Welcome to the 60's: Bill-the-Honeybear and I were given a Christmas gift last year -- two $100 gift certificates for Ticketmaster. There were some extremely minor strings attached: First, I had to promise to write a theatre review for Imprint, the newsletter of Northern New Jersey Mensa, of whatever I saw. And second, the certificates could only be redeemed at Ticketmaster locations -- not on the phone or online. Neither one a problem, or so I thought.

Then we tried to redeem one of the certificates. Since we were going to be in NYC, we went to the most convenient Ticketmaster location -- Tower Records, up by Lincoln Center. We got there at about quarter after nine in the evening, only to be told that the Ticketmaster closed at nine. So we came back two days later, only to find they didn't carry the show we wanted to see (Bridge & Tunnel), and they didn't have a list of the shows they did carry.

Then a few nights ago, we decided to try a Ticketmaster location in East Brunswick -- sort of a schlep for us, but closer than NYC. They still weren't carrying Bridge & Tunnel. Then we asked about Wicked. Nothing available through June. Finally we settled on Hairspray, which I had never seen and which Bill-the-Honeybear had only minimal interest in. (He even suggested that, if I could find someone else to go, he'd gladly stay home.)

So last night, in we went, in the driving rain, and me with the beginnings of the cold I'm nursing today. We had dinner at a nice place near where we park -- the Theatre Row Diner -- with very good food in very large portions at a very reasonable price. Then we walked the ten blocks up Ninth Avenue to the Neil Simon Theatre, where we found that there was a line you had to get in if you had tickets.

We went across the street and stood under the marquee for the defunct ballroom Roseland, watching as the line snaked down the block and almost around onto Broadway. We got on line about 20 minutes before the stated curtain time, and got in with about fifteen minutes to spare before the curtain went up (only ten minutes late).

Well...It was wonderful. I had the original cast album, which we both had heard, and that explained why Bill-the-Honeybear was indifferent at first. Hairspray is one of those shows where the cast album is OK, but seeing it performed made all the difference. Obviously, some three years into the run, the original cast was long gone, but the cast we saw (including the legendary Darlene Love) was superb. The sets were imaginative, the costumes colorful and evocative of the era. There was even a runway around the orchestra (which, since we were sitting in the second row, brought the show really close). And at the end, when the cast was singing a reprise of the last song ("You Can't Stop the Beat") and I was mouthing the words along with them, the actor playing Edna Turnblad noticed me -- and gave me a biiiig smile! Bill's only quibbles were with the sound design (the lead actress' voice seemed to disappear in choral numbers) and with a problem that afflicts many shows in long runs: the actors were reacting to lines just a split-second before the lines ended. It's a form of theatrical shorthand that, if overdone, makes performances look mechanical. A touch-up rehearsal with the director usually takes care of it.

Then the ten-block walk (the rain having stopped) down Eighth Avenue, where we saw the building that once contained Barrymore's (the big front windows all boarded up, and the name sign taken off the facade to leave a large differently-colored rectangle behind). Dessert and coffee at a little place called EuroPan, then back to the car, then home. All in all, a nearly perfect Saturday.

They always come in threes: At least that's what my mother always used to say. Recently, we lost playwright Wendy Wasserstein (for whom the lights of Broadway were dimmed on January 31) and Coretta Scott King, of blessed memory. Now today comes news that actor Al Lewis, who played the irascible Grandpa on "The Munsters", died Friday. To my surprise, I learned in the obituary that Lewis had also been a basketball scout, a restaurateur, a political candidate (most recently for governor of New York on the Green Party ticket), and a radio personality (on WBAI). An odd collection, to be sure. But they always come in threes...