Smeared Type

To put on the best face for making another step frighteningly close to the “ban bai,” in Chinese, the milestone of half of your life, if you can live to one hundred years, I went to New York City with my husband over the weekend. Things couldn’t have worked out better—got on an earlier flight on Friday minutes before its on-time departure, being spared of downpour, two days in a row, while we were having dinner, only to walk out into the sunshine, and had a very productive meeting with a literary agent over my next book project, and more, watched two wonderful Broadway shows, one play, Mary Stuart and one musical, Next to Normal. Not to mention a leisure walk in Central Park and plenty of good food.

I have to say, except the meeting that made me very excited about the next book, the highlight is the two shows. The performance of Janet McTeer as Mary, Queen of Scots and Harriet Walter, as Elizabeth, Queen of England, was superb. And the story of Next to Normal was so intense and powerful that it drew me in, deeper into the family struggling to be “normal” with each number of the songs.  Alice Ripley gave a first-rate performance as the complicated mother. However, I like the teenage daughter’s performance even better, a wonderful presentation by Jennifer Damiano. Her voice, her passion, her love and frustration were so strongly revealed that my heart went out to her, or rather the character she performed. The power of words and stories once again touched and inspired me like magic.  

If you have a chance to go to the Big Apple, I highly recommend you to see these shows!

 Jian Ping, author of Mulberry Child: A Memoir of China. www.mulberrychild.com

Tags: Broadway theatre, Mary Stuart, Next to Normal

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