A little over a week ago, Douglas McGrath sent a text to a friend describing his commute from his apartment on the Upper West Side to the DR2 Theatre, off Union Square, where he was performing his one-man Off Broadway show, Everything’s Fine. “Every night when I walk down to East 15th Street to do my show,” he wrote, “I walk down Fifth, looking at the Empire State Building as I go, and then, once I pass it, I make a point of turning back and looking at it from the southern POV. It is always and ever beautiful. Funnily enough, when I come home, I go up Madison and make a point of seeing the Chrysler Building, all lit up. How lucky I am to live here!”
The man was 64. He was no yokel. He had lived in New York for more than 40 years, and his work had connected him with such figures as Carole King, Christopher Plummer, Catherine O’Hara, Nathan Lane, Woody Allen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Lena Dunham, Alan Cumming, Sigourney Weaver, and Sandra Bullock. Yet that unjaded “Can you believe this?” buoyancy never left him.
