Blind Prophecy

So I enjoyed The Light in the Piazza, but I’m glad I was familiar with the music before going to the show. The lyrics are rather dense with metaphor at times and if you’re hearing it for the first time, you might miss some of the meaning. As it was, seeing the whole show finally made sense out of the parts I was still struggling with. I also got to meet several members of the cast and crew from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Eryka’s husband works with the show, which is how she got the tickets), so now I totally have to go see that show, too. I have to admit that I really haven’t familiarized myself with the show yet, so it didn’t have much appeal to me until meeting a couple of the cast members.

Piazza - well, I really thought all the actors did a fantastic job. Especially David Burnham as Fabrizio and Christine Andreas as Margaret. The show, on it’s own merit, doesn’t quite get there. I want to like it more than I actually do. The plot is uneven and sort of anti-climactic, even muddled at times (not because significant portions of it are entirely in Italian, but because there’s no pay-off to certain plot points and the message seems contradictory). The design was great, very cinematic in tone and feel, yet cleverly Brechtian-minimal when you stop to think about it, which is an amazing feat… I can’t imagine creating such “complete” sets with so few elements.

Eryka was as delightful as I remembered her (if not more so) and it’s interesting trying to bridge the almost-ten-year gap between us. She’d make a comment here or there which would really drive home how much I’ve changed over the years… yet, for both of us, the old wilder days of college were still there under the surface… although I seriously doubt either of us would get much enjoyment out of the old get-drunk-and-make-out-with-everybody parties anymore (for different reasons – she’s a wife and mother; and that stuff is just distracting foreplay in my book, not an end unto itself as it was back then). Anyway, I hope to see her again soon and often. I didn’t get a chance to meet her son even after BARTing out to Oakland because I started getting nervous about making it to hockey practice on time (which I didn’t, but only because I got distracted reading Astonishing X-Men after making it to Yerba Buena Gardens about 20 minutes early).

Hockey was fun, although I seemed to be having more difficulty skating tonight than I did the last time I was out on the ice. I need to buy my own skates and get more practice in. I’m getting pretty good at going around in a circle, but the stopping and skilled maneuvers are still beyond me.

Filed under: livejournal by Jere Keys