| Issue #30, October 20, 2006 |
review: the times they are a changin’
By Dan Rattiner
On Wednesday October 11, at 2 p.m., I took the Jitney into New York City from Bridgehampton to see the Broadway Show The Times They Are A’ Changin’ in performance at the Brooks-Atkinson Theatre at 8 that evening. This is a musical featuring the songs of Bob Dylan and the choreography of Twyla Tharp. Tharp did a fabulous job three years ago making a Broadway show out of the songs of East Ender Billy Joel. I was looking forward to it.
At 3, heavy rains began to beat down on the roof of our coach. We slowed. I realized that I had forgotten an umbrella.
Around 3:30 p.m., with the heavy rain slowing the coach, the man sitting in front of me turned around to show me a CNN News bulletin that had showed up on his Blackberry.
AIRPLANE HITS BUILDING IN MANHATTAN, it read.
He had a worried expression on his face.
“I have no idea,” I said.
At this point, we were at about exit 40 on the LIE and moving smartly. I called my girlfriend on my cell phone.
“I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “I’ve been on the treadmill.”
“Turn on the TV,” I said. “If you learn anything, call me. But I may be late getting in. Or maybe not at all.”
“Okay.”
We passed a sign reading TRAFFIC MOVING WELL TO EXIT 34. That seemed reassuring. Or else they didn’t know what they were doing. Again.
By this time, a number of the passengers in the middle of the coach, alerted to the problem, kept looking worriedly at the man in front of me. He continually released updated bulletins, some of which corrected information in earlier bulletins.
It had hit a 20 story building in Manhattan. It might have been a helicopter. It might not have been a helicopter. The building was 50 stories and it was on fire. It was on the East Side. It was at 72nd Street and York. It was a residential building called the Belaire. It was 42 stories and it was a small plane. No reason to think it was a terrorist attack. They were fighting the fire.
My sister lives at 81st and York. I called her to see if she was all right.
“I’m fine. It’s crazy here. Everything’s blocked off. Where are you?” I told her. “You’ll never get into the city and if you do you’ll never get up Third Avenue. Michael is not coming home yet. He’s staying in Westchester for a while.”
The man in front of me had somehow acquired on his Blackberry a list of everybody who lived at the Belaire. I went down the list with him. The only person I knew from the building list was Marvin Shanken, who owns Cigar Aficianado Magazine. But I don’t know him well enough to call him. Hopefully he was all right.
To my surprise, we finished the rest of the drive into the city normally. The driver, who has a radio up front, turned it up loud so everyone could hear. It was a charter airplane, not a terrorist attack. Two people were on board, both now presumed dead. Only four were injured in the building. All the authorities were there.
Coming up Third Avenue, I had peered down 72nd Street to see any tall building on fire, but by that time, it was already out, according to WINS. The driver asked if it was okay for him to turn the radio off and we said yes. Emergency over.
Getting off the Jitney, I quickly found a man in a baseball cap selling umbrellas. He, however, did not himself have an umbrella. I bought one, and tipped him. He was soaked to the skin. I sploshed the three blocks to our apartment all right, but the rains were still pouring down.
We tried for ten minutes to get a cab in front of our apartment building, and then gave up and took the Fifth Avenue coach downtown, getting off at 47th Street to slog east through the hawkers, puddles, tourists and theatergoers for four blocks to the theatre. We were soaked when we got there.
The show was not much. People jumped around. The songs that Dylan is famous for are all the hippie protest songs from the late 60s, but Tharp had widened her net and many of the songs from his repertoire were country western songs of no great consequence, or others that never went anywhere. The plot for some reason had nothing to do with anything. It was set amidst a traveling circus with the owner and master of ceremony a cruel tyrant abusing his performers. It seemed to be set in the year 1870 or so. The tyrant’s son was there and the owner slapped him around, too. He also forced his affections on a female assistant. His son was conflicted. What a bum this old guy was. It was great when he got beaten up in the end. The circus acts were terrific. And the choreography was stunning. Tharp is a great choreographer.
“You know what?” I said, as we flowed with the crowd out into the downpour. “I thought it was like a sequel. You know, they do JAWS and its huge, and then they do JAWS 2 and it’s a flop.”
“Well, it’s still in previews. They could still fix it.” She looked out into the street. “I think we should get a subway on Eighth Avenue and just head on uptown to wherever it goes to get out of this mess.”
“You don’t think we could get a cab? You think just because all the theatres just let out, a plane crashed into a building, everybody’s soaked and there’s floods everywhere there’s going to be a problem getting a cab?”
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