Saturday, November 6, 2010

My Guilty Secret

I have reported here before about my problems with reviewing shows in the days when I was working an 8 hour day, transcribing at night and also reviewing shows. Walt's task in those days was to keep me awake thru the show.

Things started getting better when I stopped working, and even better again when I gave up transcription.

Now my only problem is insomnia and on nights when I have had trouble staying asleep, I usually try to get a nap in the afternoon so I won't have a problem at night.

But I forgot that last night. As we were driving to the show I realized that I hadn't taken a nap. But that's OK. It was going to be a comedy. Surely there would be no problem.

Wrong.

The theatre is small and there are only a few seats that offer an unobstructed view of the stage. The audience was very small and so I was able to grab prime seats in the second row, directly in front of the stage. First time in a very long time that I wasn't going to have to peek around a pillar.

And the show was very good. A fast-paced Neil Simon comedy with very good actors, all of whom were very good in their roles.

And I. couldn't. keep. my. eyes. opened.

Walt had his work cut out for him, pinching me every few minutes to bring me back to life again.

It was horrible. I found myself slumping over in my seat, my head leaning far off to the side. There was nobody sitting in front of us so I was clearly visible to the stage.

It's bad enough to do this in a regular show in a large theatre filled with people, but to do it in a very small theatre, with only a handful of other members of the audience, with the actors just a few feet in front of you, the lights from the stage illuminating the audience as well, so that the actors can see everyone...and them knowing that you are the critic!

At intermission, Walt asked if I wanted something from the snack bar and I asked him to bring me some water, hoping that drinking water when I felt myself slipping would wake me up.

Only I fell asleep and the water bottle (fortunately capped) dropped from my hand with a heavy CLUNK onto the wooden floor. To their great credit, the actors didn't even flinch.

The water didn't help during the second half, though since it was so funny, I stayed awake more than I had before, but I still nodded off too many times.

My big fear at times like this is that I will think that I'm getting the gist of the story and realize when I sit down to write a review that I didn't have a clue what was going on. I'm not sure if this happened last night or not.

The show gets a good review, but writing it is very difficult because there are so many gaps.

We came home and instead of writing the review right away, I immediately went to sleep (I didn't even check e-mail). I woke up around midnight and was awake for an hour, but then went right back to sleep until 8 a.m.

I must have really been suffering the after-effects of the night earlier this week when I couldn't sleep at all and I hope that I have finally caught up on sleep. Fortunately, I don't have to review a show now until next Friday.

And my apologies to any of the actors in Rumors who may hear about this journal entry.

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