Get your own Free Home Page
Six psychos who are willing to drive 16 hours to Michigan to see Gilles in CHESS. Me, Melissa, Catherine, Dona, Greg, and Catherine's friend James, Cute Actor [tm]. We leave from the upper west side at 7pm friday nite. We have Dona's car and James' car. There were only 6 of us, so there was plenty of room. We drive for a really fuckin' ass long time. We pass Scotrun, Pennyslvania, and Dona glances at the sign and goes, "WHAT??? SCROTUM???" We crack up. That is one of the jokes for the rest of the trip. I spill ketchup all over the front seat of Dona's car...we think it now looks like the Cunnanen (however you spell it) murder. We drive through Pennsylvania for hours on end. I look up and see millions of stars. True city girl that I am, I have never in my life seen so many stars. I stare at the sky for like an hour. We listen to Gilles as Roger, and Dona makes faces through the whole thing. Melly is ready to kill her. So we listen to CHESS and Melly makes fun of David Carroll who was Anatoly in the original Broadway cast. I inform Melly that he is dead. Melly feels bad and will not stop whining that she feels bad that he is dead. Me and Greg laugh at her for making fun of him.
It is sunrise as we go through Ohio. Me and Melissa are now in James' car. Catherine took over the wheel for Dona (she is the only other one who can sort of drive stick). I see cows and hay barrels. New world for me. James and Melly laugh at me for being in such awe. As we drive through Ohio, there is torrential downpour of rain and much lightning. I have never in my life seen lightning like that. It was really weird. They laugh at me some more. Catherine is in the other car freaking out because of the downpour.
We arrive in Michigan around 8 in the morning and stop at McDonalds for breakfast. (probably the 5th McDonalds meal we've now had) We tell the people behind the counter where we are from and where we are going and why we are going. They are amused. We finally arrive in Muskegon around 10am. We find the theatre and park in the parking lot of the mall across the street. We mill around for a few minutes outside the Holiday Inn across the street and lo and behold, who walks out...Gilles. He introduces us to his brother, Brian. Brian asks if we all work at RENT or something. Dona replies that we sleep on the street there. Brian looks confused and Gilles turns to him and sez, "I'll explain later." We find that utterly hilarious for some reason. Gilles insists we must go to the beach while we are here. That somehow doesn't quite fit into our schedule though. We roam their pathetic little mall which Gilles warned us it was a rather depressing place. It is. We are stared at by everyone in the mall. We buy postcards of the beach since we could not go there. We find a restuarant nearby and eat lunch. Our food takes an hour to get to us. We steal the advertisment thingys for CHESS from half the tables. We go to the theatre and meet up with other random RENT people who came in from Chicago, nearby parts of Michigan, etc... We all are in the same area of the theatre. We had good seats.
The show actually starts on time in this theatre. We clap when Gilles enters the stage. Overall...the whole cast had wonderful voices... Gilles and Willy Falk (who played Anatoly) were both amazing. But the rest of the cast had no stage presence and the women ensemble scared me. Donna Lee Marshall who played Florence had a good voice, but when she sang, she just stood there and moved her arms and hands. By the second act, we were ready to strangle her. Plus, she sang me and Melly's favorite song as if she were on speed. Evy O'Rourke who was Svetlana also had the arm and hand problem, and was way melodramatic. Gilles almost fell off the couch during one song as he tried to stand on it... During his big solo, he started doing his Mark and Roger movements from RENT. We crack up. We scream after his big song. We all realize this is where Gilles belongs. Legit musical theatre. Curtain call - we jump up and scream and clap when he steps up for his bow. We do not scream for anyone else. We do not care if we were rude. :) Heather (fellow RENT fan who came in from Chicago) leads us all to the stagedoor. We wait. We get stares from other cast members leaving. Gilles steps out and we applaud. :) He is very appreciative and talks to us for a while. He hands us a map that he DREW for us, saying we HAD to go eat at the restuarant on the beach. The map is INCREDIBLY detailed with every street labled. He made several xerox copies so each car would have one. We feel awful that we cannot go to the beach. But we do not tell him that. We ask if he would like a bootleg of the show. He pretends he did hear that but sez we can do whatever we want. We tell him about Melly's completion of Gilles Does RENT, and that we will make him a copy. We tell him about our collection of Norbert Does RENT and Yassmin Does RENT. He looks up when he hears Yassmin's name and sez, "Yaz...isn't she leaving soon?" I swear to god my heart stopped. I turn to Catherine, "What did he just say?" I turn to everyone around me and ask that. I just turned and walked out. I head for the parking lot. I cry. Melly chases after me. She says Gilles is not sure. That it might not be true. We will have to wait until we get back to NY to ask Yassmin herself. I am not happy as we leave Michigan.
It is another very long drive. We search all of Ohio for a Cracker Barrel. Greg has craving for it. We do not find one. At half past midnite as we are all half asleep, Melly points out a sign for one. We laugh. It is nearly 2 in the morning. Dona is about to fall asleep. We stop at a rest stop in Bumblefuck, Ohio. Dona wants Catherine to take over her car. But Catherine cannot because she is driving James' car and James is asleep. So there in the parking lot of this Bumblefuck rest stop, Dona teaches Melly to drive stick in all of 3 minutes. And boom - we are on the highway. I cling to dear life in the back seat as Melly literally weaves the car through the lanes. Dona tries to sleep as her car is being swerved through the highway. Catherine was following us, so that Melly could go at her own pace. James wakes up in the other car and looks out the window. "WHO IS DRIVING THAT CAR?!?!?!" Catherine informs him that Dona has just taught Melly to drive stick. James tells Catherine to get her ass over there and take over. He can drive his own car. So we all switch cars again. Me and Melly are again with James. Greg stays in James' car, too. We drive through all of Pennsylvania looking for a hotel. There are no vacancies at any. Someone at the Comfort Inn makes a reservation for us at some hotel and gives us directions to it. We find ourselves driving for nearly an hour on a completely deserted PITCH BLACK road in the middle of like, some forest... We all begin to freak. I find it completely frightening. We start to think maybe the people at the Comfort Inn set us up. Maybe they were sending us to get murdered. haha. But it was starting to get scary and really weird. I did not like the pitch black road at all. We finally turn back, and get back on the highway. We are not driving long until we hit a Days Inn. They have ONE room left for 30 bucks. We take it. We open the door to the room....There is one double bed. The other bed is leaning against the wall with a huge ass stain on it. There is plastic tarp on the floor and a bucket in the middle of the room. The roof has a leak. At that point we did not care. It was 30 bucks, and we just wanted to sleep. It was now 4 in the morning. We all collapse on the beds and floor. We get 3 to 4 hours of sleep and are up at 8. That was all the sleep we got in 3 days. We split up in the morning. James and Catherine set off first to go visit Penn State where James went to school. Dona, Melly, Greg and I leave at 10am. We make fun of Simone in the car. Greg does a wonderful impression. :) I see mountains. Once again I am in awe. (I need to get out of the city more, don't I) We pass BUTZVILLE, Pennyslvania. Dona shrieks when she sees the sign and we screech to a stop on the fuckin' highway and me and Melly take a picture of the sign. We are on the floor! :) The drive back seems much shorter. We arrive in front of the Nederlander at 3:30pm, Sunday afternoon. We go to our dear Port Authority to pee...we buy juice and stuff. We decide this trip was much more successful than our Boston adventure.
Get your own Free Home Page