osprey_archer | Entries tagged with theater

I am back from my journey to Bloomington to visit Caitlin and see the opera! It only lasted a night, so it was a bit of a whirlwind trip, but still quite nice.

We had a delightful dinner at Quaff On - or rather, we had a delightful appetizer and dessert at Quaff On; my entree was a prosciutto-poached pear pizza which turned out a little insipid. But that was all right, because the buffalo wings that we got for the appetizer were delightful, with a wonderful mouth-burning barbecue sauce - and this was the regular sauce, by the way; there was also a spicy and an extra spicy sauce, which presumably causes literal steam to blast out of your ears.

Then we went to the opera, Cosi Fan Tutte, which unfortunately I wasn't too keen on. Two soldiers, engaged to two sisters, pretend to go off to war - only to come back disguised as handsome strangers to test their fiancees' honor. This is the sort of thing that could be hilarious with a light-handed treatment, but unfortunately the opera plays it just a little too straight. The sisters (and later the fiances, as the sisters begin to succumb to the handsome strangers' charms) often seem truly distressed, which made it hard for me to find it funny.

Apparently - as the program informed us - not being too keen on Cosi Fan Tutte is a long and hallowed tradition. The Victorians regularly performed it with a significantly altered libretto, in which the girls figure out the imposture and go along with it to revenge themselves on their perfidious fiances.

I'm with the Victorians on this one. That story sounds way more fun.

But never fear! Despite the disappointing opera (which did have a gorgeous set, at least - they used the same set throughout, and just a few couches as props, which was ingenious and economical and charmed me), we had a lovely time. We watched a few episodes of Natsume's Book of Friends in the morning, and then met my grad school friend for sushi, and dropped by a bookstore and a bakery.

The bakery had this sign, which I thought was pretty perfect.

( My philosophy )

I can't believe I don't have a theater tag yet. Clearly I should correct that.

In other news this weekend, I went down to Bloomington to visit Caitlin and see South Pacific. I first saw South Pacific in an amphitheater when I was about eleven, and fell in love with Joe Cable (I can't actually remember, but I presume the actor was very attractive, as indeed the actor playing Joe Cable was this weekend), but I have to say his romance with Liat seems way less sweet when you're old enough to realize that they take one look at each other and are ten seconds later doing the frick frack.

I'm not sure what, at eleven, I thought Joe Cable and Liat were doing, but it must have involved soul communion or something, because I definitely felt like there was a little more substance to their relationship than "You are so so so hot."

But I still enjoyed it. The actor playing Emil was especially excellent - there's a moment where he does an imitation of Nellie singing "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair," and it's just so goofy and fun, and it really solidifies for me why they are a good match, despite being quite different. They have the same sense of humor.

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We also watched a lot of Star Trek, in memory of Leonard Nimoy's death. I'd never seen the pilot episode, and it's really odd to watch it - like you're peering into an alternative universe Star Trek, which is like and yet oddly different than ours - because Leonard Nimoy is the only actor the pilot has in common with the show.

The pilot also has a woman as the captain's Number One (which I guess is space ship for first mate?), which I think would have been so cool and wish the show had gone with, even though the pilot also makes it fairly clear that the show would have been regularly trainwrecking itself on gender issues. ("I don't feel comfortable with women on the bridge," says the captain, after a cute little ensign hands him a report. Number One turns sharply to look at him. "You don't count," he reassures her, which is not reassuring at all.)

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And also we had delicious food! I had eggs benedict for lunch yesterday, with perfectly poached eggs and fresh golden hollandaise and cheesy biscuits: scrumptious and immensely rich.

Over the weekend my parents and I went to see a stage adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. It was odd, but excellently done: the actors had the whole audience in stitches, particularly Mr. Bennet, Mr. Collins, and Mary. (I always feel a bit bad for Lizzie's bookish, priggish sister Mary. Jane & Lizzie are best friends, and Kitty & Lydia are best friends, and Mary is in the middle all alone! No wonder she took refuge in books.)

Rather than just have the actors speak the dialogue from the book, they also quoted many of Jane Austen's character descriptions. Beforehand I didn't see how this could work, but actually it worked well: I could always tells which parts were dialogue because the other characters reacted to them (and not to the descriptions), and it kept in many of Austen's more pointed observations.

I don't think I've seen any other adaptation that captured how funny Austen is. So much of that is contained in her ironic observations about the interactions between people, which are hard to work into an adaptation.

I don't think this method would work in a film adaptation. Having the characters break character would be jarring in a film in the way that it wasn't in a play. I think. Perhaps because plays already demand that their audiences not just suspend their disbelief, but lend their imagination to the play - particularly if it's on a minimalist set? And I think there's something about the energy of having actors right there in the room that can smooth over things that would be bumpy without that physical presence.

I had the Nutcracker this evening! And beforehand I had a Nutcracker tea, for which I was going to make scones, except I was missing one of the ingredients and did not feel like battling the snowstorm to drive over to the store. So instead I walked to the bakery and bought cupcakes. The chocolate-orange cupcakes were a big hit!

DSCN3217

And the Nutcracker was splendid. I always think it's too bad they don't have a photo opportunity after the show, because of all the beautiful costumes: the peppermint costumes were particularly stunning, and it's just too bad that I can't share it with you all.

Greetings, gentle LJers! Things have been most exciting here! The power is still out at home, so I came to Starbucks to get my daily dose of internet and also a working heater.

I came back to my hometown this weekend to see a Yo Yo Ma concert with my mother, but ALAS, we arrived at the theater contemporaneously with a tornado warning, so they herded us into the catacombs beneath the theater, through which we dispersed as more and more people crowded down.

AND THEN THE POWER WENT OUT. Utter blackness.

And then everyone got out their cell phones and bathed everything in a blue and spectral glow.

Sadly, the concert was canceled, but tromping about in the bowels of the theater was kind of awesome, and I think it could be the beginning of a great story. Young Margaretta goes to the newly reopened repertory theater to watch something Shakespearian, only to have the performance interrupted by a tornado warning. The audience (rather sparser than the Yo Yo Ma audience) troops into the basement, where curious Margaretta drifts away from the group, gets lost, and finds...

The ghost of a long-dead actor? Costumes that make you time travel when you put them on? Decisions, decisions!

So we went home, and then later that evening the lights went out there, too. So I ended the evening reading Sutcliff by candlelight.

Today is the day of the Nutcracker ballet! I celebrated this morning by drinking hot chocolate and writing Christmas cards, and this afternoon ingesting a whole pot of tea while admiring my new American Girl catalog (research! It's research, I tell you!).

Yes, that is my famous new teapot! It's sitting in place of honor on my bedside bookshelf. I should try to get mood shoots of it: teapot with steam coming out of its spout, teapot in sunlight, teapot with flowers - or icicles, if it ever gets cold enough. Possibly I'm a bit too enamored of this teapot...

Paula and I are going to the local cookie store before the show. I'm thinking sugar cookies with peppermint would be an appropriate Nutcracker snack.

Or, the theater department performed The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), which is made of awesome. Titus Andronicus the cooking show! Othello the rap song! Hamlet upside down and backward! I love my school, I love my school, I love my school.

I’m sorry I haven’t gone to more of the performances this year. The only other one I went to was The Shape of Things, which is brilliantly creepy (and evidently has a movie version, according to the gods of Wikipedia). The same girl starred in both plays, and is clearly destined for great things, given that she was convincing both as a Southern Baptist gospel preacher of Shakespeare and a soulless undergraduate artiste with an attitude problem.

The gospel of Shakespeare thing reminded me of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books. I only read the first and wasn’t sufficiently impressed to continue, but the worldbuilding had some nifty moments--the machine that let people jump into books, for instance, and (more germane to this topic) the literary Protestant Reformation with split the society into sects based on their differing opinions about who was the One True Author of Shakespeare's plays. Marlowe had a fanatical quasi-terrorist sect fighting for his recognition as the true master of the English language.

The amusing thing is that there appear to be people in the real world who are thiiiiis close to being militant Marlovians. Evidently even five hundred year old fandoms have their crazies.

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September 2025

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Cosi Fan Tutte
South Pacific
Pride & Prejudice
Nutcracker tea
Lights Out
Nutcracker!
"Marlowe! By the power of Shakespeare I cast you out!"

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A Certain Slant of Light

otherwise known as Jin's journal

Entries tagged with theater

Cosi Fan Tutte

South Pacific

Pride & Prejudice

Nutcracker tea

Lights Out

Nutcracker!

"Marlowe! By the power of Shakespeare I cast you out!"