A word of advice to all my dear Hainsie/Kimlet friends...
NEVER go errant and truant from this site for 4 days! It takes
forever to get all caught up!
But I have read the 1500 posts or so that I missed, and am now thoroughly modern post-wise.
Thursday night I attended a very nice little ceremony at which a theater at Central Washington University (my very own alma mater) was named for my very own grandfather. He was hired by the university to start a new "Drama and Speech" department, and for his first 9 years (he was there 34 years in all) he was a one-man department. This theater, a 300-seat-ish blackbox, was his pet project from early designing to fund allocation and all, and was built in 1981.
Following the dedication, I saw the university's production of
West Side Story. All in all, a decent production, with some very nice aspects. The vocals were all quite good, which was a pleasant surprise given their past few musicals. Their Anita was a real standout in every department, and my good friend Rob was quite fine as Tony (improved greatly since I saw him do the role in 1999). Some orchestra issues kept the show from being all it could musically. The conductor they used is horribly wrong for WSS... her style just simply does not work for that score. Also, they used a rather abominable setting on the synthesizer that was tinny and just did not work at all with the other instruments. Really could have used one more trumpet and probably an additional trombone, too. Acting was fairly strong except for a few Shark guys, but I think they were cast for dancing. Pacing in Act I was another problem. You know a show is moving a bit slowly when a theatre professor leans over to you and asks, "Are they doing this without an intermission?" and the answer is "No."
Then, as DR Ann reported on last night, she and I saw a University of Washington production of
She Loves Me on Saturday night. Her review summed things up pretty well. All in all, I'd call it a very good production. The cast was composed nearly entirely of Master and Doctoral students, all of whom were quite wonderful vocally. The staging was simple and fun, the scenic design was fantastic (and, again, simple), a very good orchestra, and fine performances. If I were to find any fault (as DR Ann will tell you is my way
), it would have been with the Arpad, who seemed to be very aware of his audience.
Spent a lovely lazy Sunday with Ann before heading back home to my side of the state. Heavy mountain snow made the drive that would usually be about 2 hours 45 minutes into a drive of 4 hours 20 minutes, but such is life in Washington state.
