Today is Thursday, October 10, 2024. In the aftermath of one of the worst hurricanes to lash Florida, Hurricane Milton, Floridians are now left to pick up the pieces. An online Miami Herald article describes the destruction that was wreaked on the Sunshine State in just several hours on Thursday and it is entitled “Hurricane Milton carves scar across Florida. At least 11 dead, 3 million without power,” and it’s written by Alex Harris, Joey Flèches, David Goodhue, and Charles Rabin.

As of now, three million people are without power statewide. Roofs are ripped off from coast to coast, including one over the Tropicana Field baseball stadium in St. Petersburg. Parts of Sarasota (where my son lives), Fort Meyers, and other Gulf Coast communities are underwater, flooded by up to 6 feet of storm surge. Homes and buildings exploded from a record-setting string of tornadoes across the state, including one that leveled a large St. Lucie Sheriff’s Department facility.

The death toll – so far – was at least 11 by noon Thursday and could still climb, including five people who died during two confirmed tornadoes that swept St. Lucie County, Sheriff Keith Pearson said. Two others died in St. Petersburg, Police Chief Tony Holloway told the Tampa Bay Times. Volusia County spokespeople confirmed three more deaths there to the Miami Herald, two due to falling trees. Another woman died in Citrus County, also due to a falling tree, NBC reported.

Hurricane Milton cut a swath of destruction across Central Florida after making landfall on Siesta Key just before 8:30 p.m. Wednesday evening as a Category 3 storm packing 120 mph winds. It flooded inland communities near Orlando and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands.

The storm finally pulled away from the other side of the state Thursday morning, just north of Cape Canaveral, leaving storm surge and more flooding rain in its wake.

It will now take days to fully survey the damage and add up the losses, but even before dawn, it was clear that Milton left a multi-billion-dollar mess in its wake.

Tampa Bay and much of the Gulf Coast faced sustained winds and gusts that topped 100 mph. Near landfall, Sarasota registered a 102 mph gust around 9:30 p.m. St. Petersburg, to the north, registered a 101 mph gust around 10:30. Tampa measured a 97 mph gust just after 11 pm., and Bradenton clocked in a 96 mph gust.

The roof of Tropicana Field that was blown off dashed hopes of using the stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays as a shelter for emergency responders. Videos show the arena was at one point packed with rows of empty green cots. But the staging area ended up being relocated to Jacksonville, Ron De”Satan”‘s press secretary Jeremy Redfern said late Wednesday night.

It seems that evacuation orders were successful, with the state clocking in at least 100,000 evacuees in public shelters as of Wednesday evening. By Thursday evening, more deaths had been reported from falling trees and tornadoes than surge, although the toll is preliminary as access is still limited to barrier islands.

Even the usually dependable Walt Disney World in Orlando closed its area theme parks through Thursday. Universal Studios also said that its theme park, as well as Universal CityWalk, would remain closed today. As of Thursday morning, Orlando International Airport remained shuttered.

On a more personal note, I worried about hearing from my son who is in one of those affected areas, Venice, Florida, so I tried to call him earlier in the morning and didn’t receive a response. I then texted him – without a response. So I assumed that he was without power like so many other Floridians like himself. I was correct when he finally called me later in the day to say he was all right. That was the important thing: that he was bowed but physically okay. He did say that he was without power for eight hours. He also mentioned that he didn’t evacuate as he was supposed to because he had to work as a general manager of a hotel in Sarasota that didn’t close during the storm. He did complain that gas stations were without gasoline and that grocery stores were without staples on the shelf. I said it was going to take a while to get things up to snuff. Anyway, I was just very happy to have heard from him. Just like everyone else, he’s had to endure the wrath of two hurricanes in just two weeks apart.

Before it’s too late, I thought I’d comment on the play that Elliot and I saw on Tuesday with our good friend “Gene” who was in the city only until today. We all took the subway into Manhattan from our place in Forest Hills. We entered the line at the TKTS booth and were intent, originally, on seeing Hell’s Kitchen, a sort of musical biography of Alicia Keys’ beginnings in the city of dreams, New York. However, one of the young TKTS staff members convinced Gene to see The Notebook instead. So that’s what we asked for when we got to the ticket window. The agent mentioned he had Orchestra seats available for the 7 p.m. performance; I misheard him when he said all three tickets amounted to $194. I thought he had said that one ticket cost $194, but I was wrong. Thus we only paid $65 each for the tickets. You couldn’t beat that price!

I wish I could say that the play was enjoyable. There were some very good elements there like some of the young cast members playing younger versions of the two characters, Allie and Noah. The acting, more specifically by the older versions of the two characters, was quite strong. However, overall, the play lacks more emotional heft that I was expecting since it’s based on a tearjerker by Nicholas Sparks, written in 1996.

This play follows a pattern in which a plethora of books have been adapted into Broadway productions like The Outsiders (the book was written by S.E. Hinton), Water for Elephants (also a book and a film as well), and The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic Jazz Age book ), and now this version of Sparks’ novel.

I agree with the sentiments of J.J. Colagrande who reviewed the play for The Jitney who writes that “This play is a dud. It does not live up to the novel or even the movie.” I haven’t read the novel and I’ve only seen snippets of the 2004 film which starred the legendary Gena Rowlands and James Garner as the older characters of Allie and Noah, while a young Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams played the younger versions of these two star-crossed lovers, so I can’t comment on this criticism of the play.

Some of the scenes that do hold up are when the older Allie (MaryAnn Plunkett) is lost in an Alzheimer’s fog of memory, becoming agitated and angry when she can’t remember something that happened to her at a much earlier time and the older Noah (Dorian Harewood) who grapples with his wife’s memory loss and stays faithful at her side, no matter what.

What I found especially jarring was the color-blind casting here in which the races are just mixed up just for the fun of it. I can understand why this is being done in 2024, but it is still somewhat disorienting, especially when you’re not expecting it. You see, older Noah is played by a Black actor and a younger Allie is essayed by a Black actor (Joy Woods), who has a wonderful singing voice. It took a while to accommodate oneself to this type of casting.

The story is quite paper thin: it concerns the pairing of young Noah and Allie who meet while on a summer vacation in some Mid-Atlantic coastal town and then separate for about 10 years. You see, Allie’s parents are not fond of Noah who is not as ambitious or good enough for their daughter who is going off to college to become something of herself. Soon Allie is engaged to someone else because she supposedly never heard from Noah in those 1o years who went off to war and bought himself a house and refurbished it himself. You see, Noah is an adept carpenter (when he meets Allie for the first time, he is working with his father in a lumberyard) and is very adept with his hands (no pun intended). This was the house they were supposedly going to live in for the rest of their lives. However, as at the start of the play, we learn that Allie and Noah have been together for 42 years.

As young Noah, Benji Santiago is in fine mettle. I thoroughly enjoyed his singing voice. We also get to see young Noah strip to his bare chest in one scene.

Music and lyrics are provided by Ingrid Michaelson and the anemic book was written by Bekah Brunstetter. The play is directed by Michael Greif and Schele Williams. There are scenes with both sets of lovers appear together – 10 years apart. So you have young Noah and Allie paired with “middle” Noah and Allie. The older adult incarnations of the characters appear in a nursing facility where Allie is now resting.

Even if I were not so enthralled with this play, I thoroughly enjoyed being with Gene who thanked us for taking him to the TKTS booth in Times Square in order to see a Broadway production. We had an early dinner at the Westway Diner, on West 45th Street.

By the way, if you want to shed some tears during this play, go see it before it ends on December 15.

And so it went!

Tomorrow I’ll be attending Kol Nidre services at the Jacob Javits Center at 6, on West 34th Street, so I will not be able to write my blog. Also, we traditionally fast for more than 24 hours on Yom Kippur – our holiest day – which is Friday night through Saturday. I hope to see you on Saturday if I’m feeling well enough to crank out a blog.

This is the playbill from The Notebook. This is Joy Woods and Ryan Vasquez as the “middle” Noah and Allie.