New York
Five Below and BTTF:TM Third Preview
There were two shows at the Winter Garden today - a matinee in the afternoon (2nd preview), and then an evening show later on (3rd preview) - but we only had tickets for the evening show, so we had most of the day free to explore the city.
More pics of the view from the hotel window. The cars look like little toys from this high up.
Mew kept seeing a big sign for a shop called Five Below on Thursday and Friday, and on Friday she realized it was above the shop itself, a few doors down from the Target we found on the first night. She'd heard a lot about Five Below online, so decided to make that the destination for today.
Five Below turned out to be a very cool shop! Here's a photo of all the cool things Mew bought from there (taken at the end of the day).
Mew: Although I was disappointed to only find a few of Cepia's "Versus World" blind bags in there (and none that I wanted), as they're supposed to be one of the main stockists for them. Oh well, finding all this great stuff made up for that!
After our shopping spree, we went to the Winter Garden an hour or two before the evening show started, and asked the people at the box office if they could print out our tickets for the next few shows.
Mew: We had E-tickets, but wanted physical ones to keep as souvenirs. As Mum said to them, "You can't put an email in a scrapbook!"
But you don't keep a scrapbook?
Mew: It's a figure of speech, dear.
Mew was excited to spot this Cats poster behind the counter, as it's her favourite musical.
Mew: The Winter Garden is where Cats made its Broadway debut back in 1982. As an extra bit of trivia, both BTTF theatres have a connection to Cats: the video was filmed at the Adelphi Theatre in 1998.
8 pm quickly rolled around and before we knew it, it was time for the third preview!
Tonight's cast board. This was the second performance for Joshua KA Johnson (covering Kevin Curtis), after making his debut at the matinee.
Here's one of the merch stalls that you pass by on the way to the auditorium. There's another one (with a great "Hill Valley General Store" sign, just like in the Adelphi) at the back of the auditorium, next to the bar, but sadly none of our pics of it came out very well.
I asked Mew to take a pic of me in this seat I found. :3
Tonight we were sitting up in the Mezzanine! This is basically the same as what we'd call the Dress Circle in England, except maybe a bit higher up than most Dress Circles are.
Mew: It was a bit too high and far away from the stage for my liking, but I'm glad we were able to try out both seating areas, if just for the experience. (Okay, so Mezzanine seats were all we could get for the Saturday evening show, but still!)
Mew: I have to share a funny difference I noticed between UK and US audiences. In the first scene with 1955 Doc, there's a joke where he's talking to "Mr. McDonald" on the phone, then goes "Fine, have it your way" and hangs up. Here in the UK that usually gets a complete dialtone response, but in the US that got a BIG laugh every night. I guess because Burger King doesn't use that slogan over here, the joke goes over a lot of UK fans' heads. But it was a big hit here on Broadway!
After the show, we went back to the hotel, Mew took pics of her stuff from Five Below (seen above), and then went to sleep after typing up some notes about the days' events.
Day 4: 02 July 2023