War Horse

Lincoln Center is doing the National Theater of Great Britain's production of War Horse and I saw it on Tuesday.  I enjoyed it while I was in the theater, but the more I thought about it afterwards the less I cared for it. 
It's very "stirring".  It has a  large cast, with life size, life like puppets standing in for the horses.  The puppets are manipulated by at least three people that I could see; there may have been more at different times.  The puppet masters make the horse sounds and gestures needed at different points in the story and they use different sounds and gestures as appropriate to the story.
The play is about Albert, who is 16, and his horse Joey.  Albert's father is an alcoholic and sells Joey for 100 pounds to the Calvary at the start of the First World War.  Albert joins the Army to find Joey and after much battlefield action the two meet again and return home at the end of the war.  That is pretty much it.  It is  dramatic in a Perils of Pauline sort of way.  There are those moments when you think this is the end for Joey, but he goes on.  His companion in the war is Topthorn, a beautiful black stud.  Topthorn gets killed but Joey goes on.  I hope I'm not negating all the great work that people do to recreate the war on the stage.  It is excellent work.  The audience loved it.
One million English Horses were taken to France, 62,000 returned.  Barbed wire, machine guns, and tanks killed 8 million horses and 10 million soldiers.  The U. S. had 300,000 casualties.
I've read "The Guns of August", "All Quiet on The Western Front", "Johnny Got His Gun", "Birdy".
I've seen "Paths of Glory", "Breaker Morant" and the movie of "All Quiet on The Western Front".
I also saw "Journey's End", a play from 1928 by R. C. Sheriff when it was revived on Broadway in 2007.  It starred Hugh Darcy and Boyd Gaines.  It was wonderful.  Among the best things I've ever seen on a stage.   
War Horse is a sentimental entertainment.  The subject demands more.
I'm off to the L I Q store.  Let me explain.  I had this client in Brownsville, Brooklyn when I was at Model Cities.  After I brought the "teen group" I was working with home she stopped me and asked if I would drive her to the L I Q store.  I didn't know what she was talking about but she directed me to a liquor store that was missing the last 3 letters on its neon sign.  Pure poetry!  As he says in "Elling", a really good movie, she was "talking in pictures".

 
   

House of Worship

On East 2nd Street between 2nd Ave. and 1st Ave. is The Cathedral of Holy Virgin Protection Orthodox Church in America.  Orthodoxy came to America over the Bering Strait in the 19th Century.  It moved down to the lower 48 with it's home base in San Francisco.  In 1917 with the turmoil in Russia many immigrants came to New York and New York became the seat of Orthodoxy.  The Cathedral is the center for the Greek, Russian, Serbian, Antiochian, Ukrainian, Carpatho Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Albanian Orthodox churches of America in the metropolitan New York area.

It was built in 1867 by Josiah Cady, a well respected architect who founded the firm Cady, Berg & See, and worked on the American Museum of Natural History, The original Metropolitan Opera House, demolished in 1967 and many other great buildings in and around New York.  But I don't think he added this?

                                                                   A neon crucifix
The church is across the street from the NY Marble Cemetery.  So the sign doesn't keep anybody up at night.