I went to Two plays on Saturday. The first one was Giant with John Lithgow. Giant did really well in the West End last year and won all sorts of awards in England. It’s about the child’s author, Roald Dahl, and the comments he made about Israel in the 80s before one of his books came out. I think it was written for the British audience, but still it was good. It did portray Roald Dahl as an absolute monster. For the second play I liked to Death of a Salesman so much that I bought another ticket for the 8 o’clock showing as I don’t think I’ll be back in New York before it closes.

My friend that we went with ask the theater manager if he could sit in a box for Giant as he is very tall and large for the small theater seats. So we got a much better seats instead of the seats in the mezzanine that we paid for.

Box Seats

View from the box.

Music Box TheaterAfterwards, we went to dinner at Benoit. I wanted to stay in Midtown. Benoit is a Alain Ducasse bistro, there is a branch here in New York and one in Paris I think Ducasse needs to give up on the United States. I’ve been to three of his restaurants now (two are closed) Benoit, Mix, Rivera in Las Vegas and they are uniformly, terrible, and high priced. What we got was very average and the service was not very good. The dessert was exceptionally bad with really bad ice cream and really bad profiteroles. But that's what we get for going to such a touristy dump.

Inside

Empty pre theatre
we get for going to such a touristy dump.

Soggy Tarte Flambe

Foie


Under Cooked Soufflé, Grainy Ice Cream

Cold Bread

OK Quenelles.

Very brown blanquette de Veau

Soupy Gratin
My friend went home and he had to be at work at 3 AM the next day and so I went to the play alone. I got seats closer to the stage which actually made a difference in terms of being able to see the actors and feel the play on stage. Again highly recommend and if you have a chance to go, go because it’s going to be sold out once it opens.