Amethyst's Shiny Pebbles

At the ice skating rink that Huz and I frequent, it's not an uncommon sight to see a concerned parent, usually someone's mother, encouraging their daughter to work harder, to focus on this or that move or technical aspect. I always cringe inwardly when I see some of the more involved parents pushing their children to a point of what appears to me (a non-parent, I admit) as excess. Fortunately, none of them come close to Mama Rose's behavior in Gypsy.

The only thing that disappointed me about today's production of the musical Gypsy (by Broadway by the Bay at Redwood City's Fox Theater) is that today's performance was the show's last, so my reviewing it is almost without point. However, I could not let the opportunity pass to offer heartfelt kudos to the production as a whole and Heather Orth as Mama Rose in particular. From the first time she steps onto the stage, Orth is wholly and completely convincing as the stage mother who is by turns fascinating, delusional, and finally pathetic. Even in the scenes where the viewer can tell that Mama is losing her track (and any marbles she may once have had), Orth is never less than masterful.

The rest of the cast was very strong and a pleasure to watch - Samantha Bruce's Louise and Walter M. Mays' Herbie were beautifully and convincingly done. The newly reopened Fox Theater is a lovely historical venue with fully modern lights and amplification, and suits the time period of Gypsy very well. Make no mistake, this is local, nonprofessional musical theater at its very best.

Like ladybird97 , I haven't posted anything of substance in a while.  So, I post!

Work has been going along in a mixed-to-reasonable fashion.  We've got positive expression for enough of our genes to make it worthwhile to start on The Big Interactome Project.  One thing stands in our way: the ELISA that we're figuring on using to detect interactions isn't working.  Again.  We plan to work on the problem next week.  But meantime, just about everything else is ready for launch.

We had a fantastic time over the holiday weekend at the giant gaming party hosted by cerebralpaladin and orichalcum.  We saw a number of people that we hadn't seen in quite some time, and met some new - and of course cool - people.  I played two D&D games: one set in ancient Babylon, in which my thief character helped figure out why it was raining on the Jewish Quarter and nowhere else (everyone else in town was blaming the Jews for stealing their rain - turns out that basically, they were right!), and one in which all the PCs were members of a theatrical troupe.  The troupe put on plays of heroic adventures, and in this one-shot, we had to basically *become* adventurers to get our hands on a kidnapped playwright who'd promised he'd write us a play.  The last game that I played was in a system called "Dogs in the Vineyard," in which the PCs were essentially lawgivers of the One True Faith in something like mid-1800s Mormon Utah.  You can get a sense of the mechanics of conflict resolution from this Wikipedia article and the character creation and gameplay from this review.  It is significantly more freewheeling than any game system than I've ever played before (not that that's very many).  The traits and relationships that you use to define your character have essentially no limits on them in terms of their definitions: "sense truth", "skeptic", "healer", and "joyful celebration" were some of the traits in our group.  Having played a session, I can pretty definitely say that the more vague you can be in your traits and relationships, the better - it means that you can more easily bring the die values of those traits and relationships into conflicts.  It was fun, and I wouldn't at all mind playing in the system again.

We had our first choir rehearsal of the season a couple of nights ago.  We have two new people: a strong bass and a strong soprano.  Having two whole basses to our name makes a huge difference, as does having a soprano who can actually generate volume on Wednesday nights.  I'm really excited about choir this year - we're gonna be goooooooood...... :D

And next weekend we're going to see Spamalot and Yellow Face, both should be good pieces of theater.  I'll be interested in hearing what y'all think of the movie 9; it's on my 'hmm, could be interesting' list.

We're going to go see the Ram's Head production of Aida (Elton John and Tim Rice, not Verdi) tomorrow night!  Ram's Head generally puts on a very good show, and Aida is actually a pretty good show.  For a mere $20/head,  it should be worth seeing.  ;)

If it were earlier, I might post at some decent length about the two theater bits we've seen this week. 

Thursday night we saw the final dress rehearsal of Opera San Jose's production of Werther.  The very short version: Charlotte, a mezzo-soprano, is a Slave of Duty (tm).  Werther, a tenor,  is a depressive twit.  They sort of get together, but things end badly.  The music was good, though, and the voices were really quite good - especially the woman singing Charlotte the night we saw it.  I'm quite certain she could outsing any two of the other primary cast members.

Then today, we saw the Lamplighters' Annual Gala, in which they write their own show and put new lyrics to Gilbert and Sullivan tunes.  This year's show was entitled "Harry Patter and the Willing Suspension of Disbelief (or, A Series of Unfortunate Musical Numbers)".  It was... cute.  It should not have been interrupted with 15-20 minutes of live auction at the end of the first act which was then followed by a hideously long intermission (this is the Lamplighters' big fundraising event, and the intermission was for a silent auction).  And it really didn't need 2 different songs about Harry's scar.  Plusses: Equating Gilderoy Lockheart with Bunthorne from Patience was inspired.  Voldemort was rewritten as Wal*de*Mart (it's a long story; if people want, I can write up a summary later), and sang a version of "When the Night Wind Howls" from Ruddigore that involved the chorus of Death Greeters replacing the ghosts' "Haha"s in the original version with "Chu-ching!" (cash register noise).

nezumiko - that's where we were rather than being home to accept your invitation to an organ concert.  We ended up not getting home till 8:30.  (The show started at 4:00.)

Home.  Bed now.  G'night!

We went to see Avenue Q this weekend!  We'd been looking forward to it ever since I first got the announcement that it was coming to our neck of the woods, and it did not disappoint.  There's a good summary of the plot here for anyone who's interested.

Avenue Q is perhaps best termed as 'Sesame Street for grownups.'  If it were a movie, it would be rated R for profanity and simulated sex.  Between puppets, mind you, but simulated sex nonetheless.  The show includes some of the funniest, raunchiest songs I've ever heard. 'The Internet is for Porn' and 'My Girlfriend, Who Lives in Canada' are in no way, shape, or form worksafe, but boy are they a scream. 

There are also moments of comedic bliss that don't involve explicit acts or lyrics.  'Schadenfreude', a song that teaches one of the characters (and probably most of the audience) a new vocabulary word a la Sesame Street or The Electric Company is quite possibly my favorite funny song in the show.  The wedding nightmare (featuring a super-giant puppet of the main character's girlfriend in a bridal veil rising Godzilla-like over the apartment complex) is one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. 

There were a few things that surprised me about the show.  First, it's sweet: it's got an on-off-on love story between the two main characters at its core, and I hadn't expected any terribly deep emotional stuff.  Second, it defines a racial divide at the beginning of the show - not between puppet and human characters as one might expect, but between humans (including some puppet humans) and monsters.  Not terribly deep, admittedly, but an interesting touch.  Finally, it ends up being a quietly wise show.  In 'I wish I could go back to college,' a bunch of characters talk about how they'd like to go back to what they know, in a place where their needs are taken care of... then acknowledge that it simply wouldn't work, because they wouldn't fit there anymore.  And in 'For Now,' they state that nothing, good or bad, lasts forever.

So: Great show, better and more interesting than I expected.  There are certainly good reasons why it won all those Tony awards back in 2003, and I'm delighted that it's finally gone on tour.  Do catch it if it comes to your area - it's well worth the price of admission!