perhaps this movie would get more traction. Although Irish newcomer Barry Keough (Dunkirk, The Banshees of Inisherin) is a believable and sympathetic prep school boy on scholarship, I can’t help but envision Paul Mescal in this role. 

The early 2000s soundtrack is a fitting treat, with Cold War Kids “Hang Me Out To Dry” blaring in the background as the boys dip into the pool at night for something other than swimming. The lyrics “You’ve hung me out too too many times” clearly foreshadow. Spoiler Alert ahead!!

Where Fennel’s award winning prior feature Promising Young Woman gave us a fantastical ending to a Me Too encounter, Saltburn fails when it looks at what happens when in the beginning you love some bully and an elusive lothario from the start. I’m a sucker for the scholarship kid in any prep school movie as the movie morphs into a sibling love triangle, this kid and the movie dig their own grave. Emerald Fennel then veers into Yellow Jackets territory as they roast a pig, don deer horns, and then practically engage in necrophilia. I would also like to say that no one would ever eat their own period blood unless maybe Venetia was played by Mia Goth. If women could be canceled…

The movie does capture the early 2000s zeitgeist with Katy Perry kissing a girl and liking it. Another pool party scene, where all the young men take off all their shirts and the millennial anthem “Kids” plays in the background rings true to the characters, the scene, and the setting: “I’m feeling rough, I’m feeling raw, I’m in the time of my life. So make some music, make some money, find some models for wives.” And the wardrobe does include some coveted fashion pieces: can I please get a pair of Felix’s red/white/black tricolor Ray-Bans?

Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) and Richard E. Grant (Girls) are hotter than the hydrangeas as the wealthy parents, and the soundtrack wins again when the dad breaks out the karaoke machine and expertly belts out, “Applebottom Jeans, Get Low Low Low Low Low Low Low.”

Saltburn? More like Slowburn. This movie is an outsider-insider trope, a Brideshead Revisited for the 2006 set. I’d rather watch Call Me By Your Name:

🤩🤩

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EntertainmentPolitical PopReviews

Welcome to Fun Home: Not Quite Drag Queen Story Hour But Definitely Denounced by DeSantis

by root-knowyorkcity
written by root-knowyorkcity

“He was gay and killed himself and I was gay and became a lesbian cartoonist.” – Allison Bechdel, Fun Home

Review. Mimi Jacobs

“He was gay and killed himself and I was gay and became a lesbian cartoonist.” – Allison Bechdel, Fun Home.

The final Republican Presidential candidate debate before the Iowa caucuses had Nikki Haley head to head with DeSantis while toeing the line between patients’ rights, a parents’ purview and teacher autonomy on all such topics LGBTQIA+ women. This brought me back to this week’s 10 year reunion revival of Fun Home at Joe’s Pub. Will Niki Haley support the show’s female author or ban the comic book version from school libraries?  Can this piece survive the woke wars or will it be getting it from both sides?

It’s not every day that you get to see a Tony award-winning Broadway show return to its original off-broadway roots with the original cast, so I took my bets and blindly bought the last 2 tix available for Fun Home’s return home, a benefit for Outright International. 

When the original child star of the cast zoomed in, I was unsure what to think. But then she ended with, “I hope you can feel my heart say ‘hi.’ And as cheesy as that is, you could not help but feel the love. The entire audience erupted in applause and the show had not even begun. 

Some standouts: the new crop of kids 8–10 years old performing the wry Fun Home commercial to an updated tune of the Jackson 5’s ABC; plus Joan, the GF, for comedic timing; and Andrew Carmellini never fails to get it right: eat the bitter greens salad which is anything but, with pears, hazelnuts and red wine vinaigrette. Come for the salad. Enjoy the show.

Does it stand the test of time? I came across a PDF of the original comic book on which Allison based the musical on the shared drive for English teachers at school and pondered those same questions. When I flipped through the book, the drawing of a college years scene with two women naked in bed, a full frontal of Allison’s breasts, I asked, perplexed, “Do/did we teach this? And if so, which class and grade was subject to this?” Now what’s wrong with breasts you ask? Women can nurse and even be topless in public in NY. I still feel a move to Florida coming on. But, as Tucker Carlson would say, I’m just asking questions. “Where’s my bronzing stick?”, indeed.

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EntertainmentReviews

The RunDown The Golden Globes Edition (2024) Movies: Passages, The Anatomy of a Fall, and Maestro

by root-knowyorkcity
written by root-knowyorkcity

Review. Mimi Jacobs

“Bisexuality Is All The Rage.”

Your weekend before the Golden Globes would not be complete without the rundown on a trio of films featuring how you too can double the pleasure, but perhaps not double the fun. I give you the following:

🤩🤩🤩 for each

In theatrical release and streaming on demand (2023)

Passages

Streaming on Amazon, December 2023

Apparently, everyone in Gen Z is queer or in a threesome as we discover a trio of handsome Frenchie artists torn between friendship and marriage. The chick and hot schoolteacher played by Adèle Exarchopoulos, a cross between Ana de Armas and Mandy Moore, is the breakout star of Ira Sachs latest and greatest film. The tone is set from the get-go: Let’s just show gratuitous sex. But don’t get me wrong, this is the hottest gay sex you will see all year.

Maestro

Streaming on Netflix, December 2023

It’s a movie about a prominent and brilliant real-life bisexual run amok that…surprise!…turns into a cancer movie! Oscar material indeed for Cary Mulligan at the envy of Bradley Cooper. 

Anatomy of a Fall

Movies On Demand, December 2023

Justine Triet brings us the best foreign language film of the year with her quintessential piece of French cinema. The opening sequence of the tennis ball making it’s slow, bouncing descent down the steep attic stairs portends the Anatomy of the Fall from the title. While the drama heightens at every step as she deftly deploys music at every steps to portray the cacophony that consumes the lead characters of mother and son. From repetition of the blaring instrumental version of 50 cent’s P.I.M.P. to the child’s raucous moves as he practices piano as he fears the trial, Triet brings us a suspenseful and cinematic masterpiece with a bisexual at the center who is either having a bad moment or doing bad things—you decide. 

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