A WONDERFUL Night in Manhattan

Travel

Audio By Carbonatix

I’m not usually in a hurry to get Christmas started. But give me dinner with friends at Gramercy Tavern and a night in Bedford Falls, and I’ll make an exception. Manhattan can keep the calendar. We had a burger to split and a few carols to sing.

We started at Gramercy Tavern with the signature chicken liver mousse, followed by the chicory salad and the legendary Tavern Burger. The mousse is the sort of thing you put on a piece of toast and immediately start calculating how much toast is left. The chicory brought a welcome bitter crunch between bites, and the burger made a persuasive case for ordering a burger even when you’ve gone somewhere special. The burger went quickly. (gramercytavern.com)

We split all three. Twice the enjoyment, half the calories. That’s my math, and I’d appreciate it if nobody checked my work.

Then it was uptown to the Broadhurst Theatre for It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play. Four-time Tony winner Jerry Zaks directs a stellar cast that includes Andrew Rannells, Megan Hilty, Tituss Burgess, Harry Hamlin, and Lisa Rinna. Joe Landry’s adaptation puts the actors behind microphones in a 1940s radio studio, with a Foley artist making the sound effects right there onstage. (shubert.nyc, wonderfulliferadioplay.com, broadwaydirect.com)

You can imagine how much fun that was for a guy who’s spent most of his life behind a microphone. On the radio, the listener does half the work. Give somebody a voice, a footstep, and a door closing, and they’ll furnish the whole house in their head. Here you get the pleasure of hearing Bedford Falls come to life and watching the people who make it happen.

And George Bailey still gets to me. He spends so much time thinking about the places he never got to go that he can’t see what he’s meant to the people right there at home. That’s a story I’m happy to hear again, especially at Christmas.

It’s an evening I’d happily take the whole family to. At the end, everybody sings Christmas carols. There’s a particular charm in sitting in a Broadway theater full of strangers and finding out you all know the next verse.

If you’re planning your own night, leave a little room between dinner downtown and curtain in Midtown. The show runs through January 3. Order the burger, bring somebody you’re willing to share it with, and save enough voice for the singing. (shubert.nyc)