vip in the city

Ramen and Hellman

Ramen seemed just the thing for a frigid night, and Rai Rai Ken in the East Village is consistently ranked by noodle adicionados among the city’s best.

The cramped, narrow space consists of just 14 low stools along a scuffed, wooden bar facing into an open kitchen where the kerchief-headed chefs sling noodles from a pair of giant, steaming stockpots full of broth.

The restaurant offers three ramen varieties, each just under $7 a generous bowl: the Shoyu Ramen (soy sauce based noodle soup) and Shio Ramen (house special seafood based noodle soup) are topped with roast pork, spinach, fishcake, bamboo shoots, boiled egg, a leaf of dried seaweed and a sprinkling of scallion. A bowl of the Miso Ramen will set you back 45 cents more.  And for an additional charge, there are optional ramen toppings, which include corn, extra roast pork and… butter? (I passed.)

Quick, cheap and tasty. For those just not into ramen noodles — though I can’t imagine who those people would be! — Rai Rai Ken also offers curry plates, fried plates, edamame and pan-fried pork-stuffed gyoza.

Toys in the Attic was Lillian Hellman‘s last original work for stage. The original Broadway production, featuring Oscar winners Maureen Stapleton and Jason Robards, Jr.  in the starring roles, enjoyed a long and healthy run in 1960, eventually winning the Tony and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards. A 1963 movie adaptation starred Dean Martin, Geraldine Page, and Wendy Hiller.  Still, the play lags in recognition behind the better-known and more frequently restaged The Little Foxes  and The Children’s Hour.  (It’s also the one of those three plays that was not on my required reading list in high school.)

The Pearl Theatre Company‘s  revival is directed by American movie, television and stage actor Austin Pendleton, whom I last saw on stage opposite Meryl Streep in this past summer’s Shakespeare in the Park production of Mother Courage.)

Pendleton first met Hellman herself when he appeared in Mike Nichols‘s 1967 revival of The Little Foxes.  Fourteen years later, Pendleton collaborated with Hellman (and earned several Tony nominations) directing the same play, this time starring Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen Stapleton (again.)

With such a stellar Hellman track record, Pendleton was a solid choice to direct this most recent Hellman revival.  Set in the playwright’s birthplace of New Orleans, Toys in the Attic  is the story of Anna and Carrie Berniers, two unmarried, middle-aged sisters who toil away at menial jobs, carefully budgeting their meager earnings and dreaming of a grander life. The women are united in the decaying family home by their adoration and protectiveness of their charming but failure-prone younger brother Julian. The events of the drama unfold over one steamy day when Julian sweeps back into town, flush with new, unexpected and unexplained success, and the toll it takes on the family dynamic.  What happens when all you’ve ever wished is suddenly within your grasp? Which is greater: the need to be loved, or the love to be needed?  A strong dash of melodrama and theatrical convenience precipitates the kind of disaster to which so much overheated Southern Gothic eventually leads.  It is a meditation on many things: dreams, wealth, success, race, class, deception, jealousy, betrayal.  But underneath it all, it is a story about the ever-changing and sometimes frightening nature of love: love that desires, demands, and ultimately destroys.

Floodwall

Floodwall, an exhibit by New Orleans artist and YA/YA (Young Aspirations/Young Artists), Inc. founder Jana Napoli was on display on the Liberty Street Bridge from January 4 through February 9, courtesy of the World Financial Center and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

The installation consisted of just over half of the 610 drawers the artist salvaged from flooded streets in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Returning to New Orleans a month afterwards, Napoli searched for drawers that had been dumped on the curb, sometimes collecting as many as 50 a day after removing their sodden personal contents.  All that remained was the pastered-on detritus: a piece of an address book here, rubber bands and paperclips there.  The address where each of the drawers was collected was written on the back. Napoli set out alone in her van each morning for months, randomly traversing every neighborhood in the city to collect her pieces.

In this exhibit the drawers sat upright along a platform, spanning the length of the pedestrian bridge as the words of some of their former owners scroll in red across electronic screens.

The idea of bringing Floodwall to the trade center site came from David Lackey of Whirlwind Creative, a company that plans and designs museum exhibits. Before 9/11, the Liberty Street Bridge connected the World Trade Center to the World Financial Center. Today it offers a direct view over Ground Zero, and all the construction currently taking place. This afternoon, it offered an eerie juxtaposition of two studies in loss and absence.