Come to the Cabaret

Some three years or so ago, the California Musical Theater (CMT) organization (which presents touring Broadway shows in the fall and spring and The Music Circus summer productions) decided to open a cabaret, in the hopes of bringing life back to Sacramento's K Street Mall.  One end of the Mall is a shopping center, the other end is the Community Center and running between them is a six block long concrete mall filled with questionable businesses and the venerable old Crest Theater.

At the time the controversial Cosmopolitan Cabaret opened, a review of the K Street Mall appeared in Trip Advisor.  It seemed to describe how a lot of people felt about the place

....the k st mall is a slum. if they want people to shop here they need to first make parking free. and on top of that, they need to keep the place well lit, and clean. there are too many bums just walking around, sitting, sleeping, and begging. i feel like i'm going to get robbed just walking here.

The Cosmopolitan Cabaret was going to class up the place and make the whole mall attractive to new businesses and bring some sort of higher class night life back to the area.

At the time the cabaret was being built, my cousin Kathy had recently gone on disability from her job as bookkeepeer for CMT was was happy to provide me with office gossip about the new project, which she predicted was going to send the company into ruin.

Three years later, the company has not been reduced to ruin, and the K Street Mall is still pretty much as it was when the place was built, so it's pretty much a wash as to how much impact it has had.  The original idea was to couple it with a fancy (expensive) restaurant so that people could have dinner first, then move into the theater for the show.  That didn't last long, but you could order drinks or (very expensive) snacks in the theater and they were made in the restaurant. 

The restaurant idea has gone through several changes, at one point being closed entirely while they sold movie-type snacks in the lobby of the theater.   Now the restaurant is a pizza joint which plays loud music, which (fortunately) does not seep through and disturb the stage show inside the cabaret.  The drinks are still ridiculously expensive ($10 for a bottle of water and a glass of wine tonight)

The first show in the cabaret was Forever Plaid, a show I had wanted to see forever.  It was a great show for people "of a certain age" and Walt and I loved it, but we wondered how it would play to the young, hip audience CMT was hoping to attract.  The material seemed dated (especially a long segment on the Ed Sullivan show) but if you knew the material, it was very funny.  

When Forever Plaid ran its course, the next show was Late Night Catechism in which a faux nun stood up and lectured the audience on things Catholic for 2 hours.  If you were familiar with the Catholic teachings and particular if you attended Catholic school, the show was hilarious.  If, like my colleague, you had no inside information about Catholicism or Catholic school teaching, it was deadly dull.

Most of the shows which have followed have not been particularly spectacular (except for Forbidden Broadway, which I loved in New York and was pleased to see here in Sacramento.  But I've given lukewarm reviews to all of the others shows, some of which were concert shows (like Sinatra) and some of which were plot shows (like Suds, which offered great laundromat humor.  Not).

Tonight another show I've been wanting to see opened -- I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change.  Fortunately it was one of the better shows I've seen at the Cosmopolitan Cabaret.  I think almost anyone watching this show will find something to identify with, from the awkward dating scene, to the romance, to marriage, to raising kids, to getting older.  It's very funny but the scene where two old people meet at a wake I somehow found a little difficult to watch.  For one thing there was a coffin on stage, reminding me of the (so far) ten people we've know who have died this year, but even moreso because the guy in the scene reminded me so much of our friend Will Connelly, who died in April.  He would have been just as funny as the actor was.  I miss him.

At the cabaret, you are seated at a table with four chairs, so it's a chance to meet new folks (and we all know how good I am about that).  We have been seated with "regular folks," not critics before, but once we were seated with veteran radio personality Mary Jane Popp and her husband. We enjoyed talking together and since that time, we always chat briefly when we encounter each other at shows.

Walter (whose last name I don't know if I ever knew) and his wife became friendly with us years ago because at the time he and Ned were working (or had worked) at the same radio station.  He's a nice guy and I enjoy chatting with him and his wife.

And of course, Patti, from the Sacramento News and Review is someone I talk to a lot--and we are Word with Friends partners, though she beats me 90% of the time.

But it hasn't always been rosy.  I remember sitting next to a woman (you can tell critics because we all carry information packets) who let me know in no uncertain terms that she had been doing this for many years and had nothing to share with a nobody like me.  And the main critic at the big Sacramento newspaper was so curt and dismissive of me when I was first starting that I haven't dared to try to talk to him now that I'm more "seasoned."  

But tonight we sat with Chris, who writes for a different Sacramento paper.  He was charming and we had a great time sharing information, particularly about my old boss, Derrick Bang.

After more than twelve years, I'm finally starting to feel a part of the critic community in the area.  A little.

Busman's Holiday

I am a theater critic on a short vacation, so naturally I saw two shows today.  Well, technically, one was just a rehearsal (or, as Phil put it, a "stumble through") and the other was a high school concert, but nonetheless, they were both shows.

After Walt and Jeri took Lester for a long walk, Jeri went off to work and dropped Walt and me at the Boston Center for the Arts, where Phil was working.

 Phil works with a program under Partners for Youth with Disabilities.  This particular program is Access to Theatre, which gives young people with disabilities the opportunity to be in an original production featuring drama, improvisation, movement...and more.  We met some amazing people, including Donna, who runs the program.

Steven has cerebral palsy and is a wonderful musician, who plays music with his toes on his iPad. (He is also an activist for rights for the disabled)

These two did a dance to "Proud Mary" (Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river).

Even Phil got into the act playing a tree in two different skits (one of which I dubbed "Midsummer night's tree").

But the performer who impressed me the most was Linda, who has been part of this program for several years and each year does an original dance.

She closed her eyes and she danced.  She didn't care that her belly was hanging out or that she didn't necessarily get the steps right, she was loving every minute of her dance and she was transformed.  It was a beautiful thing to see.  Apparently one year she did a Harry Potter themed dance.  It was stormy out that night and at the end of her dance, she raised her wand up high just at the moment when a huge crack of lightning lit up the glass ceiling.  Apparently it was quite an effect, though she modestly told me it was just a coincidence.

After we left the BCA, we came home, briefly, and then got back on the bus to head downtown to meet Jeri.  The second show was the culmination of a five week program Berklee College of Music runs in the summer for high school kids from all over the world. Jeri trains the orchestra that accompanies the Musical Theater Showcase.  Her 16 piece orchestra included kids from 5 countries, as well as kids from all across the United States, from California to Maine and one from Alaska.

We went out to dinner with her after the final rehearsal and then Walt and I waited at the entrance to the theater.

No cameras allowed inside, so there are no pictures of the performance, but Jeri's group was awesome and they accompanied musical numbers from Side Show, Assassins, Jekyll & Hyde and Wicked.  Great fun to watch and listen to.

The show had started with a Middle Eastern Fusion Ensemble and a huge Chorus.  It ended with the "Five Week Singers' Showcase," the five featured singers chosen from 150 who auditioned.  The first four were very good (well...I wasn't pleased with one of them) but then Quinton Monteiro came on to sing an arrangement of "Over the Rainbow" that literally brought down the house.  If this were a venue for making stars, one was made tonight.  Absolutely incredible performance, and though this bore no resemblance to the Judy Garland original, his smile and huge eyes at the end as the audience leaped to their feet cheering, was every bit as memorable.

We are now packing up and getting ready to get to the airport in the morning to catch our flight home.  I hate travel days, but at the end of it, there is home and the dogs, and no more trips in the foreseeable future!

I'm going to have to check the TV and see if anything of import happened in the past few days. 

Paragon Park

So here it is: the big day.  The reason we have flown across the country.  

It was really a pretty quiet day.  Jeri went off to yoga and Phil to work.  Walt tried to take Lester for a walk, but she planted her legs and refused to go.  She seemed to spend her day moving from lying in front of one fan to another.

Sounded like a logical thing to me and I ended up taking not one, but two naps myself, the last of which was while Walt and Jeri took Lester to the Farmers Market and for a walk around Jamaica Pond.  Walt came home drenched with sweat.

Around 5, we drove to Norwell, where the musical Jeri has orchestrated was playing.  First we met our friends Dave and Diane for dinner.  Diane is the older sister of one of Ned's best friends, Greg.

When we first entered the restaurant (Not Your Average Joe's in Norwell), there was a huge poster for Paragon Park just inside the front door, which was kind of cool.  We found out later that if you were going to the show, you got a 15% discount on your dinner, which was even cooler.

We started with drinks and most of us ordered beer.  I had a beer called "Dead Man," because I'd never tasted a dead man before (kinda tasty, actually).

Dave ordered blueberry beer, which came blueberries floating on top of it.  Actually, the beer was like one of those Galileo thermometers, because the berries would slowly sink to the bottom of the glass and then bounce back up to the top again.  Not sure the chemical action involved here.

Service was slow, but got right zippy when we let the waitress know we were going to the show.  The waitress recommended the show highly, told us it was sold out, and said that people had been searching on Craig's list for tickets. While I would not embarrass Jeri by telling the waitress who she was, Diane did, but though she was impressed, it didn't get us a larger discount!

The theater was only 1 minute away and when we arrived, the lobby was full and there was a merry go round horse which was being raffled off to raise money for the theater group.

I walked into the theater and just swelled with pride when I saw the theater, the full seats, and the 20 piece orchestra.  This was before a note of music had been played.

In this day of so much synthesized music in major productions, it was a real treat to hear a live orchestra.  Jeri said she didn't want to play any of the songs for us before hand because she wanted us to hear it live.  I can't explain how proud of her I was tonight.  Reviewers almost never notice the person who does the orchestrations--I know I certainly do not.  But one reviewer had singled her out for her "splendid" orchestrations.  A well deserved notice, I think!  (But then I'm allowed to be prejudiced.)

The show has a huge cast (about 40), lush costumes, amazing sets, hummable tunes, aerial acrobatics, and a merry-go-round that is assembled (several times) on stage, and works every time.

The show takes place over several decades in the history of a very popular amusement park near Boston and Jeri's orchestrations reflected the sound of those decades beautifully.  

We met the composer and lyricist Adam Brooks and Zoe Bradford, who wrote the book along with Michael Hammond (whom I didn't meet) and Zoe could not stop raving about how brilliant a musician Jeri is.  Naturally that warmed the cockles of this mother's heart.

When it was over, we tried to go back to Joe's for dessert so we could continue talking about the show, but it was after 11 p.m. and it was closed, so we said our good byes to Diane and Dave and we went our separate ways.

This was really a special day and how glad I am that we came here to see the show!

 

Jeri with Adam Brooks (music and lyrics) and Zoe Bradford (Book)

The Milk of Human Kindness

I'm starting to upload photos to Flickr.  It's going to take a long time, because (a) there are tons of photos to sort through, and (b) the upload is very slow.  With luck, I can get a set done every other day and maybe have them all up within the next two weeks.  But for now there are only the photos from the 3 days in Prague.

Today my faith in humanity was, for a moment, restored.  I have my own bank account out of which I pay for the Compassion kids' stuff and for what Walt and I in several years of "discussions" over purchases, came to lump together as "miscellaneous sundries at Long's," those "gotta have it" impulse purchases I would grab when picking up some household stuff at the local Long's (which no longer exists anyway).  Since I started keeping my own checking account, money "discussions" have, for the most part, disappeared.  Impulse purchases, charitable donations, stamps and Kindle boooks come out of my own account.

And it is pretty much a wash each month.  My only "big" income is my Social Security check and then the payment for whatever reviews I do...which can be as much as $100 a month or as little as $20.  I do have a little (very little) savings account cushion and try not to tap into that.

Well, as I looked over what was going to be due on my charge account and what I expected to be in my checking account after the Social Security check was deposited (especially since there would be NO income from reviews, since I would be out of the country), I saw that I was going to be about $75 short of being able to pay the whole bill.  Now that little savings account cushion would roll over the money, but I'm trying to keep that at a certain level.  I could, of course, pay only part of the bill, but then I would incur an interest charge for not paying the bill in full, which I always do.

But--aHA!  I had an idea!  My bank has a rewards program which I rarely even think about, but when I checked how much was in that account, it would slightly more than cover my shortage.  I went to Europe with a clear conscience.

When I got home and went to pay the bill, I dutifully rolled over my rewards points to my account but then--oh horror!-- I realized that all it did was to subtract it from the total of my bill, which included charges that had been made since the original bill was calculated.  What to do?  What to do?  I would have to go ahead and pay the whole bill anyway and let the bank subtract from my savings account, but I just hated to do that.

But then I decided to call Customer Service.  I spoke with a lovely Indian man who made the right sympathetic sounds, but agreed that there wasn't anything else I could do.  But then he put me on hold and said he wanted to see if he had any options.  He came back and related that he could tell I had been a customer for a very long time (I don't remember for how long, but I think I got the account in the early 1990s) and that I had been a very loyal customer, never missing a payment and never having anything like this happen before.  So, dear man, he suppressed the interest charges for this month.  I could go ahead and pay what I could afford and it would trigger no interest.

Now, no fool I, I did get his name in case I get dinged, but I am feeling the milk of human kindness transfused through my veins at the moment and glad that I have not changed banks since I first got this account! Makes me want to run out and do something good for someone else, to pay it forward.

---

Last night we had one of those special theatrical moments that I will remember for a long time.  I was reviewing The Music Man, one of my favorite musicals, at Music Circus in Sacramento.  Since we have been out of the country, I hadn't seen any of the promos on TV for the show and so was surprised to discover that Shirley Jones -- Mrs. Partridge herself -- who originated the role of Marian Paroo on Broadway and who played the role in the classic movie, was playing Marian's mother, Mrs. Paroo.  Her real life son, Patrick Cassidy, was doing the role of Harold Hill.

At the end of this wonderful production, when all the bows had been taken, Ms. Jones took the microphone and shared memories of making the movie with actor Robert Preston.  She then sang a brief duet with her son, to tumultous applause.   It was a real "wow" moment and brought down the house. Perks like this don't come along often for a theater critic, but when they do...it's magic.

 

Patrick Cassidy and Shirley Jones

National Donut Day

I was told several times in several places that today (June 1) was National Donut Day, so of course I felt Walt and I needed to celebrate.

I actually debated about getting donuts, but in the end drove up to Fluffy Donuts ('cause walking there would have been too, you know, healthy).   As a connoisseur of donuts, I feel Fluffy has the best donuts in town.   Apparently a lot of people agree with me because it was a downright happening at Fluffy's, with people lined up out the door nearly to the parking lot...so many people showing up that they must have been busy churning them out, because all the donuts were still warm.

In the end, I was glad I'd gone because (a) I was part of a town happening, and (b) I got to have donuts for breakfast and use "National Donut Day" as my excuse.

While I was driving home, I was listening to Jack-FM on the radio and heard Ned singing one of his radio jingles, in which he rhymes "crappy" and "clappy."  

Later in the morning, I received an email from a friend in Orkney (Scotland), thanking me for a postcard I had sent her last week.  She asked what my Skype name was and told me to let her know when I was set up to Skype.  Well, I have been re-set up (I originaly got set up when Brianna was born) since I did a test run with our friend Dick in Santa Barbara last week, so I hit the "video call" button and next thing I knew, I was chatting with Sian face to face.  What fun!!  We chatted for 22 minutes.  Walt and I had visited her home one of the small Orkney islands several years ago (the weekend of 9/11, in fact), shortly after she had purchased her stone house and was about to start renovating it.  The renovations were complete several years ago, but we have not been back to Orkney since.  But with Skype and her iPad, she was able to give me a tour of her house and I could see out the window to the lighthouse which is right by her property (and about which I tease her unmercifully).

(I'm afraid that with so many people I know having iPads I'm starting to covet one!)

In the afternoon, I "worked."  I had rented a copy of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V from Netflix and had downloaded a copy of the play on my Kindle.  I tried reading Henry V in book form at Logos, and ended up reading about San Francisco scandals instead because it was putting me to sleep.  I tried watching the movie and fell asleep before it had gotten 5 minutes into it.

I realized that the local production I am reviewing was coming up next weekend and knew that I had to prepare, at least a little bit, and I got the Kindle book and the video and started watching.  I could stop and rewind the video, if need be, and when I needed a reminder about historical aspects of the Battle of Agincourt, I put all on pause and came to my computer and read up on it.

What a fabulous idea!  A multi-media afternoon!

I. loved. it!

I am now all excited to see the whole production of Henry V, though I do wonder how they are going to do all those characters and a huge battle scene with a company of about eight people!  But at least I will know what is going on, know the speeches I am most interested in seeing, and wonder how the Davis Shakespeare Ensemble will do their own version of the play (since Branagh cut huge chunks out of the script.  That's another wonderful thing about technology.  When I got lost because Branagh had cut so much text, I paused the video and did a Kindle search for a unique word or phrase so I could catch up again.)

A day well spent...and now off to a birthday party for the guy who died last month, our chance to say goodbye to him.  He didn't want a funeral, or a memorial service, but a big party. He would have been 80 today, so this is the day for the party.

Living Vicariously

I feel so fortunate to have had theater in my life...pretty much my whole life.  As I have said before, my grandparents met in vaudeville.  She was a chorus girl, he was the tenor in a barbershop quartet

Though in her later years (before my birth, I'm sure) my grandmother seemed almost embarrassed to have been a chorus girl and made fun of my grandfather whenever he was asked to sing (very rarely), still I knew that they had been in show business and that my grandmother had friends who were still in the movie business.   I remember being taken to the premiere of the movie Stage Coach, starring Charlton Heston, Rhonda Flemming and Forest Tucker.  Its producer, Nat Holt, was a friend of my grandmother's and she introduced me to him after the movie was over.   The stars were also on stage following the screening, the first time I ever saw a real movie star in person.

Nannie often went to Hollywood to visit her friends and sometimes brought home autographed photos for me, of stars she had met while touring the studio.   The only one I remember was Martin & Lewis, though I know I had several at one time.

I was an avid reader of movie magazines, rushing to the corner drug store at the first of each month to check out the new issues. I was so disillusioned later in life to realize that these magazines were often more works of fiction than of fact.   (I don't think I really understood that until Rock Hudson died of AIDS.)

When I was in high school, I started ushering for shows (mostly musicals) that came to town and often waited outside the backstage door to get autographs of the stars (In later years, I really wonder what is the point of autographs!)

Back in the 1970s when I began my involvement with the Lamplighters I began to live on the edge of show business.  Most of the Lamplighters never became big stars, though some went on to impressive careers in show business.  But hanging out with actors and listening to them talk about past performances and people they knew was something I came to love.  Introduce me to a famous personality, and I will become tongue tied and stupid (like the time Jim Brochu seated me with Carol Channing for cocktails at an awards show and couldn't think of one single non-stupid thing to say), but let me sit in a group of actors, directors and choreographers and just listen to the conversation swirling around me and I love it.

It has been great fun, for example, being friends with Steve and Jimmy.  When I met them, I really didn't know much except Steve was this singer/songwriter living with AIDS who had written a musical.  Later I learned that Jimmy had grown up around Broadway theater, that his father's best friend was Ethel Merman's father, and that he spent nearly every day of Lucille Ball's last year playing backgammon with her. He performed in New York, was an accomplished actor and playwright and seemed to know practically everybody.  I loved driving around with him, listening to the tape of messages famous people had left on his telephone with regard to one or another production.

I love well written books about theater, like James Lipton's "Inside Inside" as well as a host of other people who have written interesting insights into their careers and their relationship with other performers (including Jimmy's own "Lucy in the Afternoon," about his friendship with Lucille Ball).

A few years back, I had the great pleasure of interviewing Mitchell Agruss, who was doing a play in Sacramento.  All I knew about Mitch was that when we first moved to Davis, he was the host of a children's cartoon program and was known as "Capt'n Mitch."  He was 86 years old when I interviewed him and learned of his fascinating 20 years in theater, knowing such people as Katharine Hepburn and a host of others.

We have become kind of casual friends, car pooling with Mitch and my theater critic colleague, Jeff Hudson, to stage shows in Sacramento.  Recently I joined Mitch and other friends at my new favorite place to meet -- Ciocolat.  During the delightful conversation, Mitch talked about some of his memories and we all said that he should write a book because his stories were such fun.

Well, it turns out he had written a book.  It's called "A Pygmy Perspective, 20 years of personal experiences with prominent figures of the American theatrical, film and television scene from 1941-61."  I mentioned that I would love to read it and a parcel showed up in the mail yesterday -- Mitch's autobiography.  Well, not so much a proper autobiography, but stories of his interactions with a host of famous names.  To give you a taste, this is from the "teaser" page before the actual start of the book:

Kate Hepburn treats me to vodka and tonic in a cut crystal glass.   Spencer Tracy phones.

Thornton Wilder attends my wedding and knocks rice out of my hair on stage.

Riding in taxis with Karloff and failing to amuse Legosi.

Jack Klugman credits me for his becoming an actor...

Moss Hart waits for me in the parking lot.

In 1948, Carol Channing tells me her intention to "quit the business."

Bert Lahr worries aobut underwear as we depart on tour.

There are lots more.  It's a delightful read, only 75 pages long, so I read the whole thing yesterday afternoon and just loved it.  It is filled with pictures of Mitch on stage in such productions as Much Ado about Nothing (with Hepburn, Alfred Drake, Sada Thompson, etc.), The Vinegar Tree with Shirley Booth, At War with the Army with Gary Merrill, and a host of others, as well as copies of the memorabilia I had admired in his apartment (such as an autographed picture of Moss Hart). 

I suppose I'm a theater slut.  I just love being around talented people, and even more, listening to them talking about theatre, which is why I so much enjoy the TV program, Theater Talk, especially when critics sit around and talk about theater.  I learn so much from these programs, as well as being happy that somewhere, a zillion miles away, I am sharing a little piece of their world.

I Survived

My name was Mme. Leontine Pauline Aubart.  I was a singer living in Paris, the mistress of Benjamin Guggenheim. I was born in May of 1887 and I was 24 years old the day I boarded the Titanic.  I was a first class passenger, embarking in Cherborg with my maid on April 10, 1912.  My cabin was B35.

It was a great ploy.  As we entered the theater for Titanic: The Musical tonight, we were handed a program and also a boarding pass for one of the characters in the show.  

We were invited to come home and check the web site to find out whether we had lived or died in the disaster.  I survived.  So Did Walt's character.

I so hoped the show would be good.  I wanted to be able to give it a good review, since this meant so much to the company.  Fortunately, it was very good.  I was actually surprised at how moved I was seeing all the passengers getting ready to board the trip.  The sense of sadness persisted when I was out in the lobby looking at the display of newspaper front pages after the disaster and other photographs.

It had been kind of a busy day.  At 11, I interviewed a playwright about his first play, which is being presented later this month.  The guy was a musician who attended Berklee, long before Jeri went there.  He turned to play writing in his 50s and, after 6 years, his first play is finally being produced.   I'll be reviewing it later.

I rushed to get the article written because we planned to drive to Santa Barbara in the morning.  It would only be for 2 days, but since we hadn't seen Brianna on her birthday, we both wanted to see both of the girls.  I have to be home on Monday to review a show on Tuesday.

In the afternoon, after I dropped Walt off at Hertz to pick up the rental car he wanted to drive to Santa Barbara, I drove around looking for the house of the woman I met at a show the other night, who has the first Lamplighter book and mentioned that she hadn't really known there was a second book -- her daughter is in the roster of the second book.  I told her I thought I had an extra copy and took her address.  I found the book this morning and delivered it to her house (she wasn't home, so I hope she found it where I left it!)

In the evening we went to Titanic and at intermission, Walt checked his cell phone.  There was a message from his sister-in-law, saying that his brother was in the hospital.  It's not anything life-threatening, but I could tell that Walt needs to go and visit Norm.  Norm almost died a few years ago and Walt just about lived at the hospital until he was out of the woods.  I knew that he would not enjoy our brief trip to Santa Barbara, so we've cancelled the trip and he'll drive the nice shiny new car down to the hospital instead.

At least I don't have to stay up half the night writing the Titanic review, but can do it in the morning.

Three Stage Shows and a Funeral

Well, that was silly.  I just wrote an entire entry sparked by a photo on Facebook and when I went to google something in the entry, discovered that I wrote almost exactly the same entry a little over a year ago and when you google the subject, you get my entry. 

So it's back to the drawing board with the entry I started out to write before I got distracted by the photo on Facebook!

What I started to say before I so rudely interrupted myself was that it's been a busy weekend.  I normally don't like 3-show weekends because it seems that you don't get a weekend at all (despite the fact that when you are retired, every day is a weekend day!).  But the first show was on Thursday, the second on Friday and the third on Saturday, so I had today all day free, if you don't consider having to write three reviews as being "free."  I didn't have to put on shoes, comb my hair and go out, though.

The first show was the Federico Garcia-Lorca play at the University.   Yes, I did stay awake.  That's one of those reviews where you have to sound somewhat literate, and I haven't quite finished it yet, though it's almost finished.

Then there was Fred's funeral, which involved a drive to the Bay Area and back.

That was followed by Leading Ladies at the Winters Community Theatre, which maybe my favorite community theater just because they are so darn earnest and such lovely people.  This show was fun for all sorts of reasons.  They had a good cast and it was a funny show.  But I also sat with Debra LoGuercio DeAngelo, the editor of the Winters Gazette, the Winters equivalent of The Davis Enterprise, for which I work.  The two papers work together and, in fact, Deb and I sub for each other when one or the other of us is unable to review a show.

We had been joking on Facebook about her bringing a flask of vodka so we wouldn't have to drink the champagne they serve on opening nights...and she did!   Grey Goose mandarin orange flavored vodka, which was definitely better than the Cooks Champagne and maybe part of why we both liked the show so much!

Saturday it was off to Woodland to review South Pacific.   The best of the 3 shows, by far, but you know, those old Rodgers and Hammerstein classics can be so dated.  The theme of racial prejudice which dominates this show is something one would hope we have resolved, though we have substituted other prejudices for the shock and horror of discovering someone had been previously married to a Polynesian woman, who died.

Dated or not, one of the songs still rings true in this day and age.

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

We are still passing prejudices down to our children, which is why President Obama has been so hated by some since he was elected, why there is a middle east crisis, why Jews are so hated by so many, why gays are bullied and killed, and why there is no simplistic solution to the problems.  All those kids are still being "carefully taught" by their parents and, in turn, they will teach their own children.  It's very depressing.

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

By this time of night, I usually have tomorrow's journal entry long published but it's been a long day and I've had a lot of catching up to do before I could write this.

We left kind of late-ish morning to drive down to Oakland to attend my mother's stepson's funeral (funny that I don't think of him as my stepbrother).

As memorial services go, it was very nice.  There was a Mass, nice singing, a fairly large turnout of people who celebrated his life, and a reception following at the local country club.  I got to see probably all of the family, very few of whom I actually know, but I talked with those I did and met a few I didn't.

My mother was fine, but was getting really tired by the time Walt and I left.  Sadly, I had a show to review, so we couldn't leave early to take her home, and she was going to have to wait until Fred's brother Ed could take her back to her house.  The two of them cleaned up pretty good so I had to take their picture!

When we left the reception, we drove straight to Winters, 10 miles west of Davis, because I was reviewing a show for the Winters Community Theater.  We were about an hour too early and it was too late to go home, so we had dinner at the Putah Creek Cafe (where I took Walt, Ned and Marta for Walt's birthday). 

While we waited for our meal, Walt was lost in the intricacies of his new cell phone

When my BOC (Bacon, Onion, Cheese) burger arrived, it was about the tallest burger I'd ever seen and I had to eat it with a knife and fork.

We finished in plenty of time to go across the street to the theater, where we were seated with Debra LoGuercio, the editor of the Winters Express.   She's a delightful person and has a great sense of humor.  We had been joking for the past week, on Facebook, that we knew the Winters folks serve champagne at their opening night gala and Debra said she should bring a flask of vodka because it was better than the cheap champagne.  She did and we had fun sharing it.

 When we got home, the dogs had been fed by our friend Jessica but Walt discovered I had forgotten to unlock the dog door before we left in the morning, so they had been in the house all day.  I keep a puddle pad on the floor for Polly, who has been very, very good at using it (which is the next best thing to going outside to pee).  From the amount on it tonight, it looks like all three dogs had peed there during the day!   Fortunately, it holds a lot of liquid.

Such a full day and I'm zonked.  Tomorrow we go to see South Pacific.  Three show weekends are always exhausting, and if you throw a funeral in there too...

Critiques

If I weren't nearly 70, I would think that I was either pre-menstrual or menopausal.  But since all that is behind me, I guess I'm just a cranky old lady who can't let an issue drop.  I truly normally let stuff like this roll off my back and I consider the source, but maybe I didn't get enough sleep last night.

I must first apologize to all of you who don't live in this area and can't read between the lines.  For people who live in this area, you will probably know exactly what I'm talking about. And if I am talking about you, well, I hope you listen.

First of all, let me go back to the 1980s, when I was working for the Lamplighters.  I love the Lamplighters.  Probably moreso then than now, when I thought the sun rose and set on them.  I never saw a bad performance (well, hardly ever) and, as I worked on publicity for the company, I took it as a personal affront when either newspaper critics refused to come and review our shows, or when critics came with a lot of baggage and had already written their negative reviews before they even entered the theatre.

I remember overhearing a San Francisco Chronicle critic saying "Sigh...I suppose I'm going to have to see XX and XX."  These were the two current leading male and female actors, who, I thought, were absolutely fantastic. But the critic didn't like them even before he saw the production and inevitably his review was a major slam at the show in general and these two performers in particular.  He likened the woman to being as sexy as a wet toothbrush.  Her very worst review ever.

Whenever The Lamplighters got a bad review of a show that we thought was wonderful, we were always tempted to fire off a letter to the editor about the critic's comments, but we had the sense to realize that you never piss off a critic.   Once a review is posted, everyone has read it and you can't change what has been written.  Read the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam...

The moving finger writes
and having writ, moves on
nor all thy piety nor wit
shall lure it back to cancel half a line
nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

So with that introduction, let's talk about today. I reviewed a show recently.  I gave it a lukewarm review, and said that the members of the company needed a pep talk before Act 1 because the talent was obviously there but that the show just had no life to it.   (I never talk about the show while in the theater, so had not mentioned my feeling to Walt, who turned to me at intermission and said "this just has no energy to it!") 

I also mentioned, in my review, that the ensemble had great choreography and when they kept it together it looked good, but too often one or two members were out of step which made the whole thing look sloppy.  I commented that more than once the ensemble started musical numbers on the wrong note and it took a few notes for them to get with the orchestra.  And I said that I was sure these were all opening night problems and that they would improve with time.

Interestingly, I checked the last time I had reviewed this company doing this production.  There was a completely different cast, a different director and a different choreographer, but my overall impression was that the show lacked energy then too.

Now this could  be chalked up to this being community theater and not professional theater, but I also reviewed the show a couple of years ago at a different community theater and praised it to the skies.  The principal character, who need to carry the show, was incredible.  He had such electricity about him that he sizzled whenever he was on stage.  The actor in the current production did not sizzle, though he sang and danced well.  There was no electricity.

I cannot speak about subsequent performances, but the opening night performance was lacking in energy and I could not say otherwise.

Well, this being the company that it is, I naturally received complaints.  Only two so far.  None from the directors of the company.   They know better and I think they must cringe whenever someone in the company (or in their audience, perhaps) takes me to task for a review I have written. I appreciate that.

But people have to realize that when a critic writes something it is just her opinion.  You and I may sit side by side and we may see different things. The critic's problem is that she has to write what she sees.  If I were to write a rave review just to support a theater company, nobody would ever believe what I say because, let's face it, people aren't stupid!  If you have a kick line of dancers and three of them are out of step and you, as the critic, don't mention that but say that the dancing was incredible...who is going to believe you when you have a kick line that looks like the Rockettes?

I have had people tell me that of course energy is down on opening night because they are all amateurs and all work hard during the day and they just don't have their full energy until Saturday.  My come back is always "do you charge less for opening night tickets?  Do you let your audience know that they should not expect your best performance on opening night?"  Nobody said that this time, but if they did, I would point to that other show I saw a couple of years ago, another all amateur production with actors who work hard during the day, yet gave their all to give me an unforgettable performance on opening night.

I just wish that people would realize that to attack me for writing what was my truth of my vision of the performance I attended doesn't do one single thing but piss me off.  Fortunately, I have not yet used that against this company, though I have been attacked plenty in the past 12 years.  I was even attacked for one negative sentence I wrote in an otherwise glowing review. I'm not going to write a follow-up review that says "Oh gee.  Sorry.  I actually thought the show was great. My bad," even the paper would print it, which it would not.

My advice for members of this company (or members of the audience who feel it necessary to attack me), is to remember that I can stop giving the company the benefit of the doubt and just be brutally honest and ignore the good things or the feeling I have that as opening night jitters wear off, things will be better.  I get angry with critics who feel that because they are called "critics" their job is to "criticize" and find nothing positive about anything.  I don't want to be that kind of critic.

By the same token, I'm not going to say something is good when it is not.  And if there are problems, I'm going to point them out so that maybe they can be fixed in subsequent performances.

And now I have that out of my system.  Unless someone else decides to write another letter to the editor!

65, The Musical

Quote from the New York Times:

The deal is this: For the price of a $65 ticket, you play two games of bingo, receive a free bag of popcorn and experience the pleasure of watching surprisingly accomplished actors star in something that is clearly beneath their talents. Honestly, it could be worse.....With so much talent, this musical might even find an audience. If it does, the obvious question is, will canasta be next?

That was written in 2005. Tonight I sit here trying to figure out how to top that in 2011.

The show is called Bingo and is the latest cabaret offering at Sacramento's struggling downtown cabaret. I haven't really seen a show there yet that I've been enthusiastic about, and this one comes close to the bottom of the list for me. It's the story of four women who love to play Bingo and the feud that erupted between two of them many years ago. It's incredibly predictible.

On the Bingo web site, where it lists pull quote from other reviewers, I saw one that got to me. It's from "Theater Mania" and it says "Bingo may well provide for middle-aged women what Wicked offers their adolescent daughters."

Don't. even. go. there, fella. You're treading on hallowed ground when you start comparing this show to Wicked. And I ain't no adolescent daughter!

But thinking about the NY Times review I was wondering if Peach and I should start thinking about 65, The Musical, based on the favorite card game of Cousins Days. It shouldn't be too hard to write. Bingo has two acts, but the second act's six songs contain FOUR reprises, so really you only have to write music for one act.

There would be the "hello how are you" number as we do our meet and greet dance, choreographed to include ice shakers, bottles of vodka and boxes of Kleenex.

Then we would have to set up the game with something clever like "Man alive, I need me some 65."

There would, of course be a reflective song as someone contemplates yet another bad hand and how come everyone else always seems to have more luck than she does. This is really Kathy's song and I'm sorry she won't be around to sing it.

We'd have to have a song about the boob and its importance in Cousins Day history.

The 11 o'clock number would be an angry number for my mother which would have lots of nice visuals like her giving someone the finger, wagging her nose at someone, and of course tossing the deck of the cards as the finale to the song. We could call it "Grannie's Lament" or something like that.

And we'd end with some sort of farewell number that would include lots of coins, putting the cards away for another day, and saying the long goodbyes. Maybe a tap dance number on top of a stack of quarters à la 42nd Street. (I can just see my mother, Peach and I tap dancing on anything!)

It's just a germ of an idea, but I can already see that it could easily rival the production of Bingo that I saw tonight.

Fortunately, the first part of my day was much more pleasant. Alison and I met with Melissa Wortman, one of the costumers/costumer designers/costume shop manager of the Lamplighters. As with all of the interviews we have done thus far, she was a delight, had prepared volumes of material to stimulate discussion, fantastic photographs, etc. She was eloquent, quotable, and nothing she said was not interesting. I've known Melissa since she joined the company, so our experiences together spans more than 2 decades!

We have had wonderful luck in our interviews so far. We aren't quite to halfway through the interview process, but we certainly have a wealth of information with which we can start our outline process.

Then, of course, I had to come home and see Bingo. Well...at least the day started well!

Dreams and Nightmares

Sheila is lying on my feet as I write this.

Sheila never sleeps on my feet.

Lizzie is spending her time pacing back and forth, making a bed in the cage, on Walt's chair, or on the patio.

Polly is spending most of her time in my recliner, as usual, but gets very nervous when I suggest that she and I go outside. She stands far away from me and won't come when I call because she knows I'm up to something, but she can't figure out what. I have not seen her pee outside.

The dogs don't have a clue what is going on in the living room.

Walt is just working himself to the bone, having now painted the room and then making arrangements for the Pergo installation, only the Home Depot rep said we would have to shampoo the rug before they would take it up because of the dog urine embedded. I can't say as I blame them.

We talked about the shampoo, but it would take a day to dry and then we would have to lock the dogs out of the room to make sure they didn't pee in there again until the new floor was installed. Finally, Walt decided it would be easier for him to take up the rug himself, so he bought a rug cutter and has been cutting it into manageable swatches and carrying them out to the yard.

As it turned out, it was probably a good thing. The rug was much worse than we realized, with almost NO areas that were not soaked with dried urine. I have felt very guilty watching how hard Walt has worked cutting up the rug, but it's all out in the back yard now and the cement slab is ready to receive the Pergo when it is delivered.

But the dogs aren't sure what to do, since their beds no longer exist. Lizzie used to sleep on the rug behind the couch, and Sheila, on nights when I slept in the family room, slept at the other end of the couch, hidden under the end table. Neither of them slept on the big dog bed that is in that room.

Tonight will be the first night with no rug in the room and it will be interesting to see where everybody decides to sleep...and where Polly will pee.

---

We went to see a production of Midsummer Night's Dream by the fairly new Davis Shakespeare ensemble. It was basically a fun production but I have stated often that Shakespeare is not really my forte. I always feel lost through a good portion of whatever play I'm seeing, and it takes doing a lot of research afterwards to put together a review.

Others probably feel the same about Gilbert & Sulllivan, which I can review without batting an eyelash.

But I had particular trouble with last night's show. I've seen Dream several times so I kinda sorta know what's going on, but this production was kind of a salute to bicycles and in the opening scene Oberon, the king of the fairies is angry with Tatiana, the queen of the fairies about this figure made of bicycle parts which was supposed to represent someone that I couldn't figure out.

Well, when I checked my last reviews for Dream, and the script for the play, I still couldn't figure out what the heck this figure was supposed to be. I was tearing my hair out trying to put it in context and wondered ... was there an alternate version of the play I didn't know anything about?

I finally decided to admit my ignorance and sent an e-mail to my contact in the cast. Then I checked character descriptions and figured out that the figure was supposed to be a young Indian prince whom Oberon wants to train as a knight, but Tatiana refuses to relinquish her control.

OK. Now I felt stupid for having written the e-mail, but I sent a follow up saying "nevermind. I figured it out." But I hadn't really, because this scene opened the play last night and I even read the script and couldn't find it. But I went ahead and wrote the review without mentioning it at all and submitted it to the paper.

Well, then I got a reply to my note and learned that what was, in this production, Act 1, Scene 1, in the original is actually Act 2, Scene 1, but they needed to use it to set up the whole bicycle theme, since the figure is made of bicycle parts, so they reordered the scenes.

I'm not sure if I still feel stupid or relieved that maybe I had a good reason to be confused...except now I've aditted to the Shakespeare people that I'm not really all that intelligent when it comes to Shakespeare!

And now I have to rewrite my review.

---

BTW, thanks to reader Ginni, I found out that Kiva is trying to raise money for My Charity Water, an organization trying to bring clean water to areas which have no water. Check this page for information. 100% of anything you donate will go toward the water project.

Burning the Midnight Oil

It's just about midnight and I should be a good way into writing my review of The Producers, the show we saw tonight. But I can never come home from a show and just sit down and write. I have to fritter away some time reading Facebook status updates, the e-mail, playing a couple of games of Free Cell, getting something to eat and finally, after thoughts of the show have percolated sufficiently in my brain, starting the review.

In the past, I would start the review and once I had a feel for how it was going to go, I would go to sleep and finish as soon as I got up in the morning. But the new person who handles reviews comes to work earlier than Derrick did and I can't get away with that now. She likes to have it when she gets to work, around 6:30 a.m., which means, I can't go to sleep until I get the review written.

It's been kind of a strange day. The caption for the Photo of the Day yesterday said that Walt had returned home from his week-plus in Boston, but that wasn't quite accurate. He had left Boston at the time I wrote yesterday's entry, but his flight path home included a plane change in D.C. (at Dulles) and, on arrival at Dulles, first hearing that there was a flight delay and then that the flight had been canceled. So the airline put the whole flight (nonstop, D.C. to Sacramento) up in a hotel, where they checked in at midnight and had a wake-up call for 3 a.m. because their flight departed at 7.

According to the airline web site, this was a special flight and it was due in at 9:40 a.m. here. It takes about 30 minutes to drive to the airport and I was just on my way out to the freeway when I got a text message from Walt saying they had just landed. Must have been some tailwind!

Whenever Walt is away for a length of time, like a week (or in this case more than a week), there is always a little readjustment to make when he comes home. Things that I do or don't do while he's gone are things that he doesn't do or does do when he gets back. Little things like turning off my fan before we left the house, to save that bit of energy that the little thing uses up. But the fan is very old and very temperamental and if you turn it off, it takes 20 minutes before it gets up to speed again when you turn it on. I know that, but Walt doesn't, so when I came into the warm office, I expected to sit down and have the fan blowing on me, but it was turned off...and it took, as I said, 20 minutes before it got its engine up to speed again (I understand that--it works the same way before I get my engine going again!)

With there being another person in the house, I have to cook regular meals, not pick out of leftovers in the fridge. Stuff like that. I know Walt has those same mental adjustments to make as well. I am not an easy person to live with, I realize. In a day or two we are back in sync again, but it's always the minor adjustment of having to share a house again.

We also have a houseguest again. Cappy is back, his "Mom" headed off for a week. I agreed to take him back, since it worked out so well when he was here for 2 weeks. Unfortunately, dunderhead me, I thought he was coming on Wednesday and when I looked at my cell phone in the car on the way to the show (I had left it in the car the day before), I had a message from Cappy's "Mom" that she would bring him by within a couple of hours. I had to call her to tell her I was in Sacramento and wouldn't be home until 10:30 p.m. She was supposed to be on the far side of Sacramento at that time, but we made arrangements to meet in mid-town, and then she decided to stay in Davis after all and wait for me, so I felt guilty about that.

Cappy and the other dogs, who were such good friends a month ago, are going through the same re-adjustment that Walt and I are going through, getting back together again. You can feel the undercurrent of tension, which will be gone by the time the four of them share breakfast in the morning. But readjustments, even fairly innocuous ones, are always a bit awkward.

...and now that I've written this and frittered away sufficient time, it's time to tackle that review....

Tales

I took my new jacket out for its inaugural spin today.

We (and Walt) went to San Francisco to see the new musical Tales of the City. It was a perfect day for a perfect jacket. There was a cool wind blowing and the jacket was neither too heavy nor too light, but just the right weight. And a woman in the garage elevator on the way back to the car complimented me on my jacket ("Just perfect. Good choice," she said. I resisted the temptation to "place drop" and tell her where I bought it!)

For those who are unfamiliar with the phenomenon that is Tales of the City, in 1976, a then little-known reporter named Armistead Maupin started writing a story for the San Francisco Chronicle. The story appeared in serial form in the newspaper and told of a young woman, Mary Ann Singleton from Cleveland, Ohio, who arrived in San Francisco for a vacation, fell in love with the city, and, on an impulse decided to stay.

She happened upon an eclectic boarding house at 28 Barbary Lane, a fictitious street but whose location was given as across the street from our flat on Leavenworth Street. Barbary Lane was not modeled on the small enclave across the street from us, though, but on Macondry Lane, which was a block away, not really an "alley," but a wooded world with small houses and a wooden walkway that wended its way down to the end of the lane which ran from Leavenworth St. and down a tall set of steps to Jones Street.

The boarding house at 28 Barbary Lane was run by the pot-growing Anna Madrigal, a middle-aged woman hiding a deep secret that has something to do with an anagram. Mary Ann becomes friends with other tenants of the building: the hippyish bisexual Mona Ramsey; heterosexual lothario Brian Hawkins; the sinister and cagey roof tenant Norman Neal Williams; and Michael Tolliver, a sweet and personable gay man known to friends as Mouse.

Maupin's original serial was wildly popular and he went on to write two more serials for The Chronicle, then turned those three into published book and followed them with five additional books. In the latest, "MaryAnn in Autumn" the Barbara Lane crew are all (or those who did not die of accident, AIDS, or cancer) in their 50s and 60s (and the ageless Mrs. Madrigal is also showing her age), but it was like revisiting friends you just haven't seen in a long time.

In 1993 there was a TV mini series with Laura Linney as Mary Ann and Olympia Dukakis as Mrs. Madrigal

Then they decided to make a musical out of the first book. Tickets have been selling like hotcakes and I ordered our tickets months ago. Sticker shock of having to actually pay for tickets -- $85 each! But there was no way I would have missed it. I had high hopes for it, with music written by the Avenue Q crowd.

I loved it but would probably give it only 3½ stars (out of 5). The music disappoints. There are a couple of blockbuster numbers, but mostly the tunes are forgettable. I don't think anybody will be humming any of them. The set is gorgeous, moving up and down and sideways and some of the lighting effects are wonderful. The story goes in fits and starts, but then so did the original serial, so it follows that course. There's lots of sex (implied rather than explicit), drugs and rock & roll. The first act is a bit long, but the second act hits hard and doesn't let up. I was crying in more than one spot, and joined the standing ovation for the cast at the close of the show.

The SF Chronicle reviewer appears to have agreed with me: "...if it has New York aspirations, as implied by the many Broadway credits behind and in it, it needs to hone its storytelling and develop a more distinctive musical voice."

But I'm so glad we went. I loved it. It was worth every dollar!

Of course, this being the kind of story it is, there were, shall we say "unique" items for sale at the gift shop!

When we left the theater, we decided to stop at Lefty O'Doul's, that old haufbrau a block away from the theater, for a prime rib dinner. It's been a San Francisco institution since 1958, though the last time I was there was 1983, on my 40th birthday. The prime rib was as good as I remembered it!

The dogs, who had been locked up all day, were very happy to see us return!

All in all, a very good day. My jacket liked its first outing.

Spit Spot

This is one of those times when it's good to be a reviewer.

It was opening night of Mary Poppins, the touring Broadway production, in Sacramento. I wasn't as excited about seeing the show (ho-hom, another Disney musical) as I was about debuting my new Chinese coat. Only my mother had seen me in it since they packed it up for me on the ship. (Walt saw it when I snuck it off the rack and showed it to him after hours one night when the tailor had gone to bed.)

I planned what I was going to wear with it and I promised several on Facebook that I would be sure to get a picture of myself in the coat.

Then, around 4, I heard a weather report that a storm was expected to blow into Sacramento in the evening and I chickened out. The last thing they said to me was "NO WATER" and told me only to have the coat dry cleaned. I wasn't going to take it out to get rained on. So I decided not to wear it...but I did put it on for a photo.

When we emerged from the Sacramento Community theater at 11 p.m. tonight and the ground was dry and not a cloud in the sky, I was sorry I had left it at home -- but at least you can now see me in the jacket after all this hype the past couple of weeks.

So that leaves the big story of the day the opening of Mary Poppins. As I said above, I really wasn't all that excited about it; I'd seen the movie and knew what to expect. I figured it would be good. But...oh my was it good!

First of all, our seats were 6th row center, better than I usually get (usually we are farther over on the side). Second, the people sitting next to us were the parents of Nicholas Dromard, who plays Bert in the show. He played the role on Broadway and payed Fiyero in Wicked in the San Francisco production for a year and a half. He's done 17 shows in New York and he has the proudest mother in the world. She told me his brother is also on the stage, but in dramas rather than musicals.

Fortunately he's great in the role. A more believable accent than Dick Van Dyke (but then that's not difficult!) and just as lovable.

Stefanie Leigh is also excellent as Mary, though I suspect that any competent singer/actress could do as well.

But the sets and the special effects were in some cases jaw-dropping. They give the critics a sheet of "fun facts" and here are some that I know Jeri will appreciate:

• The roof and nursery together weigh about 7,000 lbs.

• The Banks House weighs about 11,000 lbs.

• It requires 14 trucks to move the show from city to city.

• It takes 2.5 days to load the show into each new theater

• There are over 250 different props used in the show.

Some facts about lighting -- the show uses 174 moving lights, 576 dimmers and 270 lighting fixture. It has >350 lighting cues.

After a lot of facts about costumes (like there are 250 costume looks, 35 women's hats, and each "starlighter costume" has over 800 hand-sewn crystal stars) it mentions that Bert has a dresser whose primary task is to follow him around backstage with water bottle. Given how much he moves during the show, I'm not surprised.

One of the most amazing numbers is "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" (yes, I spelled that without looking it up--and got it right too!), with its mile-a-minute hand, arm and leg movements. The fun facts sheet says "The first thing that the actors learn during the rehearsal process are the letters for 'Supercal...' [sic] Traditionally, they spend several hours per day during the first week to learn the complicated choreography." I'll bet!

The "11 o'clock number" (the one near the end of the show that wakes everybody up" is an amazing "Step in Time," the number for the chimney sweeps. It's dazzling.

This will be a fun review to write. It should write itself, with the help of the fun facts.

Worst. Show. Ever

I don't usually post reviews I've written here, but instead post them over on Bitter Hack, where I put all my reviews after they've come out.

But since I posted the entry about the then-upcoming production of The Moby Dick Variations, which I was so dreading, I thought it only fair that I post the review I wrote of it last night. I came away with the idea that I'm just not ready for experimental theatre.

Here's the review....

We met someone headed into the Mondavi Theater on Thursday night to see a concert. I told him we were on our way to see "The Moby Dick Variations" in the Vanderhoef Studio theater. "Good luck with that," he said, rolling his eyes.

As I entered the theater, someone spotted me and said "I can hardly wait to read your review of this."

Half an hour into the piece, when I was comparing it to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest" meets "The Snake Pit," I was wondering how I was going to handle it myself.

In an interview with the Cal Aggie earlier this week, director John Zibell described his work, saying "...it’s not a play, it’s 135 little theatrical events inspired by ‘Moby Dick.’" His comment gave me the perfect inspiration for trying to describe this piece...remarking on the "little theatrical events" that I personally took away from the evening.

As promised, this piece (I am reluctant to call it a "play") "breaks every expectation that the audience has when they walk into the show."

For one thing, there is no "audience" section. There are no seats (though a few small, uncomfortable wooden benches line two walls and can accommodate maybe a dozen people). There is a lengthy description of the director’s concept for this work in the program, but it is written in tiny print, in one long paragraph and there is not sufficient lighting in the theater to read it. The audience is expected to mill about and mingle with the performers throughout the two hour performance.

The program lists the twenty-two actors in the production, but there is no indication as to who is playing which role. And it probably doesn’t really matter because there is no real plot that follows any logical linear progression. (I only know that Will Klundt plays Ishmael because he is mentioned in the Aggie article. As to who played Ahab, or Queegqueg, or any other character, it doesn’t really seem to matter since most of the work didn’t really seem to be about Moby Dick anyway.)

At one point I wondered if things would be more clear if I had actually read Moby Dick at some point in my life, but I suspect that would not have helped at all.

For example, I don’t really think a lecture on basketball was written by Herman Melville. And while the scene of a young girl saying goodbye to her dying grandfather was touching, it didn’t have much to do with a white whale.

There was the feel of a frat party about it. Most of the people in the audience seemed to know all the performers and the noise level rose throughout the evening, accompanied by mostly cacophonous instruments playing music written especially for this work by Dylan Bolles and the Thingamajigs Performance Group.

I’m not sure what the girl in the pink lace dress and Superman undershorts was doing on roller skates being pulled through the crowd by someone hanging onto a rope.

Nor am I sure why the woman in the diaphanous gown was hanging from the door frame and then climbing down the outside of a staircase.

It seemed that whenever someone got hold of a microphone and began to say something you could actually understand, three other people in three other parts of the room also began to speak and you couldn’t understand anybody.

At an hour into it, I had a splitting headache, and I was counting down the last minutes of the two hours so I could escape. I hoped that maybe something worth mentioning would happen. But, no.

I finally decided that maybe I’m just too old to appreciate a show like this. Maybe avant garde theater is for the young. But I wasn’t alone. The best overheard quote of the night came from a group leaving the theater whispering to each other "We won’t say ANYTHING until we get to the car, OK?"

They were lucky they didn’t have to go home and write a review.