New York City – The Tragic Queen

The Theatre, Darling

April 22, 2026April 22, 2026UncategorizedLeave a Comment

My mother’s friend David, a self-described show queen, always sees as many broadway shows as he can when he comes to New York City.

This time, he invited my mother and me to tag along.

The first show that we saw was Cats: The Jellicle Ball, a remake of Cats that recreates the gay balls of the 80s and 90s. The actors were voguing across the stage, their asses moving like jello. They were doing the most intense dancing you’ve ever seen, while making it look effortless, then slinking, cat-like, across the stage. The whole show was an enjoyable assault to the senses, onstage and off, as theatre-goers shouted things like “YES BITCH” and “YES QUEEN” at the performers. Everywhere people were flapping their fans to the beat of the music whenever they heard something that they liked. There was nothing but pure joy and energy in the audience.

(I recommend watching the documentary Paris is Burning before seeing this show in order to get context about the different houses and mothers).

The next day, we went to see Masquerade, an interactive remake of The Phantom of the Opera. It was like being in a haunted house and a musical at the same time. We went up and down escalators, being waved through the building by ushers, as the show churned around us. I sat close enough that the phantom’s cloak touched me more than once, as did Christine’s dress.

It was an interactive performance in which we drank complimentary champagne as a violinist played the ouverture, were handed flowers to throw at the performers, and wore masquerade masks. I waltzed with one of the performers and during the freak show segment, a woman hammered nails into her nose, and then selected me from the audience to pull out one of the nails. It truly was deep in that woman’s nose: I can attest.

Everyone had flawless singing voices. This play was also an assault to the senses, but the kind where you feel immersed in the dark world of the show, inhaling dry ice.

If you’re not already familiar with the plots of Cats and Phantom of the Opera, don’t try to follow the plot of these musicals.

They were the definition of “no plot, just vibes.”

After that, we watched Chess, starring Lea Michele.

The story was told mainly via narration and had no set pieces. There were soporific ballads, clunky chess metaphors, and attempts to modernize its political commentary by making snarky jabs at Trump and Biden. I zoned out during nearly every song, not interested in whatever they were singing about. Chess is the kind of musical where they start singing a song two seconds after the previous song has ended and if they need to explain something they do it through a musical number.

Parts of it were enjoyable, like the Russian dancing and the One Night in Bangkok number but overall, Chess was my least favorite show of the weekend.

Following Chess, we went to see Death of a Salesman, starring Nathan Lane as Willy Loman.

Attention was PAID.

It was the creme della creme of Broadway theatre with Laurie Metcalf playing Linda in a play written by Arthur Miller. Lane nailed every monologue, his face turning beat red as he shouted through his miserable life.

The car and dirt were on stage the entire time, foreshadowing his looming death. Spoiler: the salesman dies.

It is an existential play that questions what the point of life even is. It covers universal themes about the human condition, with an American lilt, as it depicts how unattainable the American Dream truly is. This production used modern costumes and props that convey how little has changed in corporate America since the time that Arthur Miller was writing about.

I found Willy Loman to be a complicated and largely unsympathetic character who represented much of American life at the time through his role as a salesman, living a meaningless life and then dying a meaningless death.

Nathan Lane as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller on Broadway: it doesn’t get any better than that.

For our final performance, we watched Operation Mincemeat, the number one musical on Broadway.

It has a gender-bent, replacement cast and a Nazi hiphop musical number that takes you VERY much by surprise. There were two second costume changes in every scene. A few times I blinked and missed the wardrobe change. Every one of them could sing and dance and had flawless comic timing. As if that wasn’t enough, they all had phenomenal chemistry.

It was funny, but poignant as it talked about the human cost of war. The theater was full of weeping patrons during a musical number that explores the personal consequences of warfare.

It was the perfect note to end our broadway tour on.

But wait, there’s more…

A few days later, because I hadn’t had enough theatre, I went to see The Play That Goes Wrong with a friend.

As the title implies, a theater troupe is putting on a play– a whodunnit set in the English countryside– and everything that could go wrong, does go wrong. The entire stage falls apart around them, people get knocked unconscious, and bodies are dragged away, but the show must go on. The stage manager and the light and sound guy are integral characters in the show, trying to keep a sinking ship afloat. The show is all physical comedy, bordering on parkour at one point. The audience was losing its mind, shouting at the actors on stage the entire time. I laughed so hard I cried.

All in all, it was an amazing week of theater. I laughed, I cried, but overall I enjoyed.

I had the chance to see six different shows, each one completely different from the last, but all of them were feasts for the senses. I was able to witness some incredible talent all around.

My favorite was easily Operation Mincemeat, followed by The Play That Goes Wrong, Death of a Salesman, Jellicle Ball, Masquerade, and Chess in that order. Hopefully, if you’re in New York City soon, you’ll be able to attend some spectacular shows as well.

(I’m holding out hope that I’ll be able to see Megan Thee Stallion in Moulin Rouge)

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my latest blog post on a different New York City experience from when I attended The Experts Only Music Festival

Experts Only Music Festival

April 9, 2026April 9, 2026Uncategorized1 Comment

A couple of months ago, my mother called me up and asked me if I wanted to go to this “music thing” that she heard about in her neighborhood that weekend. I said yes, unaware that this “music thing” was the New York City music event of that weekend.

It was the inaugural Experts Only festival, a music festival hosted by DJ John Summit on Randall’s Island. The DJ played house music the entire afternoon.

Experts Only was the whole nine yards: food stalls, merch stands, beach balls bouncing off the top of the crowd, a woman dancing on stage at all times, and someone who was clearly on ecstasy and therefore not dancing at all to the beat. The whole thing was like a big high school football game, only instead of tailgating you’re eating from a food truck in the middle of a field surrounded by 300 strangers and instead of showing off your school spirit you’re showing off every inch of your body that you’re legally allowed to show.

I was entirely unprepared for the music festival that I walked into, wearing a long sleeve black shirt and jacket. I was the most fully clothed person there, aside from my mom. I looked like a narc.

Everywhere I looked, there were sheer body suits and crop tops. Ass crack and butterfly tattoos were also very much in, as were pashminas and chainmail waistbands. Influencers and wannabe influencers posed for pictures in their outfits. The event was in full swing.

We danced our way to the front of the crowd, squeezing through the mesh of bodies, and when we needed a break from the dancing, we sat in a field drinking vodka lemonades and eating street tacos.

My mother nodded along to the music. I jumped up and down like a lunatic.

We got there in the early afternoon and then stayed late into the night, technically morning. At the end of the night, we caught the ferry, with me limping from how hard I danced. I ended up pulling a muscle in my leg and then freaking out that I had a varicose vein, because of how it was bulging out of my calf, but it was worth it to experience such an awesome music festival.

It’s not often that I get to be pleasantly surprised when an impromptu weekend hanging out with my mother turns into a wild night of drinking and dancing at a New York City music festival. My mother, despite having a good time, has decided not to join me next year.

This was my first time at a music festival, but I am determined for it not to be my last. This year, I will be sure to return to Expert’s Only in a crop top with my friends, ready to have more vodka lemonades and street tacos, like the twentysomething that I am.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

The One Where I Got A Job– Look Out Corporate America

September 29, 2024UncategorizedLeave a Comment

After much deliberation, I have decided that I am not meant to work for a living.

I respect the lifestyle, but it’s just not for me.

*A glamorous headshot of me, taken at work*

School’s back in session, so I can finally tell you all about the joys of my New York City job, how I was every inch the slick professional in chic pumps, ready to “shake up the game” or something like that.

A few weeks ago, I completed my summer gig of working as a receptionist at a zillenial fin-tech place, having found the job through a temp agency.

*Photographic evidence of me working for a living*

My parents told me to apply at a temp agency, something that I believed to be a thing from their New York City days that no longer existed, like subway tokens and paying a buck 85 for your coffee. As it turns out, temp agencies are still alive and well, unlike the other facets of their New York City days, when they could afford a walk-up on practically no budget with a job that they got by checking the want-ads one afternoon.

*My mother requested pics of my work clothes everyday. Here they are*

Through Taylor Hodson, I got a job as a receptionist at a company that, like most people, doesn’t even have a landline. My job was primarily to greet people and to shred meaningless documents, something that they trusted a 23 year old to do perfectly.

This was one of my first ever big girl jobs, not a part time internship that paid me minimum wage, gave me one day off a week, and let me roll in at 10 AM. Working a full forty hour work week for above minimum wage felt like graduating past that point in your school career where you get to have naptime.

*A hardworking professional, as you can see*

Unlike my previous part-time employment, I actually got off work feeling like I’d earned the right to a Friday afternoon happy hour drink as well as the right to yell at tourists walking three abreast on the sidewalk while I hurtled my body into my subway stop in the morning.

I filled out an I-9, a W-2, and an NDA, before completing a sexual harassment lecture and quiz that asked real head scratchers like, “is commenting on your coworkers breasts while she’s lactating sexual harassment?”

I practiced my route to work the day before in order to ensure that I could get there in a New York Minute. Then, I did some of new-job-pregaming-rituals the night before, like watching Anne Hathaway play a plucky career woman in one of her films (The Devil Wears Prada, The Intern, etc.). She is every woman… but she is a little bit more me than the rest of you. I’m sorry, it’s the big brown eyes and the long brown hair.

I’d wake up every morning and listen to Megan Thee Stallion rap about “holding a glock in her birkin,” two things that I don’t own, before manning a desk for eight hours.

I’d gotten a taste of rush hour traffic at my old job, but would now get to enjoy a long commute during rush hour in the middle of a heat wave. Every subway car was sardined with people, except for the one half-full car that has no air conditioning, making New Yorkers choose between personal space and heat stroke. We’re all hot and angry, trauma bonded from being jostled into each other’s half-naked bodies while sweat drips down our ass cracks. Nothing quite beats inhaling a wide range of body odors while trying to get to work on time.

This is being presided over by a conductor who was usually just as mad about it as we were and made that apparent by shouting at us to not only “STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS” but to “USE MORE THAN ONE OF THE DOORS” and “WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT TRAIN IF YOU DON’T FIT,” with the same energy as a TSA agent at LaGuardia who will yell at you to stand back if you approach them to ask a question that has already been answered.

I’m not sure whose fault this is, but I’m just going to blame Eric Adams. You can always blame the mayor of New York and then a decade after they’re out of office, they’ll get a couple of buildings named after them.

Commuting home at the end of the day, unreasonably exhausted from not doing much of anything, and then being responsible for making my own dinner seems cruel and unusual.

I now have a new respect for the people who work all day, come home to kids to raise, make dinner, and then sleep poorly, only to make a paltry sum of money the next day at work.

Like I said, I have decided that I am not meant to work for a living.

I’ve just started another year of school, so I won’t have to rejoin the workforce for another year. Corporate America will have to wait with bated breath for my return.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

Those NYC Days

July 16, 2022July 16, 2022UncategorizedLeave a Comment

“There’s nothing like summer in the city”
-Lin Manuel Miranda

Nothing renews my excitement and love for New York City more than being away from it for a while and then finally being able to return. That’s how I felt a few weeks ago when I arrived in New York City with my mother for my 21st birthday, after being home for about a month.

My summer was already in full swing. I started two new remote internships. You’re looking at the newest fashion writer for Fizzy Mag, a European fashion magazine for cool girls everywhere. I’ve also started writing blog posts for the female empowerment lifestyle brand: Miss EmPowHer. I am helping to form the fashionista feministas of tomorrow.

When I’m not doing that, I am spending my days doing my four favorite things in life: reading, writing, painting, and swimming. My life is the absolute worst in case you couldn’t tell. So why did I choose to leave it even for a little bit? Because New York City was calling my name, I was about to turn 21, and my friends were in the city, so it was always my dream for my first legal drink to be in the city with my girlfriends. With that in mind, my mother and I decided to beat the heat by leaving south Georgia and heading to New York City, where it actually wasn’t that much cooler.

Specifically, we stayed in Chelsea, at a hotel just down the street from the Flatiron Building. Our hotel room had a particularly magical view of the Hudson River with Lady Liberty visible on the horizon.

On day one we sat outside of the Flatiron Building, drinking and eating tacos at a nearby restaurant.

We watched people walk by with countless Harry Potter bags, enough to make you wonder “why is even acting like they just left Harry Potter World?” The answer, it turns out, was because there was a giant Harry Potter store nearby.

No, I was not too old to walk up and down the Chelsea Harry Potter store with its Dumbledore-themed spiral staircase down the center of it. There were wands, chocolate frogs, Hogwarts scarves, and other paraphernalia for sale and I showed enormous restraint in not buying anything.

We also watched two blocks of people wait outside a cafe to get served, cafe-style by pop star Conan Gray during a merch drop that coincided with the release of his second album. Aw, yes, New York City, where you can be in such close proximity to famous people just by walking down the street.

That same day, we went to The Strand bookstore, a place that always feels the love from my mother and me whenever we visit New York. I strutted around the bookstore, flipping through the books that I found interesting, seeing the books that were written by Sarah Lawrence professors, and having to pretend to look busy while my mom bought the books on my birthday list.

When we returned from The Strand, the crowd of people was still standing around to see Conan Gray, even though he had long since cleared out. We found this out by having my mom ask the only close in age person she could find in line, a forty-something-year-old-man who seemingly had his teenage daughter for the weekend.

“Conan Gray is doing a merch drop,” was his very matter-of-fact answer, followed by, “he’s a pop star.”

“I know who Conan Gray is,” I told him. I was, after all, about to be a board-certified 21-year-old.

We didn’t stick around for his merch drop (did I mention the line?) but instead we went in search of food, the first of many great meals. This was a wonderful start to my almost week long trip. Six days in New York City: John Mulaney at Madison Square Garden, a Tony-award winning Broadway show, two museums, the Strand, Central Park, the Chelsea marketplace, some super cool people, and my 21st birthday.