It feels great to be able to get out and go to events and exhibitions and travel. Slowly and gratefully, many of us are returning to the full menu of our lives.

I had lunch yesterday with a couple who had just returned from a river trip on the Danube. It got us thinking about what we want to plan to do now.

Theaters were dark for almost two years

And for us, it is getting back to New York and going to the theater again. When New York theaters shuttered due to COVID-19 on March 12, 2020, they hoped to reopen in a month. That did not happen. It was not until the summer of 2021 that shows gradually began to return to the stages on and off Broadway. But even then we were not comfortable being in an audience.

The nexus of theater

We grew up loving live theatre and nothing is more magical than gathering in front of a marquee on 42nd street to experience “ the roar of the grease paint – the smell of the crowd”.

In honor of these memories and to support live theater that needs an audience to survive, we invite you to consider planning a New York City junket.

We can’t help but feel optimistic just talking about them. Here are some shows that are opening this month:

Take Me Out (April 4)

This revival of Richard Greenberg’s 2002 play stars Jesse Williams (Grey’s Anatomy) as Darren Lemming, a mixed-race professional baseball player who comes out to the public as gay.

American Buffalo (April 14)

First staged in 1975, David Mamet’s Obie-winning American Buffalo centers on Don, Teach, and Bobby, three would-be crooks plotting a theft. Neil Pepe’s new production puts Laurence Fishburne, Sam Rockwell, and Darren Criss in those roles

The Minutes (April 17)

A Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2018, Tracy Letts’s twisty political satire The Minutes follows the real-time proceedings of a contentious city council meeting in the fictional town of Big Cherry.

How I Learned to Drive (April 19)

Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse both reprise roles that they played 25 years ago in How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize–winning memory play. It sees a woman called Li’l Bit (Parker) reflecting on the years of sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her Uncle Peck (Morse)

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf (April 20)

In a new production of Ntozake Shange’s 1976 play—described as a “choreopoem” for its uncommon combination of poetry, music, and dance—director and choreographer Camille A. Brown (Choir Boy, Once on This Island) has made movement an even stronger focus.

Hangmen (April 21)

Nominally, Martin McDonagh’s darkly funny latest is about the abolition of hanging in Britain in the 1960s, but it’s also “about men of that era, and justice, and miscarriages of justice,”

How much fun to have such impressive choices! We cannot wait to hit New York. And while there, we also plan to see the Winslow Homer:Crosscurrents exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum that runs through July. And the about to open Anthology of Fashion exhibit in the Met’s American Wing.

Stay safe and enjoy getting back in the saddle!

Ciao

Lucy and Claudia