New York City actors who hail from Texas tell us they miss the weather in the Lone Star State. What? we say, wiping our sweaty brows. Maybe we need to appreciate Texas summers -- and Texas winters -- just a little bit more.
Our theater critic Nancy Churnin was in NYC to see Texans perform on Broadway, and she asked them to recount some of their favorite things about Texas:
Of course, food is first. They miss the food in Texas!
Actors such as Christine Cornish Smith, who appears in My Fair Lady, misses "Dallas treats" like fried pies. (Might we recommend this Texas Food Pyramid, which will make your mouth water?) Others say they miss the Tex-Mex, of course.
"You cannot get good Tex-Mex here in New York City, and so I miss it desperately," says Danny Skinner, an actor in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical. Some of the actors' favorite restaurants in Texas are Chuy's, Mia's and Taco Cabana.
They also miss barbecue. Makes sense: On one list of the 33 best barbecue joints in America, nine of them were in Texas.
They miss ... driving?
They didn't say traffic. They said driving. "I miss getting behind the wheel of a car and turning the radio up and scream-belting at the top of my lungs, all by my lonesome," says Phantom of the Opera actor Jay Armstrong Johnson.
They also miss the Texas weather.
Hard to believe when it's 100 degrees in Texas. But truly: the sun and the heat are welcomed in rainy, dreary New York, the actors say.
And OK, they miss their families.
"I miss the homey feeling that Texas has," says actor Alyssa Fox, who is in Frozen: The Musical.
Now that we think of it, it is pretty great here.
