Silver Bells and Next To Normal

Please don't think that my husband is boring or my son and daughters freaks (hmm maybe--or shits--definitely not)

One of my favorite but nearly forbidden activities is to go to Broadway shows, good Broadway shows. There is something about them that is different than any other show in any other venue. Most of the theatres are small, and regardless of your seat (except extreme side seats) are good, Mezzanine and Orchestra….well pretty much dreams. You don’t have to see many of these shows in any venue to note that the actors pay attention to the orchestra seated persons, and the balcony get the bottom of heads. That being said, on Broadway, the faces are clear, the movements viewable, and even perhaps the few mistakes more obvious.

I don’t often have an extreme hankering for a show, but “Next to Normal” had become a bit of a passion. The score is nearly flawless, the potential amazing. Thus, when my daughter called to say that it was closing at the end of the year, I immediately began looking at my schedule and checking out the frequent flyer potential to make sure that this Patricia found her way to NYC and into that theatre. An extra bonus of course is that 3 of my kids live there and seeing them, especially in their digs is a treat.

Chrissy and Kate and Isaiah and I had drinks and dinner at a restaurant very conveniently located to the theatre, where I had had the wonderful experience of spilling an entire bottle of red wine all over the floor the previous visit when Jude Law was sitting in a booth directly next to us. In fairness to me, I don’t think it was my fault, but there we go, it was my elbow.

On this occasion, all went well. We had a wait, but it was fun, and fun to talk with the kids. I had been with Chris for about an hour prior in the freezing windy cold, shopping for potential Christmas gifts OUTDOORS, before retreating into a high-end mall not far from the restaurant. I had requested two Dali sketches and Chris one or two sculptures, and we enjoyed the moment with the Holiday lights and the Dali Sketches around us.

Dinner was fine, great to be with family….and then the show. Very sad that it should be closing as it is a real gem. The venue is perfect in small theatre, and great staging. It is both funny and tragic, and real. And the score is a dream. Since I am a Sondheim fanatic, and this is hardly Sondheim, I am really giving in to a change. One of the finer things about the experience was having an actress daughter on either side leaning forward watching every move from the stage. Both of them had seen the original cast; thus I was eager to hear comparisons. Agreed by both, the originals were very different, but neither was “better”, just different. They were pleased.

This is a tough show. There is more pain than most, and many of us have experienced something similar, though loss of a child needlessly is particularly chilling when it might have been avoided if you knew just enough to fight the system. Most of us don’t know how, but that only makes the loss more difficult from which to heal. “Next To Normal” boldly looks at this tragedy, the “invisibility” of the surviving child, and the pain and dysfunction of the family as a result of it all. I like comedy and happy endings. Any one who has worked in AIDS since the early 80’s is definitely a fan of comedy and comic relief. But, when you find a score as beautifully woven as this one, and a story so real that you can feel it…..well there you have it. Put the great actors in place and it should go on.

At some point, I wanted to stand up at the end, and say…”hire my kids. Chris the mother, Kate the daughter…. they know this story. They are talented, they are beautiful singers”. But it is after all Broadway, and the public is fickle, and oh, who listens to a mother anyway.

So, the city sidewalks with all the holiday time will keep loving the feet of my kids tramping down to their many jobs, work out rooms and haunts, and I will continue to watch for fabulous new shows. Seems like you have to find them fast!

World AIDS Day 2010

Jeffrey Wayne Davies never had a memorial service, a funeral, or even the big party we had planned. He died in January 1983, after having been diagnosed with GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) in May, 1982. Jeffrey had been a soul mate through my graduate school years and attended my graduation from social work school at Boston University in 1973. He and a band of nutty Gilbert and Sullivan freaks, some of whom continue to be close friends, had sung and danced our way through the 70's, spent long nights talking and eating at Jeffrey's flat and restaurant 9 Knox Street, and supported each other. Jeffrey gave us this space. Though he had an active social life outside of our world, he was always there for us when we needed him.

While he was dying, though none of the medical establishment at the time would really name "dying", we gathered around, flying in and out of New York or taking time off work in New York, to be at his bedside, to take him home, and to try to make a plan for him. Some of those heroes, Jim and Bill and others are also dead from AIDS, others, Patty Shay, John Youngblood and Albert Sherman, to name a few, fearlessly cared for Jeffrey, and helped him out of the hospital against medical advice for his last ride home to Wales where his beloved Aunties waited for him. He lived long enough to say goodbye to his family and was conscious and out of pain at the end of his life, they told us.

Each year at World AIDS Day, I try to remember some aspect of Jeffrey's relationship with me that made a difference in my life. I made that fateful promise to him, that I would continue to be involved in AIDS care until there is a cure; thus, obviously I have had a lot of years of remembering. Perhaps this year, I just want to remember that for such an amazing human being, who was full of faults, full of magnetism, but filled with love, we never had that memorial. And though we have made huge progress towards preventing infection, we still have so many people who are afraid to seek testing and care.

Maybe in 2013 we can celebrate Jeffrey's death and maybe there will be a cure.