Hello my beloveds! Exciting news, Ollie Olliveen just graduated from university!! And as a grad gift, my mama took me on a 6 day vacation to New York City to fulfill my theater kid dreams and be all touristy and shit, and I am here today to tell y'all about my trip and also give some reviews of the shows I saw!! Prepare for a long one, I do not know how to shut up about theater.

We went to NYC having already gotten tickets to 3 shows: & Juliet, Merrily We Roll Along, and The Play That Goes Wrong (Off-Broadway), plus tickets to museums and touristy attractions. We landed in Jersey and made it to Manhattan on Friday, but the adventure begins on Saturday!

Saturday

We had tickets to go to the top of the Empire State Building, then tix to & Juliet that night. We strolled around to kill time before our entry time for the Empire State Building and ended up wandering into the Public Library, where they had some really cool historical thingies on display, including a CELEBRITY SIGHTING!! Original winnie the pooh and friends plushies!!! Holy shit its them its the little guys!!! After that we headed up the Empire State Building, woah that building can tall! Very nice very touristy yippee

Then we vibed for a bit in preparation to go see BROADWAY SHOW #1:

& JULIET

Since I am a documented Romeo and Juliet fanatic, my mom got me tickets to go see & Juliet, which, for those who don't know, is a jukebox musical about an alternate version of Romeo and Juliet where only Romeo dies and Juliet survives, and what Juliet would do next. All the music is late 90s-2010s pop (all written by Max Martin) and it is a very campy and silly goofy time. It's also queer as fuckkk, happy pride month to May only.

The thing about & Juliet, too, is that it is a jukebox musical with extremely recognizable songs, which means that its just one of those shows that attracts a lot of non-theater people who are here to see a single Broadway show and want a safe choice, which is fun because you all KNOW I want people to see and appreciate art that I love, but also we were seated in the middle of a cluster of normies who were VERY excited every time a song they recognized started (which was like once every 10 minutes) and as a result were VERY rowdy. Not that disruptive, their fun was infectious enough, but a little sillay.

AND, this show was the first ever time I stagedoored!! (for non-broadway ppl, stagedooring is when the actors come out after the show and sign autographs and chat with fans etc). I am VERY shy and was VERY nervous BUT!! I was basically legally obligated to do it because part of the reason we went to go see this show in the first place was so that I could get my Romeo Monatgue costume replica signed!! (yes, I am THAT insane about Romeo that I hand sewed and bedazzled a replica of the jacket he wears in this musical. I made a shrine to him for a reason). So, I went to the stage door and got to show off my jacket to the actors, which was nervewracking but i'm so happy I did it! I got Oliver Tompsett (Shakespeare), Maya Boyd (Juliet), David Bedella (Lance), Justin David Sullivan (May), Ben Jackson Walker (Romeo), and Makai Hernandez (Francois understudy we saw) to sign it!! Ben lost his mind, he could not stop complimenting it which was SUCH an honor. I brought a black sharpie for them to sign with but my dumb ass didn't notice that the Montague jacket HAS A HOLE IN THE POCKET so the sharpie became lost forever and the actors had to sign with the silver sharpies they use for programs. The signatures are kinda hard to see as a result but I know they're there. It's my little secret treasure.

Sunday

On Sunday my mom and I decided to explore the wonderful world of Broadway Rush Tickets. Some shows sell tickets same-day for cheap, and since we were there and when would we have this opportunity again we decided to rush 2 shows, one on Sunday and one on Tuesday, since we had nothing else going on. My Sunday choice for show #2 was... Back to the Future! I am also documented as being insane in the head about Back to the Future the Musical (please refer to the January 3rd entry of my diary) so it was my obvious choice. My mom thought it was going to be dumb and campy but when has that ever stopped us so we lined up at the box office an hour before they opened and snagged two $40 tickets for a matinee!

In between picking up the tickets and showtime, we decided to visit the Museum of Broadway (wow shocker I would be interested in this). The museum pretty much documents Broadway's history chronologically from its beginnings up to today. It was super rad!! Y'all know i'm a geek for this kind of thing, and they had a tech section in addition to all the props and costumes and actor/director/composer exhibits which I loved! 10/10 highly recommend if you're in NYC.

Then we scurried over to SHOW #2:

BACK TO THE FUTURE

And campy and dumb it was NOT! I am absolutely correct about being insane in the head about this show because it RULES. THE CAR FUCKING FLIES AT THE END, DUDE!! It flies OVER the audience and does a 360 degree turn UPSIDE DOWN with Casey Likes and Roger Bart INSIDE IT then TURNS AROUND and flies away. HOW DID THEY DO THAT (I actually have a theory... but I'm choosing not to spoil the magic here ok). The show's special effects in general are just insane!! Even the car driving on the ground was amazing to see. They had it so when the car is "driving", it is just kind of bobbing back and forth horizontally onstage while video projections both behind the car and onto a transparent scrim in front of it show speeding scenery and it looks incredible!! They really sell it in an artistic and believable way.

This show is so silly and Casey Likes (Marty) and Roger Bart (Doc) steal the show. They bouce off of each other so well and there were several moments of them just improv-ing off of each other and bantering, just totally interrupting the scene to be funny and charismatic together and it totally worked. At one point Roger goofed so hard, Casey broke onstage and they had to pause to wait for him to stop laughing, it was totally adorable and I love live theater. I am so normal about this show.

(Also I think most people know the plot of Back to the Future but since I provide mini synopses for every other show, Back to the Future is about an 80s teen named Marty who accidentally travels back in time in a time travelling car and accidentally interferes with his parents' first meeting. Watch the movie I am crazy in the head about it.)

I also stagedoored this one (I am so brave now), then we got ramen for dinner (if you're ever in Times Square, go to Ichiran Ramen. Trust me on this one) then just vibed for the rest of the night!

Monday

On Monday we once again had our day already planned. We had tickets to the Natural History Museum during the day, then tickets to the Off-Broadway show The Play That Goes Wrong that night. We had already been to the Natural History Museum the first time we visited NYC in 2017 but I barely remembered it so we decided to go again to live out my Night in the Museum dreams. Concidentally, I found out on Monday that my former housemate who just moved to Vancouver (i miss you come back) was also in NYC at the same time and happened to be at the Met while I was at Natural History so we tried to meet up in Central Park and failed because she had to scurry off to her next planned thing before we could find each other :( but while I was waiting for her I got a very nice Central Park walk out of it. Very nice very pretty.

That night we went to an OFF-BROADWAY SHOW because I think they are very fun and underrated. We saw...

THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG

This show is so fun and funny, I really recommend it!! Its a slapstick comedy about amateur actors trying (and failing) to perform a murder mystery, and the physical gags and stuntwork is so good and funny (and the set is so cool!)! Plus it takes a lot of talent to be bad on purpose and the actors are just killing it. The whole show is excellently paced and the joke of "haha show bad" never gets old but just keeps gaining momentum the whole way through. The repeated gags with the crew coming onstage were also so good, its just such a well-done show. It feels unfair to compare it to the other shows I saw because its in a league of its own, there is nothing like it. Give Off-Broadway some love, this one deserves it.

Tuesday

Once again we had no show plans, and since I had tasted that rush ticket adrenaline we decided to do it again. We were planning on seeing The Great Gatsby, since the student tickets were $25, but I heard that it was a bit mediocre, and I saw that a reviewer I really respect said that Suffs was their 5 star pick of the current season so we decided to risk it all and rush Suffs, even though we didn't really know anything about it. We got rush tix for the 5th row for $40 each. We also met this guy in line who told us that he had seen EVERY SINGLE SHOW, plays and musicals, on Broadway right now and Suffs was the last one on his list (jesus christ). When I asked him which had been his favorite, he said The Outsiders (interesting...).

Suffs was in the evening, so before that we went to walk the High Line! The High Line is an old elevated train track that has been converted into a walking path/garden/art exhibition that travels down to lower Manhattan, and its been on my mom's bucket list so we walked the whole thing. It's super pretty and peaceful, I also highly recommend. We were also planning on hitting the Whitney Museum, which is at the end of the High Line, but we were dumb and didn't check to see that it's closed on Tuesdays :( so we sped over to the Guggenheim instead. My mom does not like modern art museums but always wants to give them a shot. I thought the Guggenheim was mediocre but it had a very cute exhibit made entirely by elementary schoolers that I really enjoyed (plushie art from it below)

Then it was time for...

SUFFS

Suffs is about the Suffragette (sorry, Suffragist) movement in the USA, specifically the activism of Alice Paul. And the show was incredible!! It's been getting a lot of comparisons to Hamilton, they're both contemporary musicals about historical events with some kind of gimmick in the casting - Suffs is an all-female (& a nonbinary actor) cast, and all the male roles are played by women. Because of all the comparisons, one of my friends shared that she was skeptical about it being "cringy", cheesy, and just riding Hamilton's popularity. But I am so happy to report that the show does not feel that way at all! It was such a well-defined piece of theater that knew exactly what it was. Let me tell you, I cried three times, and the first time was like a third of the way through act 1! It was so impactful and also the songs were bangers, so. Fav performances include Grace McLean who played President Woodrow Wilson (lmao) (slay), Hannah Cruz who played Inez Milholland (SOBBING), and obv Shaina Taub who played Alice and ALSO wrote and composed the whole thing!! Holy shit!!

This show was so worth it and I 100% recommend it to everybody everybody everybody. Holy shit. For like the first day after seeing it, when asked how it was all I could say was "holy shit".

Also, after the show I finally met up with my housemate at the Suffs stagedoor, who had seen Aladdin that same night! We only got to say hi for like a minute before she had to run back to her friend she was on vacation with, but it was so nice. I also stagedoored this one (so brave), and there was a much smaller crowd so I got to chat with the actors for realsies (AAAA!). I'm really bad at that so I just inserted myself into the conversations of this very chatty but cool guy I was standing with and he did all the talking. It's really crazy how friendly and real they are and they're just down to chat with you because they're so happy that you came, it's really sweet.

Wednesday

On Wednesday we had matinee tickets for Merrily We Roll Along, then initially planned for an early night so we were ready for our flight home the next morning. To be so honest, we were both very burnt out by this point, so a lazy day in the hotel with just the show to plan for seemed lovely... buuuuuuut...

I just could not stop thinking about that guy we met in line for Suffs, the one who had seen every single show there was to see and said The Outsiders was his favorite. I mean, come on, there is no better endorsement than that. He had infected my brain and now I had to see The Outsiders or I would regret it for the rest of my life. Soooooooooo... we got rush tix for the evening. You know what that means! TWO DOW SHAY! (and by that I mean two show day)

So, two dow shay show #1...

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG

For those who don't know, Merrily is about the friendship of three best friends over the course of 20 years, showing the destruction of their relationship when one of the friends starts prioritizing fame and fortune over art and community. But here's the catch... it's told in reverse chronological order, starting the show with their final parting of ways and ending the show with their meeting and a lot of optimism for the future. I think that out of all the shows we saw, this was the one with the most hype. Famous (good??) revival of a Sondheim flop starring Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe?? Yeah. But... I gotta say (please don't kill me) this one was not my favorite and the hype wasn't very real for me (I'm sorry Sondheim fans) (I still loved it I swear). My friends were the most excited for me to see this one but idk, it lacked a little for me. My friend who's also seen it said that their theory as to why I didn't love it as much as others is because the show isn't as techincally "impressive" or complex as the other shows, and since tech is my specialty that's what I felt was missing. But idk if I agree with that, I thought the tech complimented the show perfectly. I think I finally realized what was off for me: I just did not like the music. Like, I don't think I could recall any of the songs right now and none of them stood out to me as great. Sorry Sondheim.

Don't get me wrong thought, it was still fantastic even though I didn't like the music. I'm a little obsessed with the premise, its so good. Knowing how it ends just makes you more engrossed in finding out how everything got to that point and seeing everything pay off is sooo satisfying, so many little things that the characters do or mention in one scene come back and explain themselves in another chrologically earlier scene. The AUDIBLE gasp in the room when Charley says that ONE LINE in the very last scene when they're all kids (no spoilers but if you know you know) was insane. Also seeing Gussie's character arc happening in the backgroud was one of my favorite parts, shout out Krystal Joy Brown for being one of my favorite parts of the show. It's very well-written.

Post-Merrily, we met up with my mom's friend who was also in NYC (why was everybody I know in NYC at the same time as me. My uni's marching band was ALSO there and my uni is ACROSS THE COUNTRY), and after our hangout we pulled ourselves together for ONE LAST SHOW:

THE OUTSIDERS

Lesson learned from The Outsiders: always listen to recommendations from random strangers in rush ticket lines. We really saved the best for last, beause HOLY FUCK THIS ONE WAS MY FAVORITE BY FAR! Hands down one of the coolest pieces of live theater I've seen in my life. Best lighting design, best sound design (!!), amazing scenic design (the floor was gravel!! It was so cool!!) and ASTOUNDING choreography, just out of this world. Lighting and sound are specialties of mine, and the way this show was artistically pulled together by these actually blew my mind. For those why don't know, The Outsiders is based on a book which is about class gang wars among teenagers in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1967. The main character, Ponyboy, is a "greaser" AKA poor kid who is involved with a power struggle with the "Socs" AKA rich kids, and things escalate after he befriends a Soc girl named Cherry. The book is like a faux autobiography and the play conveys Ponyboy's narration beautifully, and the sound and lighting work together so harmoniously that I was losing my mind. The use of sound specifically in the scenes were there is violence between the gangs had me geeking out so hard, especially the strategic use of silence and muffled noise (and ringing in ears). It was a FULL sensory experience that had me grinning in the most serious and inapropriate moments, I just couldn't help it.

It also RAINED ONSTAGE (sorry, that is a spoiler. I can't help it I have to mention it). For like 5-10 minutes straight. Also the set was like this abandoned warehouse that fell apart gradually and had these really cool cars that drove a little and aaaaaaaa I'm such a nerd!! I also mentioned the choreo, which was out of this world and included a fight scene that is probably the best moment of theater I've seen in my life. JUST WOW!! This show better win the Best Musical Tony and also all the tech ones or else I'm gonna scream.

And that concludes my NYC trip! Final show ranking:

• #1: The Outsiders
• #2: Suffs
• #3: Back to the Future
• #4: The Play That Goes Wrong
• #5: Merrily We Roll Along
• #6: & Juliet

Remember that I am pitting a lot of bad bitches against each other and just because shows are ranked lower doesn't mean I didn't like them, because I loved ALL of these and my only regret is not seeing MORE (I really wanted to see Stereophonic and Cabaret, and maybe The Great Gastby too) but I'm not the guy from the Suffs line, I can't do it all.

Thank you for reading! Fun fact, the journey home from the hotel to the airport to the West Coast and the drive home took me a total of 19 hours! We got stuck in traffic for five hours!! Yuck!!