Girona and unforgettable concert

Today we took a day trip to Girona. This was a trip that Edie and Bill planned and I was happy to tag along. We took the train from the main station, which also gave me a chance to see how I would need to get to the station in a couple of days to head to Granada.

When we got into the town, we left Edie at a place where she could do some work while we explored. Bill took the rest of us to meet with his friend who is a professor at the university.

The campus is set on a hill with towers and a wall with a view of the city.

We hung out for a bit at a cafe where we waited for Bill's friend as it was a very hot day. We then strolled around the campus as well as around the town. The church in town was used as the setting for the Sept of Baelor in Game of Thrones.

After a stop at a bookstore and a long lunch where Edie joined back with us we went to a well known ice cream place. They are known for their fancy concoctions with ice cream topped by various candies and then a blob of cotton candy. I chose a frozen fruit popsicle in the form of Jamie Lanister's golden hand.

After taking the train home, we had to get ready for an evening at the concert hall. Bill, Edie, Maia and I were going to hear Mozart's Requiem. We chose the evening that worked best for everyone's schedule. And the primary reason to attend is to be able to see the inside of this beautiful hall.

The concert turned out to be one of the most remarkable choral concerts I've ever experienced. The Orfeo Catala were a small orchestra with strings, some winds and brass and one percussion player. They entered the stage dressed like they were going to their neighbour's backyard party, but all in warm colours. The conductor was wearing powder blue pants with a wide white stripe and a matching vest with a sequined lotus on the back. The choir were dressed similarly to the orchestra and the soloists were wearing long robes with ruffled shirts, where each robe had a different image on it (lotus, fish, ivy and something I couldn't tell). 

The choir started with some members in the aisles singing with the rest of the choir on the stage. Throughout the concert, the choir moved either with small movements of their arms or heads, or moving around the stage or up on the balcony, or dancing on the stage. It really felt like the choir's movements helped to illuminate the meaning of the part of the piece they were singing (which was in latin). The soloists also moved around the stage and balcony. At one point, the soprano walked in and sang holding a lit up globe in her hand. 

At the end of the piece, the choir was back on the stage, on the balcony and in the aisles and the space completely filled with beautiful sound. At the end of the performance we all looked at each other stunned. The audience agreed with us with a loud roar of applause. 

We later learned that this performance is part of a Greek festival, which makes sense in having the chorus telling the story. It was an unforgettable moment in an unforgettable hall.

After the show we were joined by Bill's friends Andrew and Joanna who had been at their wedding and was spending part of their summer in France. We all walked to Santagustina tapas bar for a delicious and perfect end to the day.

Once at the Pantages

This is a show based on a movie, which won an Oscar for its song. The movie starred Glen Hansard and Markets Irglova who also helped write the music.
The musical was terrific! While the story was not particularly unique (a girl helps a guy who is stuck in a rut because of lost love) the staging was terrific. The set is primarily a bar in Dublin. Before the show and during intermission, audience members are able to go on stage and buy a drink. Every actor also plays an instrument and when not speaking lines, they sit on the side of the stage where they often are part of the back up band. There was some wonderful 'choreography' in the way props were moved on and off stage. And of course the music was beautiful. The two performers who play Guy and Girl are terrific singers. I highly recommend this show if it comes to your town.

Invisible Cities

I had a chance to experience this event with a couple of good friends. This was a 'headphone' opera based on the book by Italo Calvino. The book is a description by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan of various cities in his empire, however the cities he describes are not real, but fantasy places. The opera was took part in the original part of Union Station. The small orchestra was located in (and stayed at) the old restaurant space where the audience started, after picking up our wireless Senneheiser headphones. As we gathered for the start of the opera, the words from the book were being read in Italian. The language is so musical that it made me realize why they invented opera. How could they not put music to such a language.

After a brief introduction (and guidance) by the director Yuval Sharon and a short overture, the audience was then welcome to wander throughout the areas of the station where various parts of the performance were taking place. In addition to the main characters, there were 6 other singers as well as dancers from LA Dance Project. The action took place in the two courtyards on either side of the main hall, in the main hall itself, and in the old ticketing area. The station remained open and commuters and travelers navigated in between the performers and audience members (and the regular homeless people who spend time there).

The performance was a truly eye-opening and amazingly wonderous experience. At first, I followed some of the dancers and focused on them. In my initial wanderings, I would glimpse someone seated in the great hall singing and realize it was a member of the cast (sitting reading a newspaper, or typing as they are singing). Halfway through I realized that the text being projected above the entrance to the train tracks were the lyrics and that they were singing in English. Marco Polo was dressed in a hoodie and backpack and looked like he could have been any random station denizen. Kublai Khan was also dressed in regular street clothes and sitting in a wheelchair. The dancers and choreography were wonderful as were the singers and I loved the music. The opera took about 75 minutes, ending in the old ticket hall. Kublai Khan at this point is dressed in imperial splendour. Before we reentered the ticket hall, there was a giant cloud of smoke hanging in the middle of the air. It retained its shape remarkably and when I walked under it, it smelled like burnt sugar.

After the performance, as the cast did their bows, they were standing not more than 10 feet from us. I was able to talk to one of the dancers on how it felt to dance so close to the audience (challenging and intimidating at first but he became accustomed to it). I also was able to talk briefly to the director and congratulate him on an amazing achievement. My friends Kathleen and Brandi and I sat at the bar afterwards to discuss our experiences (each a little different) and I couldn't help but feel like this was a quintessentially LA experience. I can't wait to see more events by this talented crew.

I was able to take some (flashless) photos during the performance. I actually had to restrain myself from taking more, because the visuals were so striking I kept seeing photos in my mind.

Sign language

I went to see a play called 'Tribes' with my friend Megan. The play is about the deaf son in a hearing family who meets and falls for a woman who is the hearing daughter of deaf parents. She knows sign language and but is losing her hearing. He (and his family) never learned sign language.

Megan wanted to see the play because she studied sign language back in college. We were sitting in the section for deaf patrons, with two sign language interpreters. It was really interesting to watch the audience members communicating to each other in sign. The play was really interesting and moving, and really was about all kinds of miscommunications, not just between hearing and non-hearing people. The actor who plays the son, Billy, is deaf. He speaks well enough to be understood quite easily. The play included moments of pure sign. The set was designed in such a way that super-titles could be projected onto various parts of it during the signing. Afterwards, there was a discussion period with the cast and it was interesting to hear the questions and comments from the audience. A gay man related to Billy's situation to his own coming out. A deaf young woman described how she went through similar situation as Billy in her hearing family. Watching the various signers, I could see there were differences in how each of them used their hands. Some were emotional and aggressive. Some were slower and more relaxed. The movement was like dancing with their hands.

War Horse

I went to see this play at the Ahmanson this weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. I have not seen the movie, based on the same book. I might, just so I can compare how two very different mediums handle the same story. The sets, lighting, sound, and of course the horse puppets make this a truly theatrical experience. Who needs 3D, just go to the theatre. The horse puppets are really astonishing in how real they become. When the horses are in danger, there were audible gasps in the audience. Despite it being a harrowing war story, there is a lot of humour throughout the piece. The addition of the Song Man who sings at various critical moments in the play adds emotional resonance. I found the story a little simplistic and predictable, but was still moved despite some manipulative tugging of heart strings. Many Americans were introduced to the horrors of WWI through the TV series Downton Abbey, and there is a feeling of doom and foreboding during the preparation for war scenes when the characters still don't know what they're getting into but you do.

Dance camp in the Pacific Northwest

Today was Day 1 in Vancouver, WA, which is a small town outside Portland OR. The studio where camp is being held is Columbia Dance Studio. There is a giant light filled studio plus two smaller ones. After sign in and orientation, we had Scott Putman's EBAS class. This is a system of exercises to help us engage the joints and small muscles that are critical to ballet movement and it's a remarkable series. When we stood up at the end of it, I felt completely lifted out of my pelvis. Even my naturally pronated arches in my feet were lifted. This year I'm in 3B and we had a new teacher who played some challenging music and was very nervous. Instead of pointe, I took men's class, which Scott also taught and focused on proper placement for turns in second. He also taught modern class which was mostly Cunningham technique (so I was told). I always enjoy modern, but I chose to be prudent about the amount of rolling on the ground that I would put my body through.
After classes and a quick grocery store run, we had dinner at the Black Angus which is next door to our hotel with most of the So Cal gang plus Robin from Chicago.
Then it was to our rooms to stretch and roll out our sore muscles, take some advil and watch some Olympic gymnastics trials.

The Follies

I had a chance to catch this musical while it's at The Ahmanson, and I was surprised by how great it was! This show was a last minute fill in, after a previous engagement fell through. We were lucky to get almost the entire Broadway and Kennedy Center cast (only Bernadette Peters didn't make it across the country). This meant that we were able to see some of the top Broadway stars in our own backyard. Living in LA means often having TV and film stars show up in stage productions, and it's often thrilling, however there is a special talent to performing on Broadway and the leads in this show proved it. This production was originally written by Stephen Sondheim in 1971 and tells the story of some show girls who reunite with their spouses at their former theatre one last time before it's torn down. Their heyday was in the time between the wars and throughout the show, the ghosts of former show girls are seen in the dark on balconies and walking among the cast. The songs and story are surprisingly resonant for a 40 year old show. The second half has an elaborate Follies type production with the most incredible floral set and lighting (I involuntarily said, 'Woah' when the curtain went up to reveal this). Throughout the show, younger actors portray the former selves of the 4 leads and the lighting to distinguish the present from the past is really remarkable, and is something that theatre can do so well. And when these Broadway pros get out there and belt out a song while dancing, there's just nothing like it. I particularly enjoyed the actor Danny Burstein who plays Buddy. He's a short, stocky actor, and doesn't seem particularly graceful walking around, but in his dance numbers, he really lit up the stage.

Barre Vermont's cabaret shows

There is a town in Vermont called Barre. However, I'm actually referring to a bar on Vermont Ave. in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. The bar is attached to a restaurant called Vermont. They've been doing cabaret style shows in the bar revolving around the music from one director's movies. They've done Quentin Tarantino, Coen brothers, etc. I'm a huge Baz Luhrmann fan, especially of his Red Curtain Trilogy movies, Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge.

Last night I finally went to see what this show was all about. I really had no idea what to expect. I just knew if it had to do with Baz's movies, I wanted to check it out. They crammed the narrow space with as many tables and chairs as they could. There's a sound booth at one end, a small stage for a band at the other, stage lighting on the ceiling, a small platform in front of a red curtained niche and steps leading up to the bar itself. There is barely enough room for people to pass between the tables.

The show started with Romeo + Juliet. Interspersed among the songs from the movie is Shakespeare's actual words. They condensed the story into about 1/2 hour but managed to capture the essence of the tale. The performers are very talented. They have to sing while weaving in and out among the crammed tables and avoiding waiters bringing food and drink and the occasional patron coming and going. Since the performers are pretty much right next to you, they have the opportunity to interact and react to things going on in the audience. There is a feeling of being in the show unlike any other. After R+J, they did a few songs from Strictly Ballroom and managed to convey the weird humour from that movie brilliantly in a short period of time (as well as conveying the idea of ballroom dancing without actually having room to dance). The second half was all Moulin Rouge. As with the first two sets, the story is told through the songs while echoing the look and feel of the movie. For instance, in the movie there are a couple of scenes when the character of Toulouse-Lautrec is seen outside the window from where the main action is happening. At Barre, the performer playing TL climbs a tree outside the front window and sings from there (we hear it inside).

The venue is expanding into the adjoining restaurant soon, so there will be some elbow room in the future. I'm curious what they do with a director whose movies are less directly musical than Baz's. All in all, this was a fun and unique evening, one of those things that feel like you could only find in LA.

Toronto

I was able to time my visit to Ma and Ba in Toronto to coincide with Julie and D's visit over the Canada Day/Independence Day long weekend. The weather ended up being beautiful throughout my stay. I got in on Thursday and was picked up by D and Julie, as Ma and Ba took Austin and Mari to the Lion Safari for the day. D wanted to check out a new Mel Lastman square area that he'd heard about in North York. When we got there, we discovered it wasn't so much of a square but we were directed to Baton Rouge for dinner by two different groups of passersby.  Despite the name, the restaurant turned out to be a rib place (with very little connection to Louisiana cuisine). The food was pretty good, very substantial with D and I sharing a big plate of ribs.

The next day was Canada Day and we headed down to the Harbourfront where there were a lot of free activities lined up. I was amazed at the number of new condos and apartment buildings in the area. It was a beautiful sunny day and the crowds were out in force, with various musicians, performers, booths and other activities, both commercial and non-commercial. We saw a magician who did a nice routine with some traditional tricks, a competitive jump rope team who did amazing things with a couple of ropes, had ice cream, sipped coconut water from a fresh young coconut and did some crafts with the kids. The jump ropers encouraged audience members to join in and Julie and I gave a go at double dutch and did okay! York Quay Center had a glass blower working in their open craft studio that drew a small crowd. All in all, it was a fun and very inexpensive day.

On Saturday, we all went to ROM in the afternoon to check out the Toga Party and the Water exhibit. The museum had invited some members of a Roman legion re-enactment troupe (similar to Civil War re-enacters) in full Roman military regalia and set up tables for kids to try writing their names in Roman alphabet, do some mosaics and learn Roman numerals. The military gear was mostly hand made by the re-enacters and they all spoke a little Latin! The water exhibit was quite interesting, showing all the ways that water is important, various critters that live near or in water, and how humans have affected our water systems. In the evening, Ma and Ba took the kids home and Julie, D and I went to the Distillery. We were planning to see "The Glass Menagerie" and hoped to grab a bite to eat before. There was a jazz festival on site, so the place was crowded with pockets of great music floating around. We just managed to snag a table at the local brew pub where I had an amazing burger and D and Julie tried some local beers. The play was excellent, well acted, interesting staging and of course you can't top Tennessee Williams' writing. After the show, there was a cabaret evening in the adjoining room. We stopped in briefly to see what that was about. They had a couple of guys on stage chatting in between performances by a Canadian Opera tenor (of Randy Newman songs, of all things), a string/piano trio playing Bach, and a video of a Canadian TV personality ragging on a respected Canadian modern dancer over government funding for the arts. This promised to be an unusual evening but we had to leave as it was getting late. A thunderstorm was brewing on our way out and we were treated to a cool lightening show.

On Sunday, D and Julie and I went to Ontario Place with the kids. Boy, how this place has changed! It's the 40th anniversary of the opening. Now there's a water play area with slides of varying degrees of scariness, a zone filled with squirters and mini-slides and a huge bucket that would fill and dump onto eagerly waiting kids. Another area has mini-rides for smaller kids (as well as games where you can't lose) and a big room where kids can shoot little foam balls at each other! The IMAX was still there, but we didn't even have time to see the movie, there was so much to do! I tried to remember what we used to do at Ontario Place when we went as kids, since most of the activities that Austin and Mari enjoyed didn't exist back in the day! In the evening, I met some Iroquois friends for dinner. Three of them, Julie, Linda and Deb, were also at our last Iroquois reunion a couple of years ago. We added Anne-Marie, Jo Ann and Lisa. Despite the years, we had a great time reminiscing about the past and talking about our current lives. Deb is moving to Kitchener this summer so we don't know if she'll be back for the next time.

Monday looked to be a quieter day. We had lunch at Asian Legend with the Yangs and Huangs. The food was excellent and the adults got to talking making for a long lunch. Since July 4th was also Huang Shu shu and Ma's birthday this year, we ended the meal with a nice cake, a light chocolate sponge with an unusual jello filling. D prepared a barbecue chicken dinner on the complex's grills and we ate at the table in back. The grilled veggies, fruit and chicken were delicious, capping off a nice extra long weekend.

I flew home on Tuesday, enduring a ridiculously long customs line and just making the plane boarding.

Here are some pics that I took during my visit.

As an aside, I saw Unknown (with Liam Neeson) and Unstoppable (with Denzel Washington) on the plane to and from. Both were enjoyable big entertainment movies. Unknown had a plot twist that caught me completely by surprise, and Unstoppable was a terrific chase movie with just a touch of real-life events to make it interesting. I highly recommend both. The third movie I saw was "Win Win" with Paul Giamatti. I found this to be a heartwarming story with some wonderful performances, but it was not so much a comedy as advertised.

Hair!

A tour company of this show is playing at the Pantages this month. What a fun show! And so much more contemporary than I imagined. I pictured a fun show with hippies and cool music, which this was. However, the show was also surprisingly relevant. Yesterday was the memorial service in Tucson for the victims of the mass shooting. I had been listening to President Obama's speech just before dinner. The very first song, Age of Aquarius, starts by predicting a time of peace and love. Apparently we're still waiting for that time. The things that made Hair! shocking in 1967 (drugs, sex, nudity, irreverence towards the flag, etc.) may not be so shocking to us. People can wear their hair at any length now, but there's always something that young kids are wearing that leads their elders to despair. And we may not have the draft anymore, but there are still young people who are in the military because they have very few choices in life who are fighting wars in strange and far away places.

The performers come off the stage and into the audience a lot throughout the show, sometimes talking to audience members or dancing with them.  The Pantages is a huge theatre, so the effect of this is more muted than if we had been in a smaller theatre (for example similar to my experience at Fela! in New York in October). Many of the people in the audience looked like they could have been around to see the original show back in the late 60s. At the end of the show, which ends with the refrain Let The Sunshine In, when the lights come back for the cast to take their bows, they play the refrain over and over again and wave the audience onto the stage and the entire stage fills up with people dancing. Those of us in the audience sang along swaying from side to side. A really amazing experience.

Lincoln Center, MAD, and Fela!

On Friday, I had only a few meetings, so I planned a tour of Lincoln Center.  The whole place has been renovated by Diller Scofidio+Renfro with a new fountain in the plaza and a new 'grassy knoll' on the 65th Street side.  The tour guide was an older gentleman with a very deep and dramatic bass voice.  He took us through David Kock theatre, where NYC Opera was doing a rehearsal for Intermezzo by Strauss.  There was no music, just people running around a stage with props.  In the Met Opera House, the Opera was rehearsing Carmen with full costumes and sets.  We were only allowed into the Director's box, but from there we could see and hear everything.  That place is huge!  The final venue we toured is Avery Fisher Hall, where the Philharmonic performs.  This venue was empty so we sat in there as our guide told us a little about the place.  Apparently Avery Fisher paid to have the whole thing taken down and rebuilt shortly after it opened because that was the only way to fix the sound problems.  They really don't make rich people like they used to, do they?

From Lincoln Center, I headed to MAD, the Museum of Art and Design.  I had read about the building that this museum is in in the New York Times.  The building now looks like it says 'HI' on the top. The museum was between exhibits and had only a jewelry show and a pottery show, but their open studio housed Ruth Marshall, who knits cat skins.  She has some small knitted wild cat skins on display (ocelot, etc) and is working on a tiger.  Her knitted skins are based on actual skins in the Natural History Museum collection.  The tiger is from a female from a zoo who was donated to the museum upon her death.  The knit work is beautiful (colour work, shaping, etc) and it was cool to talk to her in person about her project.

Since I was in Columbus Circle, I decided to have lunch at Bouchon Bakery in Time Warner Center.  I had their short rib sliders at the bar and a cookie with ice cream.

After lunch, I strolled down to Times Square to see what was happening at the TKTS booth.  It sure has expanded since the 90s when I visited D while he was at Columbia and we saw Metamorphosis with Baryshnikov!  The line was quite long, and the booth is now several windows wide and located under the glowing red stairs near the Father Duffy statue.  I was able to get a seat for Fela!, a musical based on the life of Fela Kuti.  He invented afrobeat music, but I had heard that the dancing, choreographed by Bill T. Jones was phenomenal.  I went back to my hotel for room service dinner of french onion soup (and the remainder of the cookie from lunch) and a bit of a rest.  I got to the theatre as they were letting the line in.  The crowd was heavily African-American and the theatre was plastered all over with hand painted signs to give it some atmosphere.  My seat was in the very first row!  The cast is all black, and the performer who plays Fela! is pretty much on stage the entire time.  He talks to the crowd as if we are all seeing one of his shows in Fela's nightclub in Nigeria.  The music is amazing of course, but the dancing was phenomenal and it was so cool to see it so close up.  I could have reached out and touched some of the dancer's feet.  The show includes a lot of audience participation and the dancers often move into the aisles as they are singing and dancing.

Broadway, Dance and Food

I think the title pretty much covered the evening activities during the week.  Our days were packed solid with meetings, and there were a couple of business meetings over dinner, but I made an effort to fill the rest of the evenings with seeing live performance. Our offices here are very well located for access to Broadway and City Center.

One of my evening meals included drinks and dinner at Rue 57 at the bar.  The bolognese sauce was delish and I should have take some back to the hotel, because I wasn't very hungry during east coast dinner time, but got hungry later, during west coast dinner time.

A second evening meal was at Mike's Bistro, a kosher restaurant on the Upper West Side for a group dinner that included Warner Bros., our design firms, ADI from NY and BDA from Los Angeles, our contractors, and MEP engineers.  The food was excellent, great service, fun company.  After dinner, a few of us stopped at a nearby Irish pub, P.D. O'Hurley, for a drink.  Pretty authentic too, the bartenders all had real Irish accents.  The food being brought out to fellow patrons smelled really good!

On the third evening, Holly and I went to see Billy Elliott on Broadway.  We got tickets at the box office in the front row of the mezzanine.  We had a little time to kill before the show (but not enough for dinner) so we headed to Times Square.  A couple of years ago, the city blocked off a chunk of street for pedestrians and people were hanging out all staring at the side of a building and waving.  Turns out one of the stores had a camera mounted pointing to the crowd, and people were waving at themselves, which seems like a pretty universal human response to seeing yourself projected on a large screen.  The show itself was great, the Billy I saw (Joseph Harrington) was exceptionally talented (I suspect all of the rotating Billy's are).  Apparently there is a special 'camp' for the various Billy candidates because they need to know ballet, tap, singing and acting, plus be able to speak in a Geordie (or northern English) accent.  After the show, the audience is let out at the back near the stage doors and there were several pre-teen girls waiting for Billy to come out, which he did and signed autographs and had pictures taken with girls and parents alike!  After the show, Holly's brother met up with us (he was at a dinner nearby) and we found a Greek restaurantm, Uncle Nick's, that Holly had been to before and enjoyed.  They were clearly getting ready to closed but there were some 15 to 20 staffers milling about.  They agreed to serve us so we ordered moussaka, pastitsio, flaming cheese and a tray of dips.  The food was excellent, we scarfed it down and Holly's brother had leftovers to take home.

By Thursday, I was exhausted, and I suspect our design team was as well.  We wrapped a little earlier, and I spent some time sitting under the Columbus statue at Columbus Circle.  We watched high school kids milling about.  We had a drinks meeting with our contractor and one of our subtenant contacts at Whiskey Park.  After a little bit of chit chat, I headed back to my hotel.  The day before Holly's brother told us the Thai restaurant, Topaz Thai, near the hotel was quite good, so I got in line and had myself a delicious plate of pad thai with seafood, plus creamy thai iced tea.  The restaurant was tiny and packed, with a line out the door.  The service was fast and pleasant and I paid and was out of there in plenty of time to walk down to the next block to see Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at City Center. I've seen the touring company in LA, but I loved this performance even more.  I thought the dancers were superb and I love his choreography.  And odd thing happened just as the house lights dimmed though.  I was in the rear mezzanine, and there was a major stampede of people up in the rafters heading for empty seats in the front of the mezzanine.  They made a major racket and it was really unpleasant.

In The Heights

I went to see this musical with a group of friends this week.  It's playing at the Pantages in Hollywood and features Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is the creator of the show as well as starred on Broadway as Usnavi.  The theatre was packed to the rafters on the Wednesday night that I was there.  The show is set in Washington Heights among a group of neighbours and shopkeepers who sing about their life's troubles.  The rap-inflected music is wonderful!  I'm not a huge rap fan, but this is mainstream enough that I think anyone would enjoy it.  The wonderful dancing has a hip-hop/Latin flavour to it.  I found the story a little weak, there were so many threads they were trying to follow that no one story gets its proper dues. This is a typical immigrants' tale and while you're not going to come away from seeing this show with any real revelations or insights, you may be humming and tapping your toes as you leave the theatre.  This show recently on the Tony award.

Before the show, we had dinner at Fabiolus, which is within walking distance of the theatre.  This is a casual Italian restaurant, featuring some wonderful specials the night we were there.  They are well versed in timing your meal to get you to the theatre on time. 

Mary Poppins

The musical version of the movie is in LA and it's terrific! Of course the old familiar songs are all there. Some new numbers are added but they can't compete. The basic story line remains the same, however the particulars of the musical numbers are altered to fit the stage setting. The staging, sets and lighting are wonderful and really take advantage of the fact that this is theatre, and what makes it different from movies. There are a lot of children here! They are having to stay up way past bedtimes (some of them looked very sleepy during intermission). This really is a magical evening showing the best of Broadway musicals.

Flashback to 1996

I went to see the musical Rent with my friend Amy. It was at the Pantages, which is a beautiful old theatre in Hollywood. The crowd was particularly partisan and clearly knew each scene and song that was coming up next (they could've probably done a 'Rocky Horror' type participatory thing with this crowd). What struck me was how things have changed since the show came out. In New York now, it would probably be impossible to have a group of artists living in an abandoned warehouse in Manhattan (where are all the poor artists in New York living now?) and AIDS is a disease that while is still not curable, many people are able to live with it for years. It's definitely not the death sentence that is depicted in the musical. Still, the idea of a bohemian artist community fighting to stay true to their art and dying young has been around for hundreds of years (I suspect it did not start with the opera La Boheme on which this was based) and the emotional impact is still strong.

"Rabbit Hole"

I saw this play by David Lindsay-Abaire this weekend. This is the play for which Cynthia Nixon (formerly of Sex and the City) won her Tony last year. It was one of the funniest plays about the death of a child that I've ever seen! Actually, there really was quite a lot of humour in it. And a lot of sadness, of course. "You'll laugh, you'll cry", it really applied to this. The writing was wonderful. My favourite character was the grandmother. She comes off at first like a bit of a ditz, but her random meanderings would eventually lead to a comment so poignant and so deep that it almost took your breath away. As with a lot of plays in LA, the actors are often people you've seen on TV. In this case, the most recognizable was the woman who played the mother of the dead child. She was Sela Ward's sister in "Once and Again".