Lucky Guy, unlucky me

We saw the musical Newsies while we were in New York.  I cannot even begin to tell you how incredible it was.  The actors, the music, the set, everything was amazing.  We have seen the movie at least 400 times at our house, but I think the Broadway production was much better.  Go see it!

The next night, Mark and I bought tickets to see Tom Hanks on Broadway in a new play called "Lucky Guy."  I read an interview with Tom Hanks about how he jumped on this opportunity as soon as he read the script.  I knew about the basic plot--about the journalist who had uncovered a police scandal in  NYC.  I wondered how they would make that into a play, but I figured if Tom Hanks said it was the greatest thing ever and that he couldn't wait to be a part of the production, it had to be good.  It had several other famous TV and movie actors in it as well.  I also saw an article about how the run of Lucky Guy had been extended into July, which I took as another sign that this show was going to be great.

Within 5 minutes, I knew I had wasted a lot of money on tickets.

The storyline was terrible, pointless and boring.  Really, really boring.  But that wasn't the problem

In those first 5 minutes, we heard the F-word 50 times.  No joke.  Every person on stage ended every sentence with an "F-You," or F-something.  It was completely offensive.  This was dialogue?  Mark and I were both dying.  Sure, Tom Hanks was 20 feet in front of me, and his acting skills are phenomenal, but it was not worth sticking around.

I thought it would get better.  Surely, they were just setting up character development of a bunch of hardened journalists in NYC.  It couldn't continue, right?  We were in the middle of a row so we decided to wait until intermission before leaving.  It was the longest hour of my life.  I am not even joking, but they dropped the F-bomb at least another 300 times.  About every 10 seconds.  This really wasn't necessary.  In my eyes, everyone involved in that production lost my respect, from Tom Hanks himself down to the late Nora Ephron who wrote the play.

It was insulting and degrading.  Why would I pay money to go and listen to someone swear for an evening?  We walked out.  I didn't care about the money we had just wasted on the tickets.  It was a sigh of relief to walk out of that theater and into the bright, clean wholesome environment of Times Square....

That tells you how bad it was when Times Square seemed like heaven compared to the trash we had just endured inside the theater.

I used to really respect Tom Hanks, and I have loved almost every movie he has been involved with.  No more.