caro:

Conveniently, last night’s movie was shown at a screening room about 100 feet from the Gansevoort St. entrance to the High Line, so I went over to check out the much-hyped Renegade Cabaret performance.  (Apparently I just missed seeing Erin there.)

First of all: If you have been to the High Line but only during the daytime, you have not been to the High Line.  It’s pretty by day.  It’s stunning after dark.

Anyway.  The crowd was smaller than I expected, which I must say was actually sort of nice (I was anticipating a mob scene). The hostess/emcee/whatever, Patty Heffley, said that she was toying with the idea of having science lectures up there in addition to performances.

And everybody’s already played up the West Side Story angle, but the setup really does feel like a theater production about old, working class New York—bright, garish porch lights up against a brick wall, a laundry-covered fire escape that could’ve been on any downtown tenement, a siren in a ball gown singing alone into a sticky summer night.  If you hadn’t read the Times story, you might take her to be some sort of enterprising exhibitionist, or perhaps just a delusional eccentric.  Or both.

Were it all a play in three acts (or five), the opening line would totally have to be, “If you see the party patio lanterns lit…you’ll know something is going to go on when it gets dark.”

(Photo of singer Elizabeth Soychak from last night by Flickr user npzo)

Elizabeth sang so beautifully and the simple set up really did create a theatrical moment romanticizing working class life in New York. It also reminded me of a scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s where Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly sweetly sings Moon River on her fire escape. It was a nice moment.