New York City (& Yerma Review)
The plan to travel to New York started with a singular thought: Billie Piper. For those who don’t know, Billie Piper played Rose Tyler in my favorite seasons of Doctor Who, alongside Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant. She is a brilliant British actress who is altogether girlish, ultra-sexy, compassionate, and charming. I have adored her since the day I first met her as Rose.
In the past year, her talents have moved from screen to stage, as she starred in an adaptation of Frederico Garcia Lorca’s Yerma, a play about a thirty-something woman whose infertility catapults her into a spiral of despair. Since the day Billie Piper started playing this role, she has gained the attention of critics everywhere, and ended up winning just about every award a British actress can win for theatre, among them, the coveted Olivier Prize for Best Actress. When she and the cast announced that they were bringing the play to New York, I bought two tickets without even blinking.
And this is how New York really came to be.
So fast-forward to the third day of our trip. Improvements abound—after spending two days feeling pretty miserably sick, Matt is on the mend after we treated ourselves to seven-million calories-worth of ice cream last night at Serendipity. The sun is shining s’bright, radiating off the buildings in blinding shimmers, and we decide to spend the morning visiting NBC and enjoying the warm weather.
After goofing around at the NBC shop, we made a stop by Macy’s in Herald Square, which is the flagship of the famous department chain. Macy’s was having its annual Flower Show, an event where the store gets decked out in floor-to-ceiling floral displays centered around a specific theme. This year’s theme was “Once Upon a Springtime,” and the fairytale vibes were immediately clear when we walked into the store.
First impressions: COLOR. I couldn’t even see Macy’s famous makeup counters or find an employee to spritz me with a perfume sample. A trellis of blossoms too numerous to describe invited us in. Delicate papier-mâché butterflies floated down from above; a chariot strewn with English Ivy and hydrangeas greeted us on our left; a blue and purple dragon breathed floral fire from the ceiling; and a strand of books entwined with delicate blooms hovered in our midst.
We wandered around Macy’s for an hour, staring owlishly at the dazzling displays, and feeling quite overwhelmed.
I’ve been on an Adidas kick lately, so we decided to escape the crowds for a minute to shop. Turns out, the sportswear is on the very top floor of Macy’s—about 8 escalators up! And the further up you explore the store, you begin to swap out modern escalators for the store’s original rickety, wooden moving stairs. We had fun with this little piece of history. With a few new Adidas items in tow, Matt and I then boarded the subway to head to the southernmost end of Manhattan, in search of the Staten Island Ferry.
Every time I go to a new city, my #1 goal is to get The Best View Ever of That City. This takes various forms: in Memphis, there’s the view from the top of the Pyramid; in Knoxville, the bluffs on the river; in Nashville, trek to Love Circle; in L.A., the Getty Museum provides some killer sights, as does the hike to the Hollywood Sign; in San Diego, I suggest going out to Point Loma; in Boston, try Pru Tower; and in Chicago, the Willis Tower. (Let me know if you have any other amazing views!)
But New York is a city with thousands of options. When I was younger, I had the great privilege of riding the elevator to the top of Rockefeller Center, which is an unbeatable view from above. With Matt, however, we decided to skip this quintessential NYC view and opt for a more unique one—from the water.
The Staten Island Ferry is a free ferry service shuttling the people of Manhattan to (you guessed it) Staten Island and back. It runs every half hour, and passes quite closely to the Statue of Liberty. This is an enormous ferry, and now that I’ve ridden it twice, here’s my #ProTip: a lot of people who ride the ferry are tourists like us who want The Best View Ever, so prepare for a fight!
Story time: Matt and I were cheerily snapping away, watching the boat chug out of the dock, when we felt the ferry start to tip to one side. We looked at each other and Knew: people had seen the Statue of Liberty, and we were on the wrong side of the boat. It was nigh impossible to force our way to the other side, so when we re-boarded the ferry for our trip back to Manhattan, we made sure to get on the correct side. The view was stunning! From the water, we could easily see One World Trade Center, flanked by skyscrapers, as well as Lady Liberty waving her torch to welcome all.
After we landed back in Manhattan, we grabbed lunch in the financial district, stopping to take a picture with the Fearless Girl and Charging Bull statues.
Our final stop for the afternoon was the World Trade Center memorial and One World Trade Center. The memorials were incredibly moving: in the spaces where the two towers used to stand, the ground had been sunken into deep caverns in the earth, with a steady stream of water rushing down into them, like waterfalls. Carved into the black granite surrounding the memorial were the names of the victims.
We spent a bit of quiet time here, remembering, and then headed north to the city to prepare for our evening.
Our New York trip was vastly dominated by this final night. We got fancy to Park Avenue Armory, where Yerma was playing. Before the show, we loitered in the lounge outside the theatre, in hopes of spotting Billie Piper, but we were treated to something just as lovely: Matt expertly spotted Timothee Chalamet from Call Me By Your Name having a drink before the show.
Matt was quite excited, and we both entered the theatre in hopes that our seats would put us next to the famous actor. No such luck; but we quickly forgot about Timothee as the play began.
I could write an entire dissertation on this performance (and in fact, I met someone that night who was doing just that), but instead of describing the theatre, the set, or the lightning-fast scene changes, I’ll leave you with my impressions. This play was heartbreaking. We were both visibly shaken after the experience of watching Billie Piper transform from a breezy, vibrant woman to someone wracked with a devastating and deadly obsession. It was hard to watch, although I kept having meta-moments of “am I really in the same room as Billie Piper right now?” She blew me away. Many tears. The most tears.
After the show, we had the enormous privilege of getting to meet Billie, although I was so nervous that Matt did almost all of the talking! The most I could eke out was a “thank you for being so brilliant, I’ve loved you for so long!” In return, we got this photo, which she made us take in a dark corner of the room so that we wouldn’t cause a “frenzy.”
We lingered a bit after snapping a photo with Billie, just so that Matt could work up enough courage to tap Timothee Chalamet on the shoulder and express a “congratulations” on being an amazing actor. Neither of us can remember the walk back to our hotel because we were so astonishingly happy.
The next morning was Easter. As good Catholics, we dressed up and headed to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue for 9:00am mass (which was so crowded but so beautiful), after which we stuck around to meet Jackie for the Easter Parade!
After we’d watched hundreds of people milling around with various degrees of Easter bonnets, Jackie escorted us to Hell’s Kitchen, where we had a final meal of pho and then headed to the airport.
Thank you for reading about our trip to NYC! In just a few weeks, we’re headed on a totally different trip to Vancouver, Canada to see my favorite famous ice dancers and hike in beautiful British Columbia!
