{"id":1943,"date":"2016-02-22T13:59:40","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T18:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=1943"},"modified":"2016-02-22T13:59:40","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T18:59:40","slug":"hamilton-the-musical-and-per-se-the-restaurant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=1943","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton (the musical) and Per Se (the restaurant)"},"content":{"rendered":"

We were in New York this past weekend in order to see \u201cHamilton,\u201d the musical that seems to have taken the entire country (okay, maybe just the East coast) by storm.\u00a0 The tickets and a backstage tour by Leslie Odom, Jr. (the actor who plays Aaron Burr) were a Christmas gift to the kids.\u00a0 (I know\u2014I want to come back as one of my kids in my next life, too.)
\nWe flew up Friday afternoon.\u00a0 Saturday morning, Marcus and I went to a Star Wars costume exhibition at the Discovery Museum.\u00a0 Contrary to my expectations, at least, the exhibit was surprisingly extensive and well-curated.\u00a0 It was interesting to see what materials were used (the Jedi robes were often made of raw silk\u2014easier to clean and fast-drying\u2014to simulate the look of cotton and linen), what cultures they borrowed from (the Imperial uniforms were taken directly from a Nazi division), and what the costumes were supposed to represent (Darth Maul\u2019s costume resembled a samurai warrior\u2019s).<\/p>\n

\"Boba
Boba Fett!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But the highlight of the weekend was \u201cHamilton.\u201d\u00a0 While it is somewhat difficult at first to wrap your head around a 3 hour musical about the Founding Fathers in rap form, it really is a marvelous performance.\u00a0 The soundtrack is amazing\u2014clever and unusual\u2014and the performance is very visually appealing.\u00a0 It was as good (if not better) as we all hoped it would be.\u00a0 Even Jim, the skeptical one, thought it was much better than he expected, although he didn\u2019t like the ending (he likes happy endings).<\/p>\n

\"waiting
waiting for “Hamilton”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"the
the set for Hamilton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the performance, we went backstage (actually, onto the stage) where we were introduced to Leslie Odom, Jr.\u00a0 With all due respect to the rest of the cast who were all fabulous, I thought he was the best pure actor of the show.\u00a0 (And fans of Person of Interest will know him as Peter Collier, the head of Vigilance.)<\/p>\n

\"with
with Leslie Odom, Jr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He also was about as nice as a person can be.\u00a0 He found a Sharpie, signed the kids\u2019 programs, chatted with them, and then introduced them to Daveed Diggs, who played the Marquis de Lafayette\/Thomas Jefferson in the musical.<\/p>\n

\"with
with Daveed Diggs (taken by Leslie Odom, Jr)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After that, the kids met Jonathan Groff (who played George III and has the funniest lines in the show) who was also exceptionally friendly.<\/p>\n

\"with
with Jonathan Groff<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And, finally, they met Anthony Ramos, who plays Laurens and Philip Hamilton, who was lovely.<\/p>\n

\"with
with Anthony Ramos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They also caught a glimpse of Lin-Manuel Miranda backstage as well.\u00a0 Jade was so beside herself with excitement over all of this that she couldn\u2019t talk (this is a rarity, by the way).
\nOnce everyone could breathe again, we walked over to Per Se, the New York restaurant belonging to Thomas Keller (of French Laundry fame).\u00a0 Per Se recently had been panned by the New York Times restaurant reviewer, but we saw no sign of slippage at all.\u00a0 The food was amazingly fabulous (the egg custard with black truffles served in an egg shell was an especially memorable dish for me), the service was attentive and friendly but not obsequious, and all was well in the Per Se world.\u00a0 We even got a tour of the kitchen, which is huge, especially by New York standards.<\/p>\n

\"in
in the kitchen of Per Se<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All in all, it was about as perfect a day as it was possible to visualize when we first arranged the trip.
\nOur apologies to all of our New York friends.\u00a0 We would very much have liked to have seen you but ran out of time.\u00a0 (A 3 hour musical will do that.)\u00a0 We will try and see all of you on our next trip!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were in New York this past weekend in order to see \u201cHamilton,\u201d the musical that seems to have taken the entire country (okay, maybe just the East coast) by storm.\u00a0 The tickets and a backstage tour by Leslie Odom, Jr. (the actor who plays Aaron Burr) were a Christmas gift to the kids.\u00a0 (I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,82,98],"tags":[396,395,327,392,397,394,342,393,331],"class_list":["post-1943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-fun","category-musicals","tag-anthony-ramos","tag-daveed-diggs","tag-family","tag-hamilton","tag-jonathan-groff","tag-leslie-odom","tag-musicals","tag-per-se","tag-restaurants"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23QXm-vl","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1943"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1947,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions\/1947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}